In April 2026, I was contacted by Dr. Patta Radhakrishna, a surgical gastroenterologist and Dr. Vidya Mohanram, an anaesthesiologist to speak about my work in biodiversity documentation and research on an online weekly webinar that they had started in October 2020 (during the Covid pandemic) that brought a wide range of topics in medicine to a well-read multidisciplinary audience in India and abroad. I was told that over 275 episodes had been recorded by about 500 faculty on medical, technical and non-technical subjects of interest to a medical audience. Each session starts at 8.00 PM IST on Thursdays, lasts for an hour and is followed by an hour of illuminating discussions. The recordings are uploaded to YouTube and this forum, aptly named as “Marvelous Medicine” has its own website – http://www.marvelousmedicine.in – readers of this blog are invited to explore the excellent talks archived at this site.
In June 2026, I was requested to talk about my experience with research at the Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital in Assam and as I prepared for this talk, I looked back at the beginnings of our work there. My wife Ann and I had the wonderful privilege of working for close to three decades at Makunda – it was a life containing equal parts of challenge and difficulty mixed with great fulfilment and community impact. As we navigated this unpredictable life, we experienced God’s wisdom, strength and encouragement – we were not alone, we were held in the hands of an all powerful, all-wise, yet loving God.
As our early days (1) stretched into months, years and decades, we saw many stories unfolding before our eyes – stories of life snatched from the jaws of death, the enormous challenges faced by poor and marginalised people, innovative solutions in the presence of great constraints, frugal living and careful business planning, the drawing of many young people to a fulfilling life of service, the spirit of Christian life translated into practices, protocols and principles as well as observations in the biodiverse world of thick jungles that surrounded the hospital (2). There was so much of information that I wanted to bring into the public domain – in chapters and articles, images and videos. The challenge was finding the time and effort needed to tell our stories so that others in similar settings could find encouragement and inspiration as they tackled their unique problems. Work was hard, we plodded on for many years seeing few changes and crises happened constantly but in the midst of all the challenges, God helped me and my colleagues to find time and inspiration to investigate, innovate, document and publish. Please listen to the talk and the discussion by clicking the link below:
(1) https://the-sparrowsnest.net/2018/05/12/early-days-at-makunda/
(2) https://the-sparrowsnest.net/2022/09/06/mission-makunda-cartoon-strip-by-the-azim-premji-foundation/
The Sparrow's Nest 