My Past!

I was born in Bombay and baptised as a baby at the Gloria Roman Catholic Church in Byculla, Bombay. My maternal grandparents were living in Bombay at the time and my paternal grandparents were in Goa. My dad had recently graduated from the Grant Medical College, Bombay, and that is how he met my mum. However, dad had secured a job in Nagpur, and so we all ended up being brought up and educated in Nagpur. It became our home. I am the eldest and have a younger brother and sister. They are both married and have grown up families in India. My brother has retired and is back in our ancestral home in Goa. My sister lives in Pune. I attended the St. Francis deSales High School in Nagpur and then the Govt. Science College. I graduated from the Nagpur Medical College in 1964 and then joined my dad's practice for a couple of years. However, I felt that my potential wasn't being realised, and so with my dad's blessings applied for and got a post as paediatric registrar at St. Martha's hospital ( a mission hospital, which was attached to the newly opened St. John's Medical College - a Catholic College) in Bangalore. I worked there for two and a half years and enjoyed the work and the challenge very much. My professor Dr. Seth and associate professor Dr. Thimmegowda suggested that I should go abroad to further my academic career and I took their advice. They had both obtained their post-graduate qualifications abroad. So, they opened the right doors for me and on a cold and frosty February morning I arrived at Heathrow airport with what little luggage I was allowed and £3.10sh. in my pocket ( this was all that I was allowed to bring on account of the strict exchange control regulations imposed by the Govt. of India at the time). I was fortunate to be taken in by a catholic couple upon my arrival at Heathrow, as a paying guest. Sr. Helen, an Irish nun working at St. Martha's hospital was instrumental in making these arrangements for me and I am forever grateful to all those concerned for the help and advice given to me at the time. I stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Wright for about three weeks and during this period spent most of my time scouring the advertisement pages of the British Medical Journal for suitable posts in paediatrics.I secured my first post within three weeks and from then on got every post that I was interviewed for. When I decided to enter General Practice, I picked Luton as the place where I would like to be, because it was here that I had met Vera, who was later to become my wife and companion and friend.

Nagpur city is in central India, in what is now Maharashtra state and the weather here is one of extremes - it gets very hot in the summer, with temperatures soaring to 40C; and very cold in the winter with minimum temperatures dipping as low as 6C. In summers it is so hot that many people sleep outdoors or on their terraces under the open skies. And with barely any light pollution, the skies are a wonder to behold and admire. It was on one such night that I, together with other members of our family saw UFO's or flying saucers as they were then called. I was in my early teens and I just had to write about it in the local newspaper - The Hitavada. Please see the extract in another section of my web site. I have not mentioned this before to anyone for fear of being ridiculed, but the public ought to know that UFO's do exist - I am convinced of it.