I wanted to be a doctor ever since I was a child. Being a very studious kid, I wasn’t surprised that I had to change my glasses every two years. Then, in 1984, I aced the medical entrance exams conducted by the Tamil Nadu government. My dream had just begun.

I had everything I could ever want. I had a loving family and I was pursuing my dream, an MBBS degree, at the Tanjore Medical College. As the years rolled by, I was ready to take on my next milestone: a postgraduate degree from CMC College in Vellore. It seemed like nothing could go wrong. Yet everything did.

A premedical check-up showed that I had progressive myopia. In layman terms, that means I was losing my eyesight slowly. For starters, it meant I couldn’t do my post-graduation without aggravating the problem. It was devastating to realise that my ambitions had turned to dust.

As predicted, I lost my sight in one eye and my other eye was slowly deteriorating too. When I lost my father to liver disease, it felt like the final blow. Luckily, instead of plunging into depression, I found myself drawn to spirituality. One day, the words of Swami Vivekananda, whose works I had read back in college, came back to me, “Every human being is potentially divine; the purpose of life is to uncover that divinity.” And so I began my journey of self-exploration.

I joined the women’s wing of the Ramakrishna Mission. With my medical background, I could look after their free dispensary while attending classes. I later joined the Chinmaya Mission, where I volunteered with their dispensary as well. In Vedanta, there’s something called Karma Yoga, where you are required to give selfless love. So, what started as a spiritual practice in the dispensary changed my very outlook. When I reached out to the poor, the joy I felt was boundless.

I realised that my eye problem was a blessing in disguise. Otherwise, I would have had a busy life, chasing money and worrying about my own family and kids. Now, here I was happily working day and night, just earning enough to meet my own expenses. While my mornings were spent in voluntary work, I ran a clinic in the evenings to foot my bills.

In 2007, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I gave up everything and took care of her before she died two years later. I returned to the mutt but my own health was poor, so I gave up clinical duties and took on counselling instead.

All these years, my patients had always said that I was a good listener so here I was. I consider myself a healer instead of a doctor; for every person who comes my way, I do not just look into their physical ailments but at how I can aid them holistically—the soul, mind and body.

I am now completely blind in one eye and have only 50-per-cent vision in the other eye, which is also deteriorating. I live in my ancestral home in Chennai and volunteer with a college students’ association for the blind, an initiative for women with disabilities and at a senior citizens’ home. As someone who has undergone their fair share of trials, it is much easier for me to help people work through their challenges.

I am now 51 and most people my age face only one major problem—their kids have settled down, their careers are over and they have nothing to look forward to in life. This is because we are programmed to believe that we should get educated, get married and nurture kids. Obviously, when this agenda is complete, you feel unloved.

We are programmed to be selfish. Instead, we need to think of the universe as one family. We should look at the infinite possibilities our life has. We turn to God only when we face crises; instead, we should invest our time discovering our true identity, our true selves.

—Dr S Balambal, Chennai

Photo: Balasubramaniam N
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
May 2017