‘Nobody would harm me, or would they?’ Kashmir’s renowned Pandit neurologist carries Hamlet’s dilemma

By Sheikh Qayoom Srinagar, Jan 18 : For Jammu & Kashmir’s most renowned neurologist – Dr Sushil Razdan – leaving his home and clinic in the Jawahar Nagar area of Srinagar city was out of the question despite the fact that almost all other prominent Kashmiri Pandits had abandoned their homes to escape the wrath of militants.
Dr Razdan continued his daily practice without giving a thought to what was happening all around him. Patients have always lined up over months to manage an appointment with this doctor who has become a celebrity over the years.
“I was an ordinary Kashmiri doing my bit to alleviate the pain and suffering of patients across Kashmir. I was in competition with nobody after having voluntarily given up my job at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar.” “I had never agreed to be part of any official body simply because I hardly had any spare time to attend to such a responsibility. I would be left alone since I was nobody’s enemy,” Dr Razdan recalled when talking about those eventful days of January 1990 when the local Pandit community was forced to leave the Valley.
He said even during the worst periods of January 1990 he had patients at his clinic from different parts of the Valley.
“They braved curfews, protest shutdowns and what not, to reach my clinic and I could not be seen as a doctor who failed his patients,” he said.