Kavery Nambisan is among the few Indian doctors who is also a published writer and novelist. Moreover, she is that rarity, a woman surgeon. The Hills of Angheri is based loosely on her own experiences (see also http://careerfocus.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/324/7347/S158).
Figure 1.
Kavery Nambisan
Penguin Books India, 350 rupees, pp 393 ISBN 0 14 303271 2 www.penguinbooksindia.com Available in the UK through sales@in.penguingroup.com
Rating: ★★★⋆
The protagonist of this novel, Nalli, is a girl in a male dominated village in southern India and wishes, against all odds and advice, to become a doctor. The book takes us through her travels and travails, through graduate medical college, postgraduate training in surgery in England, and the years thence. Nalli learns—as we all do—that challenges in medicine keep presenting themselves in different forms and responsibilities always increase.
Many—perhaps most—medical students are idealists. Many, but not all, change gradually over the years, usually because of the lure of Mammon, wrong role models, or other reasons. Nalli and other characters in the book experience all of this. Some survive the bad influences, others don't. The incidents ring true, and medical student and doctor readers are likely to identify with them, recalling their own victories, defeats, and romances.
Nalli's experiences in England, written in the first person, are particularly striking. As a resident she is often plagued by self doubt and worries about medical errors—whether over diagnosing rare “bladder tumours” or at retained swabs in the abdomen. (So much so that at a recent book reading session a member of the audience questioned the author about Nalli's obsession with error.)
Later, after returning from England, Nalli works in an ashram or religious retreat in northern India, before moving on to a city practice and then making the final, expected move back to the village. She wonders “why we become surgeons at all when we have to die so many deaths in a single life.”
Although the story begins in the late 1960s, the issues it deals with are relevant today. These include informed consent (although it is hard to believe that a government run hospital in the late 1960s would have given so much importance to informed consent), corruption in government and private hospitals, and the odd ethical physician who refuses drug company gifts.
Figure 2.
Kavery Nambisan: a medical rarity
The Hills of Angheri will appeal to both the doctor and non-doctor reader alike. It is a simple tale with no twists, but is refreshing and engrossing.