It is quite a steep climb, careful benji! I told my friend who had accompanied me to do the hill climbing we did in the evening. As we went to the top, the view was nothing less than breathtaking. All I saw was greenery and the beauty of it all. We came back talking about the risk of falling and the calories burnt climbing up.
Even as I was climbing it struck me, that Aunt Ida had climbed that hill almost hundred years ago. She surely saw the beauty and the greenery. But she saw beyond! She saw a medical college there. She saw hundreds of Indian women and men being trained in medicine there. What vision! What foresight! Amazing, I told myself.
It would have been barren land then. It is a buzzing, yet serene and beautiful medical college campus now. It is now the best medical college in the country. Among the best doctors of the world are being made here. People's lives are being changed here. Young men and women come here with dreams and go back becoming change agents of this huge country and of course the world. I'm one of those who was blessed by the vision she saw, as my grandmother was among the first to pass out as a doctor from this prestigious institute.
How did she manage this? When she set foot on Indian soil, women were dying in tons for want of medical treatment. She decided she will train women doctors, unheard of in India before her. Now 100 years later, mostly woman treat the woman in India. Every day, averaging ten thousand people cross the gate waiting to see a doctor. When she decided to begin, all she had was a 10*10 room and a single bed. Now there are 3000 plus beds another thousand to be added. How did she manage this?
Why didn't she just come here as a tourist, take some photograph of the hills and the greenery and go back? Or may be just stay satisfied by her one bed clinic and keep going back to busy Monday morning clinics and praise God for that? Why didn't she just think of it as a calorie loss exercise or a Sunday evening outing and just leave it at that, like I did tonight? That why question keep haunting me.
What a vision? How did she manage to see hundred years afar? Did she have a direct hotline connection with the divine? May be God directly gave her that vision; Or may be she asked the divine to give her the vision! This surely cannot be human, my innermost heart whispered. May be so! May be so!
Are you the small dot in a remote village thinking what can one person do? Or are you the eternal pessimist who thinks we are doomed, like me? Are you the patriarchal society's male chauvinist thinking woman's role should be in the kitchen?
Come and see the vision which Aunt Ida saw! On the top of a hill!
Medical college campus from the hill
Even as I was climbing it struck me, that Aunt Ida had climbed that hill almost hundred years ago. She surely saw the beauty and the greenery. But she saw beyond! She saw a medical college there. She saw hundreds of Indian women and men being trained in medicine there. What vision! What foresight! Amazing, I told myself.
It would have been barren land then. It is a buzzing, yet serene and beautiful medical college campus now. It is now the best medical college in the country. Among the best doctors of the world are being made here. People's lives are being changed here. Young men and women come here with dreams and go back becoming change agents of this huge country and of course the world. I'm one of those who was blessed by the vision she saw, as my grandmother was among the first to pass out as a doctor from this prestigious institute.
How did she manage this? When she set foot on Indian soil, women were dying in tons for want of medical treatment. She decided she will train women doctors, unheard of in India before her. Now 100 years later, mostly woman treat the woman in India. Every day, averaging ten thousand people cross the gate waiting to see a doctor. When she decided to begin, all she had was a 10*10 room and a single bed. Now there are 3000 plus beds another thousand to be added. How did she manage this?
Why didn't she just come here as a tourist, take some photograph of the hills and the greenery and go back? Or may be just stay satisfied by her one bed clinic and keep going back to busy Monday morning clinics and praise God for that? Why didn't she just think of it as a calorie loss exercise or a Sunday evening outing and just leave it at that, like I did tonight? That why question keep haunting me.
What a vision? How did she manage to see hundred years afar? Did she have a direct hotline connection with the divine? May be God directly gave her that vision; Or may be she asked the divine to give her the vision! This surely cannot be human, my innermost heart whispered. May be so! May be so!
Are you the small dot in a remote village thinking what can one person do? Or are you the eternal pessimist who thinks we are doomed, like me? Are you the patriarchal society's male chauvinist thinking woman's role should be in the kitchen?
Come and see the vision which Aunt Ida saw! On the top of a hill!
Medical college campus from the hill
Aunt Ida and Vellore during her time
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