FIFTY FOUR YEARS LATER.........

September 2016

My 54th birthday was coming up in October and I was a little excited. But before that on September 8 it was my  friend from college days, Zulfiqar Jariwala's birthday. I called to wish him. Spoke at length, reminiscing about the 37 years of our friendship. I knew him to be a busy man on a working day (he being a successful advocate). Hence I tried to conclude the telecon, but he was in no hurry that day.

At some point our conversation veered to where we were born. And it turned out that the place where our mothers had delivered us was Dholkawala Hospital on Mohamed Ali Road, Mumbai, then Bombay. Just a coincidence I thought. But already there was a bell ringing in my mind. We both had very weak, highly myopic eyesight with multiple surgeries done on both eyes.

I came home and sent messages to my brothers and sister. Where were they born? My eldest brother Shamun who lives in Thane was born in Godhra. So also my special needs sister Rukaiya who lives with me under my care. My second sister Rafika. my dentist brother Shabbir and I, the youngest of all were born in Mumbai (Bombay). At Dholkawala Hospital, Bombay (Mumbai) !  All three of us have or have had high myopia since birth. There is no family history of myopia, my study of the family tree revealed. In fact, it showed my parents and grand parents having good normal eyesight until old age. It led me to a fair hypothesis that there was/were act/s of commission or omissions at the time of childbirth/delivery in all our cases - Rafika, Dr,Shabbir, Zulfiqar and I, that has resulted in weak, highly myopic eyesight. The implications are enormous and shocking. I met a judge's son whose nephew born in Dholkawala Hospital, Mohemadali Road and he too had severe eye problems

If these facts are any indicators, then it would seem that the fairly assumed acts of ommission or commission during effecting delivery of babies by Dholkawala Hospital are / were tantamount to medical negligence, and if so, the doctors there should be held liable for it.

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The Beginning

It is with many insights gained over the past few months that I write once again. With some personal and few worldly insights of what has happened in the past from time to time and what is happening now,

I was born in Dholkawala Hospital, Mohamed Ali Road, Mumbai on 7th October 1962. I was born with weak eyes / imperfect eyesight. No one knew why. At that time medical practices were not so advanced to diagnose my eyesight problems. So I spent the first formative years of my childhood looking at the world in hazy, undefined images, as in a dream sequence in a Bollywood film.

So it was natural for me to rely, use my my ears / hearing sense more, which is probably why I came to be fond of music and honed my listening skills acutely, right since an early age. Good listening skills eventually led to greater and accurate skills of speech and learning languages. I came to learn English, Hindi and Marathi with a fair degree of fluency. Later when I travelled in my first work assignment, this skill helped me to pick up the local lingo quite fast. But more about that later.

When I had learned how to count and the alphabet, my number could be ascertained by an optometrist. I do not remember my numbers but they were minus - high myopia. Later I do remember them being -13 at one point. Despite this I was an average, then a good student.