Beginning of life in the United Kingdom for one of the pioneers of Manipuri emigrants overseas
- Second part of the book: Dr Mohendra's Memoir to be published -

Dr Mohendra Irengbam *

At a dinner & Dance party in my Golf Club, with visiting Friend Dev Puri, an industrialist from Delhi, Margaret and an Irish nursing friend Phil Sterling

The story of my life of immigration is plain to read. It began one night of February of this year (2021), exactly one year after the outbreak of Covid-19 virus pandemic. It was a damp night with light mist outside. I lay down on the bed to sleep after reading a bedtime book [sitting up].

A wistful nostalgia, a yearning about the halcyon world of Manipur overwhelmed me like a winged messenger. The book was a Christmas present from my son Neil. It was the life story of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize winner from Burma, by Peter Popham, mentioning in the beginning, how she came to London from Delhi and then to Oxford, among the vast text of her life.

Aung San lived in Delhi with her mother Khin Kyi, who was ambassador of Burma to India, beginning in 1960. She was 15 when she came there. She did her schooling at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, located about one kilometre from Connaught Place. She then went to Lady Shree Ram College for women at Lajpat Nagar in South Delhi, which outmoded the top Miranda House College for women in Delhi University campus. Miranda House in the 50s, about the time of my college years, was reputed for commendable hostel accommodation and for turning out smart fashionable girls with science degrees. After her graduation Suu Kyi came to London in 1964.

The early part of Aung San's life story recaptured the memories of my youth as a trainee doctor in Delhi for nearly two years until mid-1963. While in Delhi, I casually applied for a work visa to come to London, in response to an invitation to the doctors from the British High Commission in Delhi. I was then the secretary of Doctors Mess of Irwin Hospital. I came to London in 1966 after working for two years at Civil Hospital in Imphal and a stint at Churachandpur

I left my Medical College in Agra for Delhi to do my House Surgeon's training. By the 5th year I have had enough of Agra. I did not take up the trainee House Surgeon's job that I was offered. I wanted a bit more fun in Delhi as a newly qualified doctor before I went home to settle. I did have a marvellous time. I must have eaten with Punjabi student nurses a lot of ice creams and drunk many small paper cups of ice-chilled water from portable carts in the hot summer evenings at India Gate. So, I overstayed until I received a letter from my brother Gokulchandra, saying it was time for the Prodigal son to come home.

Author [3rd from Left sitting] Senior Underofficer NCC, Agra Medical College, in the final Year

In that freezing night of February in the grip of Arctic cold outside, I switched off the wall light and lied down on bed with my head propped up against the foam pillow at about 1.30 am. My wife slept in the adjoining bedroom. I was listening to the prattle of gusty February downpour of sleet, bashing against the roof top tiles. While I was alone in the 'dark night of the soul', my restless mind wandered and drifted away from me. Soon, I was back to my native land and my home at Uripok in Imphal. It was a dream of a density that I could not bring back. It was ethereal, and woozily enjoyable.

It was not just another dream. It was certainly much more than an authorial whim. My mind went riot, reliving my past. I remembered the early mornings in my young boyhood days. At the crack of dawn, I could hear the crow crowing from the musty tall bamboo trees in the back. I could smell the fabulous fragrance of yellow Leihao (Magnolia champaca) flowers in our garden

The dream elements were a jumble of my daytime thoughts, remembering how I left my mother and father in a pensive, brooding mood, the morning I left home to catch a propeller-driven Dakota plane bound for Calcutta en route to London for my postgraduate studies.

It was still dark when I woke up in a panic after about two hours. There was a rapid fluttering in my chest. My pyjama top was wet with sweat. I had had a nightmare, but could not recall much in detail. All that remained languishing was the horror that I was going to take the MRCP exam without any preparation at all for it. And that I won't be going back home without it.

It was near-delusional. It was like I was up a short flight of stairs that threatened to crumble under my own weight. In the predawn darkness and chill, I struggled to raise the nightmare up from my subconscious, by self-assuring that my bête noir or the bugbear of my life had long been resolved and that I have now got my poetic justice.

In those waking hours while still in bed, many recollections flooded including how I jumped through hoops in search of my personal silk route to happiness. How I tied to order my life's chaotic tumble of events that was waiting at the gate of my life's adventure, to take me to live the life of my dreams. It filled me with conscious pleasure as an experience of immediate gratification of instinctual impulses. I passed quickly from modern to ancient with too much of my past winking at me from the shadow of my room.

Charging with excitement and with a sense of freedom of my mind to meander in a mood of belligerent exuberance, places, names, pleasant and unpleasant anecdotes tumbled out. Many faces came back as clear as pictures on my wall. Still, more events came out from the mental crypt where I had buried them. I was reflecting of the half-finished nursing home that my father and brother had built at Thangal Bazaar in Imphal, and how I built a castle in the air for a Swiss-style Chalet to live in our country house at Iroishemba. Dream, dream, dream; all I had to do was dream.

A poster of Heavy Weight Champ Muhammed Ali in his prime, rushed in: "Shake my mind and shake the things that trap the grind. Escape the dream, shooting star, I aim supreme." I went to sleep again.

After appearing in the final MBBS exam in 1962, I went to Kashmir for holiday with a friend and stayed at Srinagar for a month. After returning to Delhi I found a job in the surgical unit at Irwin Hospital, now called LNJP Hospital. I thoroughly enjoyed working as a newly qualified doctor. I enjoyed more, when I was on duty for emergency services at the Casualty Department at night. It was always non-stop with all kinds of accidents and emergencies. I felt like a complete doctor.

Time passed quickly. You know what they say, 'Time flies when you're enjoying yourself in your head clock'. It means, you are not deterred by the world's clock. You follow your own time in your head. And lo and behold, I overstayed for nearly a year, training in obstetrics and psychiatry, apart from Medicine and surgery, which were required for registration with the British Medical Council (in case I would want to go and study in London).

Britain at that time, needed many trained doctors from overseas to run its National Health Service (NHS), especially from South Asia where the curriculum in the Medical Colleges were the same as theirs. And doctors spoke better English, not the fragmented one spoken by European doctors. British NHS is the best in the world. Every British citizen regardless of caste and creed, and rich or poor, gets the same free treatment.

NHS was introduced in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan (Welsh), the Health Minister in Prime Minister Attlee's Labour Government. However, in the postwar Britain, because of poor economy following WWII, the British government could not afford to train thousands of their own doctors. It was very expensive. Instead of training their own doctors, the British Government recruited already trained doctors from overseas, particularly from the Indian subcontinent. Many of these doctors settled in the UK. I was one of them.

The permit to go to London came very quickly. It was a voucher, a little piece of paper. But I still had a moral problem. I had been away too long (13 years) in my hubristic college life. I had also lost 3 years during the Japan Lan. I was grateful to my father who said after I finished school I could study anywhere in India, as long as I did well in my study. I just did that. My college life was a fun fair.

So, I shelved the idea completely as I did not want to exceed the boundaries of acceptable human ethics. I also stayed longer in Delhi as a trainee doctor. It was not fair to my family that I should be gallivanting again. So I returned home only when I received the letter from my brother. It was mid- 1963.

Settled in the newly purchased house

The good thing about getting old is to forget some old memories including the unlovely sides, in order to prepare space in the brain for recent information. But they are mostly recoverable, though they have a latent period, as I am experiencing now.

I am usually quite confessional normally because of my extroverted personality, Ander after drinking alcohol I was prone to speak uninhibitedly to someone I have just met in a bar, all about my life's story in full cadence. I have stopped drinking alcohol for the past one year since the outbreak of the pandemic that rationed food and alcohol supply because of lockdown. Still, my sense of levity is rolling off my back with my past story in this write-up.

Speaking with alacrity, my past life had always been a merry-go-round. Study cum pleasure. I was not a book worm, but I was still a topper in school while engaged in all sorts of pastimes and rough and tumble street fights. Ultimately, despite the disparate negative points my wish to be a doctor of medicine amazingly came true. Simply because I wanted to be respected and not from any altruism.

My father had nothing to do with the choice of my career. He never ever asked me what sort of profession I had in mind. There is one thing I remember though. Having worked with British officers for the best of his life, he was the one who taught me that an Englishman's word is his bond. And likewise, I have always kept my word.

Only that, my mother wanted me to be a BA, which at that time was rarer than hen's teeth. It would be her pride and joy. So, I did B Sc for fun, prior to my taking up medicine. My father left it to me to choose the career I wanted. He was there to bear the expenses.

Another outlook in life that my father had, and I appreciated, was his courage to say fairly repeatedly that he would not live off his children. And he did just that. Sometimes, I used to wonder in the truth of the statement until he explained to me one day. He had enough paddy fields that supported the joint family. The women did not have to go out to work. Even years later, after I had decided to stay in the UK, my parents did not even once, voice their desire for me to return home to look after them.

Late Dr Chongtham Samarendra's visit & Scarborough seaside trip
With Margaret & our children Anita and Neil

After doing my B Sc from Nainital, I went to Calcutta and stayed at a YMCA in Wellingdon Street, in walking distance from Chowringhee/Esplanade. I was enjoying the night life at posh restaurants, such as Trincas, Blue Fox, Mocambo and Moulin Rouge in the then fashionable Park Street.

I felt quite relieved as if I had finished my higher education. I was looking at the daily newspapers in the YMCA's common room, for jobs in the adverts column. I had also applied to Manipur Government as a candidate to be sponsored for medical study. I was not sure whether I would be selected as it was based on merit. Only 3 or 4 candidates were chosen every year, to be sent to various medical colleges in India, which had contractual and financial agreement with the state. I was not even there in Imphal.

After about two months, one day a telegram came for me to go to Agra for my study in the Medical College and report to the Principal of the college, latest by the first August. And so I went. I chose not to take the government scholarship as I did not want to be bound for 5 years, during which I would be posted at various places in the districts and the interiors of hill area, where there was no mobile transport, electricity or proper food.

As I mentioned above, I returned to Imphal in 1963. My interest was general medicine. I was fortunate to be able to join the Civil Hospital as the only physician. My eldest brother Gokulchandra, was Chief Engineer at that time. He was very resourceful. It was also a stroke of luck. My predecessor Dr Pukhrambam Kumud MD, who had joined the Medical department had just left for London to do his MRCP with a central scholarship. He was from Sagolband (First Manipuri doctor with a postgraduate degree), a couple of years senior to me.

As doctor in-charge of Medicine in the only hospital in Manipur, I was doing very well for 2 years. I was the monarch of all I surveyed. I was able to read ECG for patients with heart attacks, which helped me to diagnose patients with acute heart attacks. That helped me to treat such patients according to guidelines. I found an old ECG machine that was lying dormant. I made full use of it after I trained a staff nurse how to record the tracings. Imphal had a lot patients with High Blood pressure which they did not know. As a result, strokes were very common.

At that time Dr Nando Roy was in charge of Surgery, Dr Mansing of ENT (who later settled in England). Dr Kala of Paediatrics and Dr Chaobi of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (who settled in Delhi), among others for other departments. We were all MBBS doctors except for a few older doctors with LMP (Licentiate Medical Practitioners) Diplomas, such as Dr Gopal and Dr Satyabati. A few senior doctors had then left for postgraduate studies, such as Dr Lalmohan for MS (surgery), Dr Surchand for MS (Eye), Dr Kuladhjaja for MD.

Dr Kuladhaja was my class fellow, but he went for Medicine after Intermediate Science. Kuladhaja and I grew up together from Moirangkhom UP School. A couple of teachers must have valued our career prospects. They took keen interest in our learning, to the extent that one teacher who taught us mathematics, took upon him to coach Kuladhaja and me for two months every night at his home at Tera Keithel. We slept in his bedroom with a curtain between our beds and his bed with his newly married wife. It helped. Kuladhaja came first and I second in the common examination for entry to High Schools.

In the Johnstone High School, we two were favourites for a teacher from Singjamei Mathak. Near the final examinations of each class from Class V, he would come to our house and would tell Kuladhaja and me about some exam questions he saw in some other teachers' subjects and coached us. He however, never told us about questions in his own subject. Fair enough.

I was very glad that when I was working in the Civil Hospital, one day he came with a friend whose son I was treating. I was able to pay my humble gratitude, but not in so many words. He must have been very pleased that he had not wasted his efforts. Both of us became doctors.

I remember, the young patient had bowel constriction with Crohn's Disease. I showed the x-ray to them and advised to take the patient to Gauhati if they would operate on him at all. He came back as surgery was not indicated at that stage, as there was no complete obstruction.

I never forget someone who has been good to me. Nor can I forget anybody who has been rude to me. I always try to pay it back in their own coin. Well almost!

Revenge is a dish best served cold.


Author's website: drimsingh.com