Colours of the Rainbow

About the Author Umesh Bhat B is a consultant surgeon born in November 1958 to Shrimathi and Ganapathi Bhat of Belagodu village in Udupi District. Born in a lower middle class family comprising five children, he had a difficult childhood. His father ran a small hotel in a village in Hassan district, Karnataka for some time and returned to their ancestral village. He had his primary education in the village school along with back breaking work in the agricultural fields. A time came when he was almost sent to work in some town before Lady Luck smiled on him and made him continue his education. However, he walked nearly 20 kilometers every day for his high school and junior college without lunch. His hard work was rewarded when he got a merit seat along with scholarships, first for MBBS and then, immediately for MS in General Surgery.

Bhat returned to his native place to work amongst his own people. Though he had a difficult starting in practice, many good people helped and encouraged him. After 30 years of his surgical practice, the author decided to tabulate his trials and tribulations as a surgeon to help others. This story appeared as a serial in a magazine before MUP decided to publish it in a book form. Presently, he continues to practice as a surgeon in the coastal town of Kundapur where he resides with his wife. His two sons stay in Bangalore, the elder one working as a software engineer and the younger one is a final year student in BIT, Bangalore.

The author, through Colors of the Rainbow, tells us that everyone is destined for his/her own rainbow with a pot of gold at the other end if, one has a will, works hard on it, and with a little bit of luck.

The book narrates the dream journey of a village boy.

Foreword It gives me immense pleasure to write the foreword to this maiden book written by my friend, Dr Umesh Bhat. There is so much to learn and so much to gain from our own experience.

One such classic example are the short stories written by Sudha Narayan Murthy with her vast experience in travel, charity, love, and affection especially towards the poor people. This book also applies to doctors, their own lives, and their daily experiences with their patients. No one will understand the pain, the agony, and the suffering of the patients than doctors. Experience is the best teacher. Dr Umesh Bhat my good friend for the last 35 years in the private practice is a talented, dynamic, and successful surgeon in a taluk called Kundapur for the last 30 years.

Success does not come easily. He was not born with a silver spoon in the mouth. As you go through the book one can make out how he could achieve success despite the odds and with many hurdles. This should help the younger generation to understand what the difficulties in the early seventies and eighties were and how he has achieved success. The narration is simple, easy to understand, and straight forward. It looks like words flowing directly from the heart thus the readers, as they read would feel that they are sitting by the side of author.

Every successful person has many stories to tell. How he started his primary schooling, got the medical seat, completed surgical training, how destiny took him to Kundapur and so on. All these are turning points in the author's life. The author started his practice a few miles away from Kundapur in 1985.

Immediately after my surgical training, I started my surgical career in Kundapur. But due to my father's illness, I discontinued my practice at Kundapur and joined Kasturba Medical College, Manipal. It was a great turning point in my life. Dr Umesh Bhat started his surgical career in the same hospital in Kundapur from which I had resigned. It became a turning point in the author's surgical career. Essentially, these are opportunities one should accept going beyond comfort zones. Through the book, the author also tries to tell the readers that one should not to get disappointed during a professional career because of some failures one stumbles on the way. That one has to know how to get up and stand on the own.

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship. Again, in the entire book the author remembers and talks rich about his friends. It is better to have good friends than a fat bank balance.

To summaries, the chapters have been well-knitted and keep the interest of the readers engaged. It is full of real life stories and is an extremely interesting book. I wish Dr Umesh Bhat all the best. More importantly, I wish the readers-an enjoyable reading.

Preface Footsteps in the sands of time ...

I strongly believe that each one of us, whether poor or rich is destined to reach the other end of individual rainbows meant for us. There is a hero inside all of us. He only needs encouragement, effort and a little bit of luck to reveal himself. It is left to us to find that hero, make him wake up and to go on. Sitting back, after three to four decades, I am sure mine revealed at last.

During the last few years, there were many times when I wanted to and even started to write a few pages about my journey in search of that elusive pot of gold at the end of my rainbow. Here, I wanted to make sure that the reader will understand that each one's destiny is a rainbow and there is a pot of gold waiting for everyone at the other end and it needs just continued effort to complete the journey.

After plenty of false starts, one day after I returned from that village in Hassan where it all started 50 years ago, I sat down to write. I felt it was so easy. The words, sentences, and the incidents tumbled out like never before. Not that anything was new or had to be referred back. They were all stored in my brain! It was as fresh as yesterday. I had no difficulty in remembering incidents that happened even 30 or 40 years ago. After the novel was completed, I felt totally spent for a few days. Such was the urge to write about my journey along the rainbow and to get done with it.

The 60s and 70s of the 20th century in India were difficult times for a person with a furze for higher education. Schools and colleges were far, in-between or, out of reach for village folks. Most village families thought that it was enough if their child knew how to read and write letters and could perform rudimentary calculations, so that, he could be sent to towns to work and send some money back home. It was easy to have primary education because the government had opened plenty of primary schools in villages. High schools and junior colleges were a little farther away and only those children with that fire to learn and who could walk ten to fifteen kilo meters a day would reach half their goals. For, professional colleges were very few to provide for the masses. For example, those days there were only four government and four private medical colleges in the entire state of Karnataka. This is the story of one such poor village boy who succeeded in completing his education and returned to his roots to serve.

Those days the village families used to have five to six children each. While one or two remained in the village to look after the few acres of land the family had, the rest drifted away after their primary education. They went to towns in search of jobs in hotels, factories and offices. Many of them succeeded in finding their feet in the respective fields and make it good. Some remained in the same jobs of cooks, waiters or, office boys. Destiny took each of them along their rainbows. There were times when I almost thought it was probably, my last year in school. There were times I almost gave up.