By Dr. Raj Bhayani
The passing away of Dr. Ranjit Nagpal is extremely shocking and as painful as loss of Dr. Pandya. The second shining star of our life has fallen leaving us all in extreme grief. The risk of love and respect is loss, and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love and respect.
We, all his students, are indebted to Dr. Ranjit Nagpal and owed a lot of respect to him. The grief is always hard and we all grieve in different ways. How much our teachers give to us, and how little they so often get in return, even from the students who adore them.
And maybe that’s what I grieve about most, as I don’t feel like I gave that back to him. I wanted to but it was too little, too late.
If Dr. Pandya was the heart of Department of Neurosurgery, Dr. Karapurkar was the soul, then Dr. Nagpal was undoubtedly the brain of Neurosurgery department at King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital.
His clinical acumen, his surgical expertise, his focus on precision and meticulousness was exemplary and par excellence in true sense.
He took every opportunity to pour his positive energy into me and every other willing student he found. Dr. Nagpal strived relentlessly to guide us towards excellence and at the same time, he expected from us nothing else but excellence.
It’s okay to say that at times he was tough or demanding— those are the qualities of a real professional teacher.
When I heard the news of his passing away, there were so many thoughts and memories that raced through my head just like all of you would be experiencing.
We all can fondly remember the legendary rounds with him on every Friday, where on call resident Doctor would be anxious the whole night before the round, preparing and checking all the details two or three times to make sure he would not fumble in front of him. I still remember those pranks we played on our senior colleagues. We would admit a new unexpected patient from the ER and bring to the ward just before the round started and then witness the resident doctor presenting that new patient literally sweating and trembling as he would know nothing about the patient.
The best honor of my life was when he gave me the opportunity to operate with him during the trans sphenoidal surgery when I was just finishing up the first year of residency. To my shock and surprise, he asked me if I can do the trans sphenoidal approach for his pituitary adenoma patients. He gave me the microscope and actually assisted me, which was an experience of a lifetime. That literally boosted my confidence in self and my morale had grown hundred times, thereafter. He saw something in me that day, which I did not see in me at that time. The feeling I had that day is something which is impossible to put in words. Yet, it occurred to me that Dr. Nagpal whom we considered to be the best educator we had ever; was an absolute timeless icon of our life.
Though decades have passed since we all sat in the department, the great feeling we had when he taught us then, has not faded a bit.
There is no tapering off of our recollections when it comes to matters involving all three teacher’s Dr. Nagpal, Dr. Pandya and Dr. Karapurkar. The fond memories of radiology readings, in the operating rooms, in the OPD, and on rounds; All of us tend to hold on to the best memories of our young days and Dr. Nagpal and others in the department were most certainly a big part of our best memories in our life.
He loved us all so much that he worked harder than anyone else I know to give us the best possible chance in life. Dr. Nagpal knew better than anyone else that if he could succeed at giving us a clinical and practical knowledge of the neurosurgery, our career as well as our life would be much easier, much more fulfilling, much more successful.
He truly believed that the greatest gift he could give to me and all those students is, make us all confident neurosurgeons and medical professionals.
We can definitely proclaim that every person who ever had Dr. Nagpal as a teacher will tell you that he was the absolute best of best.
The sorrow we feel when we lose a loved one is the price we pay to have had them in our lives. Dr. Nagpal touched our hearts in very special ways that we can never, ever accurately or fully explain with the mere mortal tools of these writings and words.
Dear Dr. Nagpal Sir, you will be truly missed. A heart once touched by love and respect will never be the same, and the void left by your absence can never be filled.
