I came to the School of Tropical Medicine to get an MD degree.
I am leaving with something I never came here looking for: an understanding of who I could become.
Eight years is a long time. Long enough for a workplace to become a part of your identity. Long enough for corridors to become familiar, faces to become memories and ordinary routines to acquire a meaning that you only recognize when they are about to disappear.
After eight years at the School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata, I am finally leaving.
I first walked through its doors in May 2018 with a fairly straightforward ambition. I wanted to get an MD degree and become an excellent physician. I expected intense training, difficult cases, long hours and, hopefully, the making of a good clinician.
I did get all of those things.
But I got something else that I could never have planned for.
I am leaving having had an intense, larger-than-life experience.
The beginning
I still remember my first day.
I attended the round with the then HOD of Tropical Medicine and was immediately struck by his clinical prowess. But what stayed with me even more was his strength of character and his kindness. Soon I was introduced to the then MSVP, the other faculty members and my seniors. I was delighted by the friendliness of the place.
In those early days, STM felt like a new beginning. There was excitement, possibility and the hope of becoming the physician I had imagined myself to be.
Then came the inevitable period of being overwhelmed.
During my Junior Residency, particularly in the early part of my second year, I began to wonder whether I was actually good enough to become the clinician I wanted to be. There is a peculiar kind of self-doubt that comes when you are surrounded by people who seem more capable, more experienced and more certain than you are.
For a while, I wondered whether I was simply insufficient.
But eventually I realized something that would change the direction of my life:
Perhaps I did not have to become merely what I had initially imagined.
Perhaps I could be more.
Discovering another way to be a doctor
One of the most important discoveries of my Junior Residency was research.
Prof. Goswami was among the first people who encouraged me to take clinical research seriously. In my very first year, I began attending conferences and presenting papers. What began as an additional activity gradually became something I genuinely enjoyed and, more importantly, something at which I discovered I had a natural aptitude.
Prof. Guha became my dissertation guide. Even after he became Director, our conversations about research continued. Some relationships in medicine begin as formal academic associations and quietly become something much more meaningful over time.
And then there was Prof. Saha.
Perhaps the most important thing he gave me was not a particular piece of clinical knowledge or even an opportunity. It was the freedom to be my own person.
At first, I had imagined that becoming a good doctor meant becoming a particular kind of doctor, the kind I had seen and admired. But gradually I realized that there was more than one way to do good in the world.
Prof. Saha understood that.
He recognized that there was something I could do that did not fit neatly into the conventional image of a physician. He encouraged me not to conform to a predetermined idea of what a good doctor should be, but to discover my own strengths and use them fully.
Perhaps what I received most generously from STM was trust: the trust to try something new, the trust to take responsibility and eventually the trust to find my own way.
When COVID changed the direction of my life
COVID-19 arrived when I was nearing the end of my Junior Residency.
I caught COVID myself. And then, once I was back, I threw myself into the work.
The pandemic made one thing extraordinarily clear to me: digital medicine could be immensely powerful when it was designed around the realities of clinical care.
I had been developing my programming skills long before I came to STM. Until then, they had largely existed as a separate part of my life. COVID gave me the opportunity to bring those skills into medicine.
I personally designed, built and maintained a paperless HIMS for COVID-19 management and trained the personnel who would use it.
What surprised me most was how quickly the faculty, residents and staff adopted it. There was very little resistance and very little training was required. Once they saw what it could do, they simply used it and used it effectively.
Something I had built was no longer merely code sitting on a computer. It had become part of patient care.
That was a profound realization.
I had entered STM trying to become a better clinician. COVID taught me that there were other ways in which I could contribute to medicine.
There is one memory from those days that has stayed with me, although it had nothing to do with the system I built.
I once spent almost an entire twelve-hour shift in PPE sitting beside a patient who was on BiPAP. She would become extremely anxious and restless when left alone. So I stayed beside her. I would get up only when another patient needed my attention and then return to her bedside.
The shift eventually ended.
She died the next day.
Medicine has a way of reminding you that technology, research and systems can transform care, but sometimes the most important thing you can offer another human being is simply your presence.
I think both lessons from COVID have stayed with me.
From clinician to builder
After my MD, I continued as a Senior Resident in Tropical Medicine and eventually moved to Infectious Diseases and Advanced Microbiology.
By then, the question had changed.
During Junior Residency, I had been asking myself, Can I become a good clinician?
Later, I began asking something different:
What else can I contribute?
The Infectious Diseases and Advanced Microbiology department gradually became my second home.
I took on the responsibility of running the adult immunization clinic. I continued my clinical research. I attended the Endocrinology OPD throughout my senior residency. I became involved in administrative work. I kept finding myself drawn toward problems that did not necessarily come with a predefined solution.
Looking back, my path became a combination of clinical medicine, research, programming, digital health and administration, with an increasing urge to tread unbeaten paths.
Fifteen publications came along the way, spanning Tropical Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Endocrinology and Artificial Intelligence.
But if I were to reduce these eight years to a list of accomplishments, I would miss the point entirely.
The important thing was not that I did all these things.
The important thing was that STM gave me the freedom to discover that I could.
Building something that lasts
One of the most important chapters of my time in the department was the Adult Immunization Clinic.
The clinic was envisioned by Prof. Saha and Prof. Guha, whose extraordinary effort and persistence made it possible. When it began in 2022, I was entrusted with running it.
From the beginning, we wanted it to be both well organized and strictly protocol-driven while ensuring that patients received the best possible experience. We paid close attention to the details, from maintaining proper vaccination records to making sure patients were comfortable and well supported. The departmental staff were exceptionally helpful in this regard.
I eventually built a computerized vaccination management system for the clinic. The clinic also hosted immunization workshops for doctors on two occasions, where I had the opportunity to demonstrate its workflow and share our experience.
One of the most rewarding things was seeing patients return years later and still remember their good experience there.
There were challenges, including vaccine supply shortages and increasing overcrowding, but the clinic remained true to its purpose.
For me, it became another lesson in what it means to build something in healthcare: not merely creating a system that works, but creating one that works for people.
Perhaps that was the direction my journey at STM had gradually taken me towards: not simply becoming a better doctor, but learning how to build things that could outlast me.
The quiet hours
There were many evenings when I stayed back long after everyone else had left.
Sometimes it was research. Sometimes paperwork. Sometimes some problem that needed to be sorted out before the department could function smoothly the next day.
The department would become quiet. The day's noise would disappear. And I would continue working in that relative calm.
Eventually, there would come a point when I had to leave.
I would call the gatekeeper.
By then, he knew exactly what that call meant. Sometimes he would acknowledge the request merely on seeing my number flashing on his phone, before I had even said anything.
It is a small memory.
Perhaps too small to matter to anyone else.
But these are the things I suspect I will remember most.
Not the certificates. Not the publications. Not even the major milestones.
The quiet evenings.
The familiar voices.
The people who knew what you meant before you finished speaking.
The feeling that there was still something worth doing before you went home.
Learning to take responsibility
There was another chapter during these years that taught me something quite different from medicine, research or technology.
The Abhaya movement brought the residents of our institute together in a way I had rarely seen before. Every resident participated. It was a time of conviction, uncertainty and considerable emotion and the circumstances demanded not only that we stand together but that we look after one another.
By then, I was the longest-serving Senior Resident in the institute.
That situation came with a responsibility that had little to do with seniority itself. I felt responsible for ensuring that everyone remained safe during the protest and, equally importantly, that every resident's voice was heard.
There was no single voice that mattered more than the others. We were a group and the strength of that group came from allowing everyone to participate, speak and be heard.
Looking back, I think this was another way in which STM changed me.
Medicine had taught me to take responsibility for patients. Research had taught me to take responsibility for questions. Administration had taught me to take responsibility for systems.
The Abhaya movement taught me something about taking responsibility for people.
It reminded me that leadership is not necessarily about standing at the front. Sometimes it is about making sure that everyone around you can stand safely beside you.
The value of uncertainty
I don't think choosing Tropical Medicine was necessarily the most conventional career decision.
Had I chosen a different specialty, perhaps my career would have followed a more predictable trajectory. There would have been a clearer formula, a more established path and perhaps fewer reasons to question where I was going.
Tropical Medicine gave me something different.
It gave me freedom.
It forced me to become my own person.
It gave me the opportunity to cultivate my own uniqueness rather than conform to a predetermined idea of what a successful doctor should look like.
Perhaps this is also why I have come to value uncertainty so much.
In medicine, ignoring uncertainty and convincing ourselves that we are certain can be dangerous. The reality is that much of clinical medicine is practiced with incomplete information, imperfect evidence and decisions that cannot wait for perfect answers.
I have learned that acknowledging uncertainty is not weakness.
It is often the beginning of good judgment.
The same has been true of my life.
I did not know, when I entered STM, what kind of doctor I would become. I did not know whether Tropical Medicine was the right choice. I did not know where research would take me. I did not know that programming would eventually become part of my medical career.
I simply kept moving, learning, experimenting and making the best decisions I could with what I knew at the time.
Looking back, I would not change a single thing, not even the difficult days, not even the periods of doubt.
Because all of it made me who I am today.
What STM gave me
Perhaps the most important lesson I learned was that there is more than one way to do good in the world.
A doctor can treat a patient.
A doctor can conduct research that changes how patients are treated.
A doctor can build a system that allows hundreds of patients to receive better care.
A doctor can use technology to solve problems that medicine has learned to tolerate.
A doctor can contribute to the administration of an institution.
And sometimes a doctor can simply sit beside a frightened patient for twelve hours.
All of these can be medicine.
For me, being a doctor has gradually come to mean something broader than treating diseases. The greatest good may come from bringing together clinical care, research, innovation and technology and using whatever abilities we possess to make the whole system a little better.
STM gave me the space to discover that.
An old institution with a young future
STM itself has always felt like a somewhat older person to me: calm and friendly, old and wise, carrying the memories of a more glorious past.
There was a time when it stood among the great research institutions of its kind. Its history is something to be proud of.
Perhaps that is why leaving feels complicated.
I am leaving an institution whose past deserves admiration, whose present could be better and whose future I still believe in.
Institutions, like people, can lose some of their momentum.
But I don't think the story ends there.
I have seen enough of STM to believe that its potential is still very much alive.
Institutions are ultimately built by people.
A new generation of energetic faculty, residents, researchers and staff can restore what has been lost. They can bring back the curiosity, ambition and vision that made the institute special in the first place.
I hope they do.
I hope that if I visit someday, I will find a bustling institute filled with energetic people, ambitious ideas and, most importantly, an environment of hope and vision.
I hope I will be able to look around and feel even prouder of STM than I already am.
The people I carry with me
There are many people I will carry with me from these eight years.
Prof. Guha, who guided my dissertation and with whom conversations about research continued long after that formal relationship had ended.
Prof. Goswami, who encouraged me early to discover my interest in clinical research.
And Prof. Saha, who perhaps understood better than anyone that I did not need to become someone else's idea of a good doctor. He gave me the opportunity, trust and freedom to become my own person.
There were countless others: the faculty members, seniors, juniors, nurses, technicians, administrative staff and colleagues who made this place what it was for me.
To all of them, I owe a part of who I am.
Leaving
And now, after eight years, it is time to leave.
Not because there is nothing more to do.
Quite the opposite.
I leave because I believe I have done what I could here and because it is time to find my own adventures in life.
Leaving a place you love is strange.
There is sadness, certainly.
But there is also a peculiar sense of freedom that comes with knowing that you have reached the end of one chapter without regretting how you wrote it.
I came here in 2018 expecting to leave with an MD degree.
I am leaving with far more than that.
I leave with friendships, memories, mentors, failures, discoveries, patients I will never forget, research I never expected to do, systems I never expected to build and a much clearer understanding of what I might be capable of.
Most importantly, I leave knowing that I do not have to spend my life trying to become what the world expects me to be.
I have to become the one who can wield my full potential.
One day, someone else will walk through the gates of STM for the first time.
They will probably be hopeful.
They will probably be uncertain.
They may wonder whether they are good enough.
Perhaps they will struggle, as I did.
Perhaps they will discover something about themselves that they never expected.
And perhaps, years from now, they too will stand at these gates preparing to leave.
That is how institutions survive.
People arrive.
People learn.
People build.
People leave.
And those who come after them carry the story forward, sometimes in directions their predecessors could never have imagined.
I hope the people who come after me are not merely replacements.
I hope they are people who want to see this institute shine.
People willing to tread unbeaten paths.
People willing to build things that outlast them.
People willing to give STM another golden era.
Because every spot left vacant eventually fills.
Every goodbye eventually becomes a new welcome.
And perhaps that is the most comforting thing about leaving.
The story does not end when one person walks away.
It simply makes room for someone new to begin.
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