KRISHNA Heart and Super Specialty Institute

By Tapan S. Parikh

It was a weird feeling. For a few minutes I was transplanted in time and space, I was back in the land of red, white and blue, of trucks and farms and highways and McDonald's and everything else I have grown up with. As I sat in front of the computer screen, waiting forever for the page to load waiting for two words to come up on the screen. "Bush wins". And my stomach dropped, and I was home again, and I looked around for someone to talk to, someone to maybe even cry with, someone who would care, and I looked, and looked, but I didn't really find anyone. Why? Because I am 10,000 miles away, and for people here, it's all the same. Another white King of the World. The American Raj. Except these rulers don't even care what happens in Bharat Mata, they hardly even know where it is.

I don't even know why I care that much, about the election that is, partially I think it is just pure partisanship; I root for the democrats like I root for the New York Jets. And it hurts pretty much the same when they lose. As for the future of the world, we're probably all screwed anyway, and if we're not, I doubt the savior is going to come from either of those circuses we call political parties.

The savior. Lots of fools have tried to save the human animal, to make him realize who he is, his birthright. Rama, Krishna, Christ, Buddha, Gandhi. Where did that get us? Did it help the human race live more spiritually, to realize our higher nature, show us that we have the ability to rise above primitively? Not much, I don't think. It just led to churches, and money, and power, and inequity, and just more biting and scratching and clawing at each for that last scrap of fresh kill.

Along these lines are the thoughts of Dr. Acharya, my aunt's father, in my mind an elder, a vadil, who has developed enough insight and experience to make such claims knowingly. Not a fakir and a charlatan, a 26 year-old kid who thinks he knows the world. But I have to agree a little bit. Human beings are not much removed from animals. They are going to be driven by their base desires, their primitive impulses, and in the end they have the ability to do very few things. Is there the potential for another way, the potential for raising ourselves to a new level of understanding, a gentler way? I think so. I have to believe that.

Maybe I saw that yesterday. Maybe I saw that at KRISHNA Heart Institute. I have not been impressed like that by a work of Man in a long time. In the middle of a small town outside of Ahmedabad stands the finest hospital I have ever seen. And you can only fully understand the importance of that statement when you realize how poor the facilities have been at every other institution of any type I have seen in India.

The attention to detail at KRISHNA was meticulous. For instance, throughout the critical care areas of the hospital, you will not find a perfect corner at any wall, door, or floor. All corners are rounded, to minimize the accumulation of bacteria. All of the staff were perfectly disciplined, there was never an odd smell in the entire place, not even in the kitchen. When patients are discharged, they are given a copy of the Gita. By comparison to other hospitals in India, facilities of ridiculously inferior quality, the costs here seem very, very reasonable. In so many ways, words cannot describe this place.

If only the level of facilities were amazing, it would have been impressive enough. But the feel of the place, the story of the place, the philosophies and the personalities of the people behind it, that is what makes it stand out as one of the finest modern achievements I have seen so far in India. The people I met, the two executive directors of the hospital, spent three hours showing us the place. Every nook and cranny they showed us, they showed us with pride, but not with the pride of the work they had done, with the pride of the work God had done. Whenever we tried to praise them, they refused to accept it, and you could tell, for the most part it wasn't just show. They really believe that it was God who made all this possible, who allowed such a place to be built in only two years (amazing by any standards, especially Indian), and for only 43 crore rupees, or about 10 million dollars. Truly amazing. In the US the building alone would have cost more than twice as much, forget all the planning, staff, land, facilities, equipment, etc.

And it is true. Humans alone could not have built such a thing. Only human will steeped in God, united with the universal reality, only with God's divine help could such a thing be done. According to them, as such, with the help of God, it was done almost effortlessly. But I believed these guys. I was very impressed, to the point of true emotion.

The story of how the place was built is also beautiful. An Indian spiritual leader, possibly one of the last great ones, Pandurang Shastri, aka "Dada" (whom my father is a strong believer in), was in the USA, and he needed some heart surgery. He was taken to a prominent heart surgeon in New Jersey, himself a well-read and spiritual man. Such an affinity developed between these two men that they spent all available hours together for the next two weeks. The doctor even temporarily closed his office for some time. At one point, Dada asked, "Beta (Son), where have you been all my life?� At one point during his stay, Dada, so impressed by the medical facility he was being treated at, asked, "Can't we build hospitals like this in our country?" The doctor said, "It is done." And it is done, with the help of his brother and his brother-in-law, but so much better than done. One may find facilities like this in the US, but none have the bhavna (spirit) of this place. It is truly a temple.

After seeing the failure of so many things in India, and I am finding that Gandhiji's Gujarat Vidyapith, of which I am a faculty and fellow, is one such place, it was nice to see what beauty human will and intelligence is still able to create.

But ochre chords still live among us, and the chord of pessimism rings strong in me, and I saw cracks. I saw a hint of pride in Mukesh Bhai and Animesh Bhai, a hint of the feeling that "I have done this", that which is the ruin of any human enterprise, the ego of self, as apart from God. And I hate to think it, but that is human nature too, our lower nature, and our probably more powerful nature, and that is our history, as well as our future. But it was nice to see our higher nature for a little while, a hint of what could have been, a hint of maybe what can still be. Maybe.