This isn’t a biography, the author says in her prologue and technically it isn’t one. Yet, it deals with the life of Dr. NGK Sharma and the words flow with finesse from his daughter’s pen.

Then what shall we call it? People tend to veer towards biography of famous personality to know what made them succeed. But this book is more a memoir of an ordinary person who faced challenges thrown his way and yet rose to become a doctor of repute.  But is it just a memoir of an individual, a doctor, a husband, a father, a family man?  Had she given him a stature of a demi-god? Not at all. He is as flawed as a person next door and that makes his character come alive. His thriftiness and his penchant for saving money was so honestly portrayed that I could not but cheer for people of that generation.  I just loved the way he set an example of work culture without sounding pontificating. He rolled up his sleeves and got down to it. People just had to follow his lead in punctuality, organization and patient-care.  That simple, right? Surely the most effective way.

I am no stranger to Radhika’s writing. Her columns and books are filled with humour and her wit is all too evident in her writings.  This is a light read except for a couple of chapters on the doctor’s early struggle.  She encapsulates the life of her parents and it is all so relatable as she goes about narrating the happenings around her home, the guests, the city of Goa and the celebrities that she crossed path with. Her narration about meeting Amitabh Bacchhan was simply hilarious. And I was way too jealous of that meeting that I almost gave up reading the rest of the book!

I have never met the doctor and his strong, better half. Not sure I would. But I know him pretty well from the way the daughter painted him through her words.  And I saw a lot of my parents in her own.  A couple who marries in an arranged marriage set-up and just goes on in tandem pulling the cart along with them in the journey of life. How much we need to learn from the older lot who did not have much yet, made their life and their children and the extended family as beautiful as possible without hankering for more.

Kudos to the author for portraying their life with such honesty and grace. I loved the way, he learnt to handle new technology. When the author wrote, “he started studying it like he would a patient with a rare and new disease,” I could almost picturize him sitting on the sofa with the light behind him trying to decipher the new technology.  And her chapter on them reading the Mahabharatha was both hilarious and nostalgic as it transported me to my own parent’s living room when they used to bicker about things. Even the health set-back was dealt with such naturalness and not make heavy weather of illness.

The students of the doctor sharing their views were so very honest. I particularly liked the honesty of Dr. Deepti Shastri who in her urge to overcompensate her inadequacies of the previous day says, ” the patient gives no history of electric shock!” I laughed aloud. The entire book was so very honest, relatable and went straight to the soul.

This book is available on Amazon.