When I first met Dr K.K. Aggarwal ten years ago, my first reaction was: Why hadn’t I met him sooner. He was that sort of person. At the time, he was the spirit behind the MTNL Health Mela, an annual free medical check-up, health awareness and lifestyle jamboree that thousands of people attended. Every year, he would add additional elements to the event, making it more widespread, inclusive and holistic.
I had approached him to seek some guidance in organising a large medical camp in Rajasthan. He was much enthused by the proposal and hand-held the organisers in every aspect of the event, from patient and crowd management, roping in hospitals, medical experts, pharmaceutical companies and philanthropists to ensure that the event was a resounding success. This was when he introduced me to Dr Naresh Trehan, who went on to perform several heart surgeries on children from poor families in the state. I kept in touch with Dr Aggarwal thereafter. Every time we spoke or met, he emphasised the need to educate people about healthy practices. His busy schedule, often at the expense of his own health and leisure, would be crammed with initiatives. His palette was rich, his initiatives spanned advancement of public awareness of medicine to making quality medical services available to the needy. Whenever I offered to pay him consultation fees for seeing an indigent patient I had referred him, he would shrug it off. After he became the President of the Indian Medical Association, the place was soon crackling with energy and initiative. I was in the building next door and would often walk across to his office during lunch for instant warmth and inspiration, which he could deliver in amazingly large quantities in seconds. Although always at the centre of a cloud of admirers, he made room for those at the periphery, ordering and reordering his time frantically to accommodate those who most needed it.
At the time, I was thinking of innovative ways to improve taxpayer compliance. One day, he suggested that he and other leading cardiologists appear in an advertisement to inform taxpayers that paying their taxes on time was good for their hearts. How he convinced other luminaries of the field to lend their name to the ad, I would never know. Around the same time, I fainted at home. My hysterical wife rushed me to Moolchand Hospital where Dr Aggarwal quickly took over my management, rushing me through diagnostic and interventional procedures within minutes. I was conscious enough to overhear his exchange with an ER physician in which, failing to make headway with my wife, he said he would sign the consent form as my father. That was the moment when I realised I would do just fine. Whenever I visited him afterwards, follow-up would last just a few minutes. He would quickly zoom out to larger purpose of human life. This was inexplicably uplifting and therapeutic. Soon, he became physician and healer to my whole family. His ability to connect with everyone ensured that my wife and my daughters had established independent channels of communication with him in no time. After examining my father-in-law’s heart, who was then in his seventies, Dr Aggarwal told him he would go on to live a hundred years. That assurance has been central to my father-in-law’s willpower to keep going. Once, when I thought I had diagnosed a rare disorder in the knee of a close relative, he encouraged me to publish it.
Watching him at work was a lesson in nurturing talent around him, pushing them into challenging assignments and tougher roles. The story of Dr Aggarwal’s round-the-clock commitment ever since COVID-SAR-2 pandemic befell India is well-known by now. His journey during the past one and half years saw him emerge as the leading public intellectual of the pandemic. Single-handedly, supported by volunteers who subscribed to his vision of health for all, he delivered scientifically validated information to millions in small easily digestible bites day after day, took questions from every part of India, and kept his followers abreast of fresh developments. Incidentally, ‘single-handedness’ was nothing new to him. His efforts have trained millions in CPR techniques. It is hard to put a number on the lives saved by his efforts. He was an educator to his last breath. In his last public video, he declared, even as he breathed oxygen through a nasal cannula, the ‘show must go on’. In the battle against ignorance and misinformation, he led from the front. Every Teacher’s Day on September 5, also his birthday, we will have an opportunity to remember him and to keep walking the path he illuminated. I miss you, sir. I speak on behalf of millions.
(The writer, Dr Amandeep Singh, is a physician and a civil servant.)
