Salutations to Dr Sharad Kumar Dikshit.

This article is about a person who has just become a octogenarian, battling throat cancer and can barely talk, confined to wheel chair due to an accident, underwent a triple bypass surgery, has a heart that functions only upto 18% of its capacity – perhaps all indicators of one lying inside a hospital, requiring medical attention !!

Yes this man is inside hospital with people anxiously around him. Just as one waited (many do it impatiently) for the lift at Deshbandu Plaza, saw a notice of ‘free plastic surgery’ – a 3 day camp  run by Sree Jain Medical Relief Society and Bharatiya Jain Sangatna.  In this holy land there are many good hearted samaritans and associations rendering service to the society …….. but an article in Times of India of date aroused my reverence for this noble person.

The billboard spoke of a surgeon – Dr Sharad Kumar Dikshit conducting the surgery.  He is the hero mentioned above, confined to hospital beds not as a patient but the Surgeon fixing defective faces and bodies, something the plastic surgeon has been doing free of cost for poor patients for the past 42 years. Advancing age and ailments  have not slowed him down.  With precise moves and extremely neat sutures, it takes him less than 30 minutes to perform a cleft lip surgery on a one-month old child. Speed and efficiency are his mantras and he performs 100-150 surgeries a day.

Dr Sharad Kumar Dikshit was honoured with Padmashree in 2001 and his profile makes you admire and respect him more.  He was born on 13^th Dec 1930 at Chandarpur, Maharashra.  His father was a Post master and he studied in Nagpur.  Due to financial reasons, he could not initially complete medical but subsequently completed his degree at Medical College, Nagpur.  Shortly he served as a Railway Medical Officer and went to USA.  He has been coming to India every year doing surgeries in rural areas.   A car accident in 1978 left him paralysed, his indomitable will saw him complete Fellowship in Cosmetic surgery in Mexico.  In 1982 he was detected with Larynx cancer and underwent four operations followed by radiation therapy.  He survived heart attack in 1988 and had bypass surgery done.

For anybody else, all reasons enough to remain confined to bed but he still continues to do surgery work free by moving around in wheel chair.  

Some newspaper reports hail that he has done more than a lakh plastic surgeries and can do operation for 10 hours continuously without break.  He helps for corrections of Cleft Lip, Squint Eyes, Facial Scars etc. He was awarded ‘Padma shree’ in 2001 for his contribution in the field of plastic surgery.  He has had many recognitions pouring on him and was awarded The Kellogg's Hannah Neil World of Children Award for individuals dedicated to service by World of Children Inc. Dr Dikshit lives in New York for six months and spends the rest of the time in India.  He travels the length and breadth of the country and performs surgeries to deserving.  ,

Dr Dikshit is presently  in Chennai and is performing  free surgeries for the underprivileged at the DMM Hospital in Sowcarpet.This is the first time he is performing such surgeries in the city. He prefers small children and young men and women of marriageable age for surgeries as he does not want them to live with the ignominy of a disfigured face, said the  coordinator and member of Bharatiya Jain Sangathana ,which funds the surgeries.

Really noble is the MAN AND NOBLER ARE HIS DEEDS.

Regards – S. Sampathkumar.