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M N Nandy: Larger than life hero
Dr. Mandira Nandy
(THIS IS THE CONCLUDING PART OF THE ARTICLE, THE FIRST PART OF WHICH APPEARED LAST WEEK).
On a Friday in 1950 in February, madness broke out everywhere in Dhaka. There was curfew in Dacca town from dusk to dawn from 10-20th February. Thatari Bazaar was set on fire and the flames were visible from the Juginagar house. Panicked Hindu families rushed to the doctor's house for refuge - counting on his fame and his gun as safety factors.
The family remember and are grateful to Abbas Mirza, the famous captain of Calcutta Mohammadan sporting club, a friend of the doctor from their college days, and Mr. Itteza, the then Police Commissioner of Dhaka, for the protection they gave to the Nandy family and all those, over two hundred people, who sought refuge in the house. Santi, escorted by Shamsuddin, left with her children, the eldest being eleven and the youngest, eight, to go and live at her parent's home in Jalpaiguri only to return once again after the riots. It was at this time that Dr Nandy moved to 37, Rankin Street, Wari where his cousin, noted freedom fighter, Sri Bhabesh Chandra Nandy, MLA, lived. This house was purchased by Dr Nandy in 1953-54. It was in 1950 or thereabouts that the Medical Service of East Pakistan decided to transfer Dr. Nandy to Faridpur. This was highly resented by the family and Dr Nandy resigned and for the first time started his private practice. He lived at Rankin Street until the time he was forced out of his homeland in 1965.
At 37, Rankin Street, the doctor appointed Sultan, a cycle-rickshaw puller, to take him around the city on his calls. A man of strict discipline all his life, Nandy would be ready and leave on his calls at 7:30 am every morning, would come back to attend to patients at his clinic and would not break for lunch till all he had attended to all his patients. In the evening he would again divide his time between out calls and attending to patients at the clinic in his house. Most days he could retire for the day as late as 11 pm,
but he would be out again the next morning at 7:30 am. On outcalls within Dhaka he travelled by rickshaw and travelled on boats to distant villages. Later, he acquired a very old second-hand Ford Prefect followed by a brand new Ford Prefect and lastly a Hillman. With an enormous zeal to learn and adapt new findings of medical research in his work, he voraciously read his medical journals in between the calls. He continued to read these and discuss them with young doctors till his last days. The patients who came to his house queued up on bicycles and horse carts (Ghorar Gadi).
Over all the years he lived at 37 Rankin Street, Dr Nandy charged his patients only Rs 5 and did not take further fees for the same illness. He never sold any medicines and, in spite of pressures, he never associated with any medical store or nursing home. He could never be enslaved to the business of medicine.
As a practitioner the Doctor examined and treated every patient holistically. His prescriptions contained instructions on what to eat and when, carried symbols for the prescribed drugs and instructions on how to take these and when.
All his life he was closely associated with the local medical associations. Much later in life he became the President of the Jalpaiguri branch of the Indian Medical Association (IMA). Amongst the doctors in Dhaka he was very close to DrToyeb Ali and Dr Nurul Islam. They met frequently. At 37 Rankin street, Nandy set up an operating theatre and when he operated, many students came over from the Medical College to observe. Dr Chandra Madhav Banik of Uttar Malsundi was a pathologist who worked closely with the doctor and assisted with the operations. Then there was Sukumar Bardhan, an LMF doctor who was the doctor's assistant and a constant fixture at the chambers. Sukumar Da was accepted as a family member.
In 1956(/7), Dr Nandy and some colleagues travelled to China in an
official delegation, to see how matters of rural health and public health were being tackled. The doctor was then an active member of the Red Cross Society and St John's Ambulance.
The Nandy household provided, despite the tensions of the time and the busy schedule of the doctor, a hub for left leaning intellectuals and artists. With a lot of encouragement and support from the Doctor, his wife and daughters played an active role in the cultural life of Dhaka at a time when women hardly stepped outdoors. The friends of the family included linguist, playwrite Munier Chowdhury, educationist Ajit Kumar Guha, poet Sanaul Hoque, artist Zainul Abedin and many of those who met their tragic death in Rayer Bazaar massacre . Contacts had not been totally severed with the Communist Party which was now a banned organisation. Some times in the dark of the night Khoka Roy, Nepal Nag, Oli Ahad, Md Toha would come. Prof. Muzaffar Ahmed was a very close friend of the doctor. Nandy was also well acquainted with Maulana Bhasani and attended the Kagmari Conference . The doctor was the family physician of Sher-e-Bangla A K Fazlul Huq. At this time Mujibur Rahman too came close to the doctor and addressed him as Dada.
It is still an enigma to the family
what precisely prompted the Government of Pakistan to confer a Tamgha-e-Quaid-e-Azam on Dr Nandy.
Faiz Ahmed has written exhaustibly on the days when once again Hindu Muslim rioting broke out in Dhaka. Dr Nandy did not consider himself a Hindu by faith and would not desert his house in Dhaka. After much persuasion he was moved to a safe house. For generations, starting from Mathura Nath, the Nandys have remained athe-istically inclined.
In August 1965, the news reached him that his two sons and their families had met with a car accident. The accident was grave and they were in a hospital in Ludhiana, India. Dr Nandy and Santi flew over to Ludhiana. The Nandy sons with their families were travelling from London to Dhaka by car when they were knocked off the road by a truck near the township of Khanna. The doctor at the local clinic gave first aid and said that most of them needed hospitalisation. They were transferred to the Brown Memorial Hospital in nearby Ludhiana. The eminent neurosurgeon Dr Namboodripad diagnosed that the 3 year old granddaughter had suffered a severe head injury and needed an operation. He opened up her skull and
eased the pressure inside the cranium.
It was at this time that war was declared between India and Pakistan. The local Indian police were alarmed that Pakistanis, i.e. the Nandys, were in the neighbourhood. Questions were asked. Dr Namboodripad and Dr Nandy assured them of the legitimacy of their presence. But at the sound of dropping bombs coming nearer, the family after making difficult arrangements travelled by train to Calcutta where they had an incompletely built house.
The political situation between the two nations ran out of control. The Government of Pakistan came to the conclusion that Dr Nandy was a suspicious character. There were two factors that coloured the reasoning - that the Nandys were Hindus and very coincidentally (!) they were in India when the war broke out. Then came the saddest news from friends in Dhaka that the Nandy house and his other properties had been declared to be 'Enemy Property'. Overnight at the age of 55, Dr Nandy lost everything, his medical practice, his friends and his savings, and found himself stranded in India. But he was not one to give up. He decided to start life anew in Jalpaiguri in a remote corner of West Bengal where there were a few friends and relatives.
At this time, Jalpaiguri did not have the facilities of a modern town. It had no piped water - cement containers, filled from lorries, was the principal source of drinking water for the town. The electricity came intermittently from a rickety old generator with light bulbs providing inadequate lighting. Most houses had toilets dependent on night soil removal every morning. There was no direct rail line connection with Galcutta without crossing a mighty river by boat; it was as if the days had improved little for the Nandys since the days of Sreenagar.
In Jalpaiguri, alongside his medical practice he became active locally. He helped to found a students' health home, organised a medical store that sold and still sells medicines at almost
wholesale cost prices; he was in the Governing body of a very old girls' high school - to which Santi went to as a little girl. InSiliguri, he was the nominee of the Governor on the Executive Committee of the University of North Bengal and the North Bengal Medical College.
In 1968, October after the mountain river Teesta ran rogue through Jalpaiguri, he stood at the main crossroad and vaccinated people against water borne disease. He took an active part in the local in the local branch of the Indian Medical Association where he presided for almost thirty years; the association have named a hall after him. In the centenary celebration of the town he and his family contributed articles to the official publication.
During the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence he had friends, neighbours and distant relatives from the other side of the border come and visit him. One of the sons of Samsuddin Kaku came and stayed; unfortunately he was killed on his return to join the freedom fighters. Faiz Da came to stay with Indira, the eldest daughter of Dr Nandy, in Calcutta. In 1972 when Sheikh Mujib visited Calcutta to deliver his speech with Mrs Gandhi, an urgent message came from Bangabandhu that his 'Dada and Boudi' should accompany him to go to Dhaka to his old house and resume his practice.
But Dr Nandy was elderly and felt that he did not have the strength to make a fresh start once more. The eldest son, Vaskar, had joined the Naxalbari movement alongside Charu Majumdar and was living underground for many years.
He slowed down and never fully recovered from the blows that fortune had bestowed on him; he had lost friends and the spirit was ebbing out of him. He lived in Jalpaiguri until his death on 15 March 2005. His ashes were sent down the Karala, then the Teesta; they have probably washed up against the river shores of Bangladesh.
MANDIRA NANDY IS THE DAUGHTER OF
LATE DR. M N NANDY.