(Dr.Santhosh Kumar SS)
“We go around and initiate young people to volunteer for the
organization, Doctors without Frontiers,” said Dr.Santhosh Kumar S.S, Deputy
Superintend of Trivandrum Medical College and an active member in the Paris
based Medicine Sans Frontiers that works in the conflict ridden countries that
desperately need medical and trauma care. “Most of them pull out of the mission
at the last moment citing the objection of their parents, partners and
children. To volunteer in the medical field you need a different mindset,” Dr.Santhosh
said categorically. Serving in the conflict zones, though sounds romantic,
proves to be contrary for the people who really dare to venture and serve. We
were talking about his forthcoming book tentatively titled, ‘From Gunpoint to
Syringe’, a collection of essays that he penned for one of the major Malayalam
newspapers, detailing his experiences in around fifty countries, mainly the
African ones, as a member of the Doctors Sans Frontiers. I was curious about
his statement and asked why so. “You should be a person having more than
humanitarian piety and that quality is something akin to thrill and excitement
derived out of life threatening adventurous,” Santhosh explained. He filled in
me with more examples related to mountaineering, street brawls, accidents and
calamities.
Meek people may prove to be lions when adversities confront
them. Adversities are the test of a person’s true mettle. Those who brag about
their prowess in any situation may turn cold feet when they are really in a
life threatening situation. During the first and second World Wars, there were
many among the writers, poets, doctors and painters who went to the fronts as
fighters. They were not really volunteering but were forced to serve because
compulsory military service was in place in those days. Wars perhaps enriched
them and the trauma helped them to purge their minds of bad feelings for
humanity. They became great artists. I remembered all these when I was invited
to be a part of the four members team that just decided to travel to the flood
affected northern districts in a car. It was a very lucrative one for the
thrill of adventure was the first reason for that invisible adrenaline pumping.
However, soon I checked the pros and cons and found myself unsuitable and
perhaps unwilling to take up that journey because I had something else to care
for at the home front. But the friends made the crumpled seams of my ego smooth
by assuring me that the invitation was just a formality and they were not
really intending to take me along because the seats were already full.
(Dr.Ajitkumar G)
One of them was Dr.Santhosh Kumar SS and the other was Dr.Ajitkumar.G.
Accompanying them were the social thinker and former activist Maitreyan and
Anu Devarajan, a woman activist. Having served in conflict areas in more than fifty
countries, for Dr.Santhosh the flood situation is one such conflict which makes
him act out of the routine. “Some are people who prefer to be in one place and
serve the maximum number of ailing people. I like that kind of ethics in my
friends. But I am a kind of person who just gets bored by the routine of a
place and work. It is not the cheap thrill that goads me to pack my bags and
fly upon the intimation from the Parisian Headquarters of the Doctors sans
Frontiers, it is a way of life that cuts the routine out and rings in the new
experiences, new people, new lives and new stories,” says Santhosh. Dr.Santhosh
has carved his life differently by finding time for working away from his
office but at the same time performing his duties efficiently. He finds time
for writing columns in the newspapers and also spare time for friends. With a
vast number of influential friends on his side Dr.Santhosh doubles up as a fund
raiser for ‘revolutionary’ projects imagined and executed by his artistically
inclined activist friends, of whom Dr.Ajitkumar tops the chart.
Dr.Ajitkumar G is fondly called AKG, an acronym for one of the
legendary communist leaders in Kerala, A.K.Gopalan who was also a close friend
of Jawaharlal Nehru. Though Dr.Ajitkumar does not resemble AKG in any manner,
when it comes to the organizational qualities Dr.Ajit stands almost at par with
the legendary namesake. Came up in the forefront of political struggles during
the early 1990s as a medical student, Dr.Ajitkumar not only earned a medical
degree from the Trivandrum Medical College but also innumerable friends from different walks of life including politics,
art, literature and of course from the medical field. From the very beginning
Dr.Ajitkumar was more interested in dissecting human form on papers with colors
than on the dissection tables with scalpels. He became a university winner of drawing
and painting. “We were a pack of trouble shooters, future doctors who moved
around in packs for political reasons but lived lonely lives in our minds where
we remained extremely creative,” remembered Dr.Ajitkumar in one of our
conversations. “We went to the University Youth Festivals in a small bus. We
were a few people. But we came back with a busload of trophies, shields and
certificates. If Medicos were there then there was not much hope left for other
colleges,” said Dr.Ajitkumar.
(Dr.Santhosh Kumar with the patients in Wyanad)
Remembrances are not about just boasting or boosting the
self-image. Despite the talents they all individually had, they were destined
to politically struggle against the existing educational system. They were
fired by a romantic zeal to change the world by all means necessary, which
obviously brought them lathis and tear gases and temporary imprisonments.
Dr.Ajitkumar still nurses the memories about his political struggle and the
kind of thrashing that he had received at the hand of the Kerala Police.
Dr.Ajitkumar had the fire of an artist in him rather than to pursue a regular
career in medicine. However for the time he worked in some hospitals only to
start his own with a few friends, who were equally romantic. Hence, the
hospital did not become a huge establishment. Instead Dr.Ajitkumar became an
establishment in himself by organizing art projects and similar programs while
pursuing his individual creative activities as a painter, installation artist
and conceptual artist. An extremely good watercolorist, Dr.Ajitkumar was
instrumental in inspiring a few youngsters who later on went to art colleges
and became artists. Amal Pirappancode, an artist, writer and illustrator who
lives in Japan these days remembers that it was Dr.Ajitkumar whose watercolors
that inspired the artist in him and the guidance that Dr.Ajitkumar gave him
years back helped him to find a foothold in the art scene.
Dr.Ajitkumar initiated Arteria, a public art project in
Trivandrum collaborating with the Tourism Department, Government of Kerala. He
has done two phases of it with the participation of many important artists in
Kerala. Dr.Ajitkumar and Dr.Santhosh Kumar SS and Maitreyan, their fellow traveler of the
day, besides many more doctors and friends were at the forefront of the ‘We the
People’ movement that upheld the Indian Constitution through mass mobilizing
through political, social and cultural involvement. Dr.Ajitkumar has also been
the Director of the Shanghumugham Art Museum. A man with more than one project
always in his pocket and many more in his mind, Dr.Ajitkumar is an ardent
pursuer of anthropology, linguistics, sociology, genetics, history and
socio-biology. The multi-disciplinary approach to anything and everything in
the society helps him and his friends to be on the track of science and they
vouch for a scientific revolution of the society.
(Dr.Ajitkumar with patients in Wyanadu)
Seeing them at the flood relief camps is a wonderful
feeling. It is more heartening to see Dr.Ajitkumar who generally denies that he
is a practicing doctor (but in fact most of his doctor friends discuss medical
matters with him before they go into real action. Also many friends seek
medical advice from him before they go in for any medical procedure) attending the
patients and looking at the medicines with Dr.Santhosh Kumar SS. When I saw the
pictures posted in the facebook I thought of celebrating them and of course
there are thousands of doctors in Kerala who are currently serving the flood
affected. I acknowledge them all. And it is great to have such wonderful
friends.
n
JohnyML
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