BRAINWASHED

Anecdotes of work, love, and travel by a Guyanese doctor in Australia.

Bhola was born in 1946 in the South American country of British Guiana (now Guyana). His ancestors arrived there from India in the late 19th century, and partly because they left no records of their lives behind, the author decided to write this account for his own descendants. He was among the youngest in a family of 11, but his family had high expectations of him. He asserts that his father “brainwashed” him into pursuing a medical career by naming him after Dr. Ramdyal, a respected physician in their district. Bhola dutifully focused on his studies, left home to attend the City of Westminster Collegein London, England, and then moved on to medical school at the University of Newcastle in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. After his father died in 1967, he stayed the course and became a doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. He married, became a father, and moved his family to Port Augusta, Australia, in 1975 to practice medicine. The author has lived in Australia for nearly half a century, delivering more than 2,000 babies during his career. Bhola’s book feel less like a cohesive narrative than it does a series of disconnected anecdotes in roughly chronological order. Some stories are diverting, such as his childhood descriptions of wearing his hair like Elvis Presley and seeing a visiting Princess Margaret. His accounts of navigating the British educational system while grieving the death of his father and, later, of losing his second wife to cancer are truly moving. Ultimately, though, there’s little here that will have wide appeal. Bhola’s heritage and life experience include three British colonies (or former colonies), but readers learn nearly nothing about how life for a resident of the British Empire changed over the decades. Instead, the author provides sometimes-gruesome stories of “memorable medical encounters,” descriptions of automobiles he owned, and pages of information about expensive cruises he took.

A disjointed remembrance that will likely appeal most to the author’s loved ones.