It was a pretty long drive. Our famed Indian roads made us take five hours for the hundred kilometres, I travelled from Silchar city to the tiny village, Makunda in the southern most part of Assam. It was pitch dark when I set foot on the land; “Current nahin hain”, said the driver, only that he did not tell me that current had not been there for many days. Though, I was tired to the marrow of my bones, sleeping amidst the croaking sounds of huge lizards and howling foxes was always difficult. Welcome, to Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital (MCLGH)! A hospital where foxes can be seen daily, but electricity had always been a guest;
After such an introduction you are bound to have doubts about the place, don’t you? But all those doubts are put to rest when you go around the serene, green 300 acre campus. You can see people thronging to meet the doctor. “We have been waiting for almost two hours and travelled two hours to meet the doctors here”, said an old man. “Four hours” just to meet the doctor (Leave alone the time taken for investigations, and other works) is almost a joke in my place. Why should he wait for two long hours? Can’t he go to any other place? Aren’t there any other doctors in the nearest vicinity? Questions, which can give a lot of perspectives.
The campus lies bordering the three north eastern states of Assam, Mizoram and Tripura. The place is so underdeveloped that you almost feel like living in the 80s. Credit cards are still an unheard of commodity, computers and the internet are for the educated upper class, the previous day’s newspapers are read the next day, IT means “it”, engineers are still revered and the threat of terrorists rise once a while. These states had to be among the poorest places in the country, my mind said. It is in such a dark backdrop lie this light. After all, lights burn brighter when the darkness is more profound, don’t they?
Just to think that it was an old, dilapidated building, closed for twenty years when Dr. Vijay Anand and his wife Dr. Ann Miriam took over in the early 1990s is mind boggling. The place is bubbling with energy. 300 Outpatients are seen every day, more than 300 deliveries conducted a month, almost 6000 ultrasounds are being done and more importantly almost 20 leprosy patients are given livelihood. When you begin to wonder at the numbers, somebody says hold on; you have not seen everything yet. When you finally see the primary school for the children around the place, which now is in its tenth year and a nursing college sending out 20 smart nurses every year who run to the every sound of pain, you are made to ask “ Is this it or anything else still remain”. It is no longer surprising to hear that more than half of the school children and all the nursing school students stay in the hostels and eat food produced in their own campus.
It is one big village out there inside the campus. They all work towards a single goal; the goal of improving the lives of the people around them. When I look back now, I am reminded of the saying that the light on top of the hill cannot be hidden. Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital was started as a small light in one of the darkest places of the world. No doubt, it was a small light. But a light which had burned brighter as the days progressed and more importantly a light which is showing the world its way!
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