A Fistful of My Sky

 memories of Jawahar

Dr. ANAND GOKANI

After graduating as a doctor one is expected to do a year long internship. This internship used to be

for six months in the urban hospital and six months in a rural hospital. This memoir is an account of

the six months I spent in Jawhar, a remote Adivasi village 160km from Bombay.

This book is based in 1981 and the characters, events and sentiments expressed herein are as

accurately real as possible. This is an account of life in the village in that era. The bountiful Natural

beauty, unspoilt by urbanisation, the simple, innocent and loyal people and their lives as they

intertwine with ours, the excitement of working with bare minimum resources yet delivering

medical care to the poor and helpless people is the crux of this little treatise.

The interning doctors from Bombay, the staff of the hospital, and the people who knocked on the

doors for help are woven together in this intricate meshwork of events, emotions, excitement,

intrigue, joy, sorrow, gratitude and loyalty.

Anecdotes of true grit like the story of Dhavali, or the marvel and miracle of modern science that

saved Shiva, the faith and gratitude shown by the Adivasis to the doctors at the hospital, all are a

part of the large canvas that spans six months spent in the remotest village with the most backward

of humanity.

Stories of love, kindness, bravery, loyalty, gratitude, success, failure, cooperation, innovation, and

simplicity abound in these pages. The book has the ingredients of a medical novel, yet it is a true-to-

life story. It is about the poor who are effectively camouflaged in villages which are tucked away in

oblivion, far away from the glitterati of the highway community. This book, this memoir, is testimony

to their plight. It is a story of rural India …raw and unexpurgated. It is the story of the heart of India.