Dr. Irshaad Ali

Chief consultant pediatrician at the Balrampur Hospital, a 12 handicapper at golf, shayir and Sufi music enthusiast, Dr. Irshad Ali is all this and more. Having completed his MBBS from Kanpur medical college he joined the Pradesh Medical Service, “My first posting was at Malhipur, in Baihiraich. We lived in a kacchaa house, which was initially Raja Pyagpur’s stables, I was the only gazetted officer in that area,” he reminisces. It was this seven year stay at Malhipur which was the most exciting part of his career, “While eating dinner, we’d raise our legs to allow a snake to slither from under us,” laughs Dr. Irashad’s wife, Nahid. They were married while he was posted at Malhipur “Any other lady would have runaway! Nahid has been my uncomplaining companion through thick and thin,” he says.

“Snakebites were the most common occurrence in the area, I remember how a villager would come running to inform me of a victim, and I’d run back with him and usually I’d administer the anti venom shot in the middle of the field! It had to be done quickly and it was a junoon I had, that I must save every patient”, he says. It was in Malhipur that Dr. Ali’s son Arish was born. “I was an idealist when I joined the service, and the patients treated me like God. An old man once brought his dying son, saying all three children before this one had died under similar circumstances and at this age….” The doctor diagnosed it as pneumonia and rushed the child in his jeep to Baihiraich, 33 km from Malhipur, “We didn’t even have oxygen at public health centres in those days, but the child survived the journey. Whenever the child traveled to the city, his father would bring him to touch my feet before he left, this was the faith that parents and patients put in doctors,” smiles Dr. Ali.

It was his posting at Kanpur, during which he was “introduced” to the golf. “My friend Shiraz used to play and asked me to come along, I just walked with him and observed closely,” he recalls. But it was in the Mauri Bagh Club in Lucknow that he hit his first shot and took the game up, now a passionate player and owner of a Callaway set, Dr. Irshaad plays his nine holes daily. But it was also in Kanpur when he performed a surgery that saved a child with 80% burns, “We couldn’t find his vein and I decided to operate on his sub-clavian vein, something I’d only read of. The operation was successful and I can’t forget the child’s face, when he smiled, just white teeth and a black charred face.” His colleagues always warned him about the hazards of getting too involved with his young patients, but he attributes the success of his three children to the blessings that came from the parents of those whom he saved. “ Ghar se masjid hai bahut door, chalo yun kar lein, kissi rote huye bacche ko hasaaya jaaye”, recites the poet Doctor.

“What golf does for my body, music does for my soul”, states this fan of Tiger Woods and Amir Khusro. Listening to Abida Parveen sing Khusro’s “Babul”, he attributes his love for shayari to his childhood when he grew up in Maulviganj, “At the tea shop would sit poets and singers, everyone had something beautiful to say and these friends still visit me at hospital. They joke that I suffer from a disease they gave me”, laughs Dr. Ali. His days now, are spent relaxing to the ambient Sufi music and in attending Nashishths, which are small gatherings for shayari. “All it takes to be happy in life is a passion, any kind of passion”, prescribes Dr. Irshaad Ali.

In the Exptess: - http://cities.expressindia.com/archivefullstory.php?newsid=197541&creation_date=2006-08-20