On a balmy weekday morning, the well-known Sir Ganga Ram Hospital is a hubbub of activity. Past frantic families, overcrowded waiting areas, the lazy hum of ceiling fans, a stretcher being rolled out (with a middle aged woman with her arms bandaged up) and its wheels barely missing a dead lizard its shimmering belly exposed to the sun (like a miniature sacrifice),young women doctors in their stark white overcoats spilling out of every hospital entrance some briskly walking to the cafeteria for a chilled drink and a break to cool their heels, while others walk to and from the adjoining Fatima Jinnah Medical University to plop down in a shaded spot in the campus’s immaculately maintained garden
Here, in this surreal pre partition portal, in the heart of Lahore, life and death are conjoined twins; neither can exist without the other. At first glance, 24 year old Farah Azam comes across as reserved and shy. Petite, with kind eyes and a discreet smile, the young doctor tells me that she’s at the tail end of her house job at the hospital. But she hasn’t made a decision about her specialisation yet, she reveals, as we walk past the marble stairs of the campus entrance and a rather magical strip of quaint, white washed wooden windows, partially covered by a cascade of orange bougainvillaea.
The eldest of five siblings, Azam grew up in Shahdara, the historic town that once stood as Lahore’s entrance gate during the Mughal era in the 15th century. Having completed her schooling at a CARE Foundation-adopted school in the area, Azam knew she wanted to make a career in the medical field. “I used to think; ‘agar medical nahin, toh phir kuch nahin!’ I just knew that I wanted to be a doctor for the rest of my life,” she says, “There are no doctors in my family, and for some reason, it used to give me a bit of an inferiority complex. That’s when I decided I had to get out of the career comfort zone that I saw so many of my family members lodged in.” After acing her matric exams, Azam mentions that she was lucky enough to be able to receive full scholarships from CARE to complete an FSc degree at Lahore College and later, enrol into a 5 year MBBS program at Fatima Jinnah Medical University. However, while she excelled in the classroom, Azam’s personal life took a turn for the worse during grad school when her father married his second wife and moved out of the house for over a year. Those were dark days, full of trepidation, Azam recalls. Money was scarce and she would spend nights weeping into her pillow, wondering how her family would survive. “I kept thinking; if I give up now, what would become of my mother and my younger siblings? I had to be strong for them. I wouldn’t allow my mother to work and told her she could depend on her children.” It was then that Azam began teaching at a nearby academy after university. From waking up at the crack of dawn, attending her classes and then taking a rickshaw straight to the institution, Azam’s days would end past 9 pm, on a daily basis. This was in 2011, and now, standing as the only doctor in her family and her town, Azam says that she’s grateful for what she had to endure. Why? Because it was a wonderful, albeit difficult teacher. “I was never emotionally strong; I’d get sensitive and upset on the smallest of things. I’m not like that anymore; I feel I can take on any challenge now.”
