Doctors are the pillars of the healthcare system of a nation. But in a large, developing country like India, do you think the doctors get the respect and recognition they deserve?
Based on true events, A Man With White Coat by Lom Harsh narrates the story of a veteran doctor who dedicated his life to treating the ailed. Lom Harsh is an Indo-Australian writer and director currently working in Bollywood. His protagonist, Sunil Kumar Garassa, hails from a rural village in Rajasthan. He realizes that doctors are equivalent to god since they could bring back a person to life. From that point onwards, his dream is to be a doctor. But the path to that goal is not rainbows and sunshine for the country boy. He burns the midnight oil and works hard to successfully secure a seat in a renowned medical college. But the struggle doesn’t end when he finally manages to put on the white coat he dreamed of for so long.
While in medical college, he understands many things; that the responsibility of being a doctor is far greater than he thought, that the profession is dangerous to one’s own health due to the lack of proper safety measures and that he is in love with his fellow medical student, Shalini.
The book beautifully describes the journey of Dr Sunil through the years and the struggles he encountered to become a doctor and the hardships he continued to face even after becoming a veteran doctor. The non-linear narrative style and the foreign writer Sam definitely adds elements of surprise to the whole story. But what surprises the reader most is the fact that these are all not mere fiction. A man actually went through all these troubles so that he could serve the poor in the country.
