Dr. Sunil Chandy

Let me tell you my story. I was born in the holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, the seat of ancient Hindu culture. After I finished school, God catapulted me into the seat of Christian culture at Christian Medical College, Vellore. Why did God do that? I am still discovering.

It was in God’s good design that it all happened that way. Today, I find myself not just a physician, but a specialist working in a very empowered position as Director of this great institution, a position that I certainly did not deserve. There are three phases to my life, 17 to 32 years, I am ignoring the school phase. The age of 17 to 32 years was a period of learning; obviously, for most of us, we are training for the domain that we belong to. Most of the time, we were being fed by teachers and parents, and you were receiving. You had no strength of your own. The next phase of my life was about earning. I become an intern and a postgraduate, and you start your career. It is in that second phase of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs wherein most find themselves establishing their credentials, getting job security, getting married, having a family, looking for a place to settle down, and so on and so forth. It’s a kind of receiving, but it’s actually gathering on everything that you can to give you some kind of stability towards your life ahead. The Maslow’s apical portion of 50 years and above, into which slot I now belong, is about discerning, getting insights, fulfilment, and a phase of giving. I think it happens to all of us because we stopped looking at our payslips, especially in Vellore, because it’s not worth looking at. Even if it is, it doesn’t matter to you because life has taken a different wavelength and receiving doesn’t give you fulfillment anymore. So you’re looking at how you can actualize yourself—the phase of self-actualization.

It is said that 70 percent of Jesus’ miracles had to do with healthcare, although He was not a doctor.

So there are three phases of my life, and I will take you through three questions, three life lessons, and three challenges that we see from a physician’s perspective. Jesus did three things when he was on this earth, in Matthew 4:23–25, it’s very clearly said that His mission was threefold. One is that He taught in the synagogues; He preached the good news, and although he was not a doctor, He healed every disease and sickness in people. He healed every disease, so he was a generalist and a specialist. If you look at the miracles that Jesus did, He did very magical things like converting water to wine, calming the storm, feeding the 5,000, feeding the 4,000, and all kinds of things, but the majority of the work he did, 70 percent, was to do with physical ailments.

If you look at Matthew Chapters 8 and 9, you see a sequence of chronicled miracles all relating to health and disability. He healed the leper, the centurion, Peter’s mother-in-law, the demonised person, the paralytic, the dead girl, the sick woman, the blind man, and so on and so forth. It is said that 70 percent of Jesus’ miracles had to do with healthcare, although He was not a doctor. Therefore, that has relevance to much of what I am going to tell you. I want to make this metaphorical statement that he didn’t do MBBS, but I want to believe just for argument’s sake that Jesus was a medical missionary, like you and me. Therefore, there are three things that are important as far as Christian leadership is concerned. Every doctor must do the same thing that Jesus did: teach, preach, and heal. This is why doctors are not effective today because they do one or two of these things. However, a complete doctor in the Spirit of Christ, the Christian doctor, will do all three. He will do healing as a primary mission, teach, and preach. So this is what I want to present: the perspective of my life so far as a physician. So the three questions that I want to ask you are: Who am I? What am I doing in my profession? Where am I going?

We all have our external appearances. We buy good clothes, we comb our hair, and when we go to work, we are completely different from who we really are. We must ask ourselves, “Who am I, deep down?” When the door is shut and I am inside my room, who really am I? I have asked myself this question, and I think there are three perspectives. First, as a Christian, I am a Christian. I am a physician, and in my position, I am unfortunately a leader. It’s not easy to be, but these are the things that must converge on your workplace, your home, your life, your travels, and everything else. So what does it mean to be a Christian, especially from a healthcare leader’s point of view? Christian means being “Christ-like,” and if you look at His life, it was all about service, integrity, excellence, and dependence on God. He was the son of God himself at every point that he needed, and he could withdraw and draw energy from God. He was a perfect servant leader; in fact, the whole concept of servant leadership has biblical origins. Today, the secular world talks big about it, but it is actually rooted in the Bible for us.

I think a Christian life is all about doing that little extra thing. There are so many extra things that one needs to do if we are in a leadership position, so it’s a parable of going the extra mile and also about doing something complete.

As a physician, I think there are several roles that one can play, and it’s a privilege to be these five things. The first is being a clinician at the bedside, and there is no greater joy than being with someone who requires a little assistance from you as an empowered individual. Second, being a scientist at the bench is no longer recognised as an ethically correct or morally sound service in India due to cheating and plagiarism. This is where, as a Christian scientist, you can make a difference. Thirdly, a missionary at the borders of the country; fourthly, a teacher by the blackboard; and finally, an administrator in the boardroom.

I have a different set of interpretations for the very popular story of the Good Samaritan. This is all about being in order to do, and if you look at the life of the Samaritan from his perspective, he had to be something in order to have done that. To me, this parable, from a medical perspective, has the following connotations: People passed by around 2,000 years ago, ignoring the injured and troubled man. It’s a parable of courageous compassion, and it took courage on the part of the Samaritan to go and do what he did. If he had not decided to do that extra bit, nothing would have happened. I think a Christian life is all about doing that little extra thing. There are so many extra things that one needs to do if we are in a leadership position, so it’s a parable of going the extra mile and also about doing something complete. Today we are in a reductionist world, where we want to treat the headache, leave the stomach, treat the gastric problem, and leave the headache. We want to go to this hospital and that hospital. But, like the Good Samaritan, the one physician who takes you from your initial complaint looks after your pocket. He not only dressed his wounds; he was not a doctor, as he probably tore his tunic to do that. He put him on the same donkey and walked with him backwards. He puts him in an inn and says, “I’m going my way, but I’ll come back, and if there is a bill, I will take care of that as well.”

India lacks holistic care today. This is what Ida Scudder did, and this has been an inspiration for us. She was not building a Medical College, but through the building of a Medical College she was building the kingdom of God. As a student and staff of this College, we are constantly reminded that the larger vision of being part of the medical fraternity is to build the kingdom of God.

There are three personal stories that I want to tell you. In 1986, I had just gotten married, and the scenario was the Indo-Nepal border. The first story is about two young interns who had just joined this very remote hospital. They were full of energy, knowledge, and excitement. One of them was me, and the other was my wife. One night, there was a lady who had 3 grams of haemoglobin, which is one-fourth of what you should have. She was pregnant and in labour. There was a senior doctor who asked me what he should do, and I was taught in CMC Vellore that it’s risky to conduct surgery with only 3 grams of haemoglobin. You either have to transfuse or refer the patient. So pat came the answer from me. I said, “Transfer the patient from Patna to Kurji Hospital because it’s not possible to do it.” She asked me, “Do you know how far Patna is and that she will not even survive the journey? Come with me.” We went into the theatre, and she operated with 3 grams of haemoglobin, and the child and the mother were discharged, hale and hearty. Here I was, having been taught in India’s best medical college that 3 grammes is a contraindication to surgery. That was my first wake-up call. This is a statement that says that knowledge is not wisdom and that experience is the best teacher always.

The tender, loving care given by the chaplains and the staff was far more enduring and endearing. So, the heart and hands definitely supersede the head.

The second story is also from 1986, but this time the patient is my wife, and she is pregnant with our first child. There is no scan, and there is no blood bank in this hospital. Despite her parents’ asking her to return back to Kerala, I opted that she would not, against their wishes. She went on one week post-date, and it was discovered that she had placenta previa, which means that the placenta is at the mouth of the uterus and will not allow the child to be delivered. There was no blood, so the scene was very similar to what you see in Hindi movies. Fortunately, my blood group and her blood group were similar. So there is a lesson here: if you’re planning to fall in love, please check your fiancé’s blood group. It may come into use. Jokes apart, it was operated on, and we had a bonny baby boy born in this remote hospital in the foothills of the Himalayas. Anything and everything could have gone wrong. I was a disobedient son-in-law who refused to send my wife to her parent’s house as is customary. There was no blood bank, and there was no obstetrician, as this lady was a generalist. But nothing happened; in fact, my second child, who was born in Vellore, had a lot more problems. This was a wake-up call that God is always in control, even in the worst of circumstances.

The third story is about the time when I was a specialist and a cardiologist. I saw a husband-and-wife team whose husband had bad heart disease, and he was supposed to be operated on a week from the time he saw me. He told me, “I know I’m sick, but I want to make sure my wife is all right.” I said, “Okay. Fair enough. What do you want to do?” He said, “I want an angiogram done on her.” I said, “But she doesn’t have a problem.” He said, “No, I just want to make sure. We have two small children.” So we complied, and we did an angiogram on this asymptomatic wife of his and found that she had major problems in one of the arteries. He said, “I want that fixed first.” We went ahead and did that. Three days later, she bled and died. This man was in shambles. He came to me and said, “Doctor, what happened?” I said, “I have no explanations other than to feel sorry, apologise, and pray for you.” He said, “What do my children do?” I had no answers. He did not have his treatment, and he went back. I was pretty sure I’d never see him again because his disease was so bad. But he came back three years later and plonked himself in front of me, and he said, “Doctor saab, namaste!” He was from West Bengal, and he almost fell at my feet. I was shocked because I thought he’d be angry and irritated, but he was thankful. We assisted him with his wife’s final rites. The chaplaincy department came and helped, and he went back as a content man. This is a third learning point that medicine and technology will fail, and an otherwise irate patient became a complete fan of CMC. The tender, loving care given by the chaplains and the staff was far more enduring and endearing. So, the heart and hands definitely supersede the head. This is the knowledge I gained from these experiences.

When God calls you, He may not call you because you’re the brightest and the best, but once He calls you, He qualifies you.

Where are we going from here? I want to highlight that India is changing rapidly, and it is in this India that you and I are being released either as civil servants, doctors, engineers, or contractors. Look at the enormous changes that are going on. Some are positive, while others are negative. Starting with our population, our economy, the inversion of money and time relationships, and the poverty of abundance. Today, our poverty is not because we don’t have something; it is because we have too much of everything. Too many cars and too many vehicles. Go to a department store, and you’ll find that there is nothing called “not available.” If it’s not in the front, it’s in the back; if it’s not in the back, it’s in the back room; if it’s not in the back room, it will be in the godown; and if it’s not in the godown, it’s available online. You will get it. There is a poverty of empathy. Let me tell you an actual story of a man in Orissa. In 2016, there was a man in Orissa who had everything in the town that he lived in. There was a government hospital and ambulance drivers, but they wouldn’t help him because he refused to bribe them. He had to carry the dead body of his wife for 12 kilometres to the funeral site. This is India, 70 years after independence, while we are also talking about India being the biggest economy of recent times. We also know that a child was refused treatment in New Delhi across four hospitals; the child died, and the parents committed suicide. In November 2016, the city of Delhi was completely unliveable. Children feel choked and are not able to go to school because of pollution, and it is completely unliveable. In some BIMARU States, female neonates are just dumped into dustbins, aseptic techniques are not followed in hospitals, and surgical gowns are not used in surgeries. In some villages, somewhere in India, all this is happening. So, it is in this milieu that we are going to exist. What should we do as Christian leaders? This is a constant struggle. There is a decline of ethics and values, whether it is in medicine, politics, bureaucracy, or the construction industry. Our planet is in peril. It is understated, but we are going to reach a stage where we will have to pay for the air that we breathe. The best things in life are free. God has given us free air and free water. Today, we pay for water, and tomorrow we will be paying for air. Imagine if we had to pay for the air that we breathe at the rate that they charge in the ICU for oxygen. I think the salaries will all have to be made three to four times. So, we are generally going into an unhealthy world.

There are three challenges that we face, and for me, being in leadership, this is what I have discovered. If you want, you can wreck the system with so much power and authority. The beauty of being in positions of power, like that of a director, is not to have power over people but to give power to people. Delegation empowerment is the best privilege that a leadership position can provide. It’s an opportunity to help; you can refuse help by saying, “You pay the bill; otherwise, don’t even come,” or you can say, “I don’t care whether you pay or not; I’ll take care of you because you need help.” Enhance the environment and augment systems because we have a role to play in social transformation, water sanitation, and traffic accidents. That is what is called “Thy Kingdom come.” To build God’s kingdom on earth, you need to lead. It’s not easy, but lead with courage. You will make mistakes; I have made plenty of them, but if God is with you, He can turn those mistakes into victories. The Christian faith, or Christian ethos, has these legacies: the legacy of faith, the legacy of compassion, the legacy of love, and the legacy of building. If we don’t build, we will perish. Sadly, the Christian Church is decimating its assets and selling them off. No other religion does it. We have to be watchful. Lastly, it’s the legacy of family—not blood family, but the larger family of Christ. I can say this is true for me. I was never the brightest student, but I can testify to this: when God calls you, He may not call you because you’re the brightest and the best, but once He calls you, He qualifies you. That’s why, from being an ordinary country boy in Varanasi, playing marbles in the city of Varanasi, to my present position, it has been an experience of empowerment and qualification by God. As a result, despite constituting only 2.6 percent of India’s population, the Christian mandate is to be the salt. It doesn’t matter; we can be small, but we can be the leavening and transforming agents. Be the light and don’t hide, but put it on the stool and let your good works be shown before men. This is what we don’t do as a Christian community. To be in order to do and not to do in order to be. Be the best! Christ did everything towards excellence.