Week 1522 - The KEM Katta - It Exists and It Doesn't Exist!

The Concept Explained

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1579

Why 1579

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

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Yesterday was the KEM Radiology Centenary Day Celebrations. Young and old alumni attended and it was fun meeting everyone. Kudos to Hemangini for making it happen and to her entire team and Ravi for the support.

I was asked to write a piece for a coffee-table book that was released yesterday. Here it is.

I was in KEM for just 9 months, shunted/thrown out from Sion, the moment the powers-that-be heard I had been selected for a pre-MD lecturer’s post - the only reason I got it was because no one else bothered to apply. Post-MD, I wanted to work in OC (orthopedic centre), but was forced to do neuro because that was the one time someone senior to me actually wanted OC and wasn’t willing to swap. Fed up of doing Myodil myelograms, I finally left for a senior registrar’s post in Bombay Hospital in May 1991, when they acquired a new CT scanner capable of 1 mm thin sections. Everything happens for the best.

My association with KEM and its radiology department however has been longer and much more pleasant. As residents, we used to come for the Saturday meetings, quaking in our shoes whenever Ravi turned around to ask questions, little knowing that one day I too would be sitting in the front with Ravi making other residents shiver with my questions. These sessions toughened us up and gave us the confidence to face up to even the worst, gaslighting physicians or surgeons who would come our way.

A good amount of time used to be spent at the KEM “katta”, a specific corner diagonally opposite the canteen door. This is a small ledge…Ravi would typically occupy the corner and all of us would circle around standing, drinking chai. It was quieter then with very few cars and two-wheelers and you could stand and gas away for over an hour without having to step aside to let someone through.

In 1996, a few of us were hanging around at the katta, after one of the Saturday meetings, lamenting the state of affairs in radiology education, when Bharat Aggarwal challenged everyone, saying we should do something about the situation rather than just behaving like khaki and Kolhapuri chappal wearing, chai-sipping armchair revolutionaries. Thus REF was born.

With Ravi’s active involvement, Bharat, Chandra and Ravikumar, who were all TMH residents got together and in two months we managed to put together a program, the Residents’ Review Course, that attracted residents from all over the country. It was easy then…you could open bank accounts instantly, there was no kYC and no GST. Ravi and I were hauled up by so-called seniors who ironically had started and then failed with a society called SARB but were also active MSB IRIA members, their main issue being with the concept that two upstarts could just go ahead and hold a meeting without involving the “higher-ups” and without taking permission from those who thought they controlled radiology in the city and state. We heard them out, in our minds telling them to…(you know what I mean). 

The first meeting was a success and led to the formation of the trust/foundation (The Radiology Education Foundation - REF), which then led to multiple meetings over the last almost 3 decades and spawned a host of other meetings, once radiologists across the country realized you didn’t need anyone’s permission to hold a scientific meeting. Perhaps that has been the biggest contribution of the KEM katta and REF…that the stupid stranglehold that doddering radiologists and the IRIA and its state branches had on who could hold conferences was completely broken…partly thanks to SARB that started the trend. 

The KEM meetings continued till the HODs changed and the protocols and policies changed. Till then, I would come whenever I could and while the meetings were fun, hanging out at the katta, chatting with whoever would drop in and sipping the now foreign-tasting katta chai, were things to look forward to. Often, I would then walk with Ravi to his home behind the hospital and then drive home from there. 

These days, thanks to another change in HODs, I come once in 2-3 weeks for a chest radiology meeting, held in concert with the pulmonary medicine department. I look at the katta with sepia-tinged nostalgia…though it physically exists, it is no longer the same, because the people who made the katta what it was, are no longer around.

It is like Schrodinger’s cat. The katta exists and at the same time, it doesn’t.