An academic surgeon, teacher, practitioner and research scholar, Dr Yvan Silva, formerly on the faculty of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and visiting professor in surgery in over 15 universities internationally, penned a tribute to his role model, the late urologist Dr Fardoon Phiroze Soonawalla on November 14, 2012, a copy of which was forwarded to Parsiana by reader Rashid Khosravi.
Dr Fardoon Soonawalla: "opened doors for many"
Harking back to the time when he was a 20-year-old medical student in Bombay in 1956 Silva recalls that he and his dissection partner would spend time at an anatomical laboratory on the grounds of the Infectious Diseases Hospital on Arthur Road. Students from the Topiwala Medical College in the Bombay Central area would go there to complete their assigned curriculum of dissections on human cadavers kept there for anatomical studies for the first year of the MBBS studies. "It was fun — 15 minutes of dissection and 45 minutes of table tennis,” writes Silva and the place was usually unoccupied during the time they spent there.
There they noticed a "solitary figure hunched over a cadaver specimen handling instruments and studying along with a text — engrossed.” He was in the "far corner of the room, lined with metal gurneys, an array of cadavers and body parts in an open room, windows open with breezes wafting through the room carrying currents of a familiar dilute airborne formaldehyde.” The young medicos often wondered who he was, as he appeared to be somewhat older than they were. He would be there, and then he would be gone. Consumed by curiosity, the youngsters asked a janitor to unravel the mystery and were told in tones of awe that the mysterious person was a "big doctor.”
One afternoon Silva walked up to the figure and stood nearby. It was a while before he was noticed. The doctor turned to him with a puzzled look and then returned to his dissection. Silva remained where he was, expecting to be reproached, but the doctor looked up and smiled, his look gentle, if somewhat puzzled. When Silva introduced himself as a medical student, the doctor seemed interested and asked whether he liked his college and how he was doing in his studies. That was Silva’s "first real lesson in learning to be a real doctor — listening and portraying real caring interest.”
Soonawalla later told Silva that he was there because he was preparing for his Royal College of Surgeons examination in London. This was the first of many times in over 50 years that the two doctors would enjoy each others’ company in Bombay, in Detroit, in many places in social and professional settings. "And each time, like the very first time Fardoon left me with that special emotive energy — to listen, to give, to share and to smile softly! He finished his notes of recommendation, opened doors for many, always selflessly on behalf of others, with the line: ‘Please do the needful and oblige.’” That was his unique legacy, that we should be there for each other, Silva notes.