The doyen of surgery
By Kailashnath Sud

THE passing away of Dr Santokh Singh Anand on June 4, 1996, (SSA as another teacher Dr P.N. Chhuttani called him.) though a normal phenomenon in the scenario of human existence and the passing show of human metamorphosis, must have set some of his students thinking.

He was one of the foremost doyens of the Medical College Amritsar. The other greats were Dr Tulsi Dass, Dr K.L. Wig, Dr Sant Ram Dhall, Dr Karam Singh Grewal, Dr Man Singh Nirankari, Dr Yudhveer Sachdeva, Dr R.P. Malhotra of one-minute-diagnosis fame, and Dr P.N. Chhuttani.

The following two incidents will illustrate the greatness and the magnanimity of the man, a teacher of the yesteryears. Santokh Singh had taken up our third year MBBS batch for teaching surgery in 1960 when he was persuaded by the Chief Minister Partap Singh Kairon to set up the PGI. This was a dilemma for Santokh Singh Anand — how could the same man be at two places and do justice to both? It was unthinkable for a teacher to leave the his students midway. Amritsar and Chandigarh were six hours apart. But the great teacher solved the dilemma by travelling to Chandigarh and back twice a week and on holidays, including Sundays, looking after and setting up the PGI in Chandigarh and teaching his surgery class in Amritsar for the next two years. As both the jobs required perfection, he was doing both the jobs excellently well. For the war with China in November 1962, he had to produce doctors who had a bent of mind towards surgery and a spirit of patriotism. Few of our batch-mates were directly picked up and recruited as second lieutenants (subalterns he would call them) by Santokh Singh and Pritam Singh, both of whom had the operation theatre rapport of the surgeon and the anaesthetist. Special training was carried out for these few in the operation theatre and on the P.T. field.

When the war finished, Anand was required to be in Chandigarh all the time to set up the PGI while the final year students still required his full attention in Amritsar, where he had to finish the surgery courses. Anand took the bull by the horns once again, courageous as he was. Three time a week he would drive down from Chandigarh in his own car, at his own cost. He would start from Chandigarh at 4.30 am and reach Amritsar at 8.30 am, take the class and go back to Chandigarh in the afternoon and attend to his work at the PGI. Santokh Singh Anand (the doyen of surgery as P.N. Chhuttani called him) had chosen the impossible task of riding two horses at the same time, with flawless perfection and for a long distance. The slave driver had turned into a slave for a handful of final year students, a lot that comes and goes by the score these days and no teacher bothers about them.

The peak of his commitment to his final year came when one cold January morning in 1963. He turned up at the anatomy lecture theatre, got down from his car elegantly dressed as always, in a striped blue or gray three piece suit, dabbing his badly blistered face with a white handkerchief. While driving his car somewhere near Jalandhar, he had some car trouble and in his hurry to reach Amritsar at the appointed time, he had opened the radiator cap which spewed hot water on to his face and caused second degree burns. He had covered the remaining distance faster than the speed he had maintained throughout his life and reached the anatomy lecture theatre at the appointed time, "lest I fail in my commitment to my final year" he was heard saying later.

The second instance of his magnanimity came when after passing the first professional examination in June 1960, I took the risk of not attending his first few surgery lectures. Shimla after all is a fine place to be in, in June, as compared to Amritsar, and then it is my home town. "Let me stay for a few days more in the cool Shimla summer". I thought Santokh Singh was taking the muster roll and stopping at my roll number he started looking up at the ceiling of the lecture theater "Where have you dropped in from, I see no hole in the ceiling". Completely confused I muttered under my breath "From Simla, sir". "Ah!", he exclaimed in the well known gruff and irritatedvoice, "eating paranthas in your mamma’s lap; I would love to do that too". Raising his voice a trifle further to an irritated crescendo, "Meet me in the Principal’s office immediately after class".

They used to say, "When Dr Santokh Singh gets irritated, God save the man he is angry with". Somehow I managed to sit through the 40 harrowing minutes of the lecture, imagining all sorts of punishments, a letter summoning Dad, or rustication from the college (both equally disastrous, such was the discipline then). After the lecture I knocked at the Principal’s office wire-net door "Come in" he shouted , submerged in a bundle of files and papers lying on the Principal’s table "Yes..." he looked at me. "Sir, you asked me to see you" I murmured. "When? and get out of here, don’t you see I am busy, don’t disturb me. When did I call you" he shouted. In a jiffy I was out thanking my lucky stars, nothing had happened. I had got away unscathed, what luck! "I’II never do something like this ever again," I promised myself. Three years later came the final professional examination in April 1963. Santokh Singh had come from Chandigarh as one of the external examiners for surgery. The others were Khanna from Srinagar, Yudhveer Sachdeva, the internal examiner and some Englishman from the CMC, Ludhiana. Everything went fine, the short case, the long cases, the instrument identification. Through the viva voce I was standing near Santokh Singh when he lifted his huge hand and put it on the nape of my neck, rubbed the neck a little, "You are through my boy", he said and then, "Do you still sit in your mamma’s lap and enjoy paranthas, my laddie from Simla". The great man had magnanimously turned me out of his office two years earlier, pretending he had forgotten the episode of which he remembered every detail even now.

The fragrance of his teaching, the moral guidelines laid down by the great man of the yesteryears and his personality still pervade the atmosphere and shall continue to do so as long as the students who passed out as doctors from the Medical College Amritsar from 1958 to 1963 and are around. Great teachers leave this world and ascend to those immortal mansions above, whence all goodness emanates. They live always in the hearts, nay in the minds of those they taught.