Nonagenarian mother and doctor son serve as Corona Warriors
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in
The present corona crisis showed that people can rise to the occasion and use the skills they have to fight the pandemic with courage and give hope .
At the start of the crisis there was an acute shortage of masks . Mrs Bhupinder Kaur Bedi – a 91 year old resident of Mohali – being mother and grandmother to 8 doctors – realized the significance , It only took one sample of a mask for her to know that it was a simple task for her to stitch it. She got some pieces of cotton which she had got recently for her own dress and started stitching.
“I can make upto 100 a day,”she says confidently. It takes her about six hours approximately, working off and on. Hundred is on her best day – less on others.
After her morning prayers, breakfast and reading her newspaper – she starts on her sewing machine (Usha – she got it at the time of her marriage in 1951 !) by 9 am along with her daughter in law (who is a Paediatric surgeon).
Being unable to get new cloth as the shops are closed – she used some old cloth pieces and also some of her son’s cotton shirts – old and new!
She initially gave the masks to distribute in the hospital – but when that shortage was quickly resolved by the hospital – she started distributing the masks to poor people who come to the nearby gurudwara for langar and to residents of Mohali village, as masks are now compulsory. Others like the sanitation workers, gas delivery drivers, vegetable vendors, etc have also benefitted from her largesse
She is very positive that the current crisis will be over soon. “The government is taking the right steps,” she says.
In fact, as she is an Army wife (her husband was a Senior Paratrooper Commando Officer and participated with valour in the 1962 Indo-China and 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars) – she exhorts all her children and their doctor colleagues to do their duty – but to take due precautions. Her generation has seen the partition and the wars – as children, wives of Army men and as mothers. Curfews, lockdowns , blackouts and sirens are very familiar to her. Her paternal village is Dyalpura Sodhian near Chandigarh .
She shrugs off the ‘so called’ problems of lockdown with a scorn – “We have survived bombings and air raids, looked after three children and four dogs when my husband was at a forward station and at war and shifted six times at a short notice during postings,” she says “And no phone or internet or TV,” she further adds.
She exhorts everyone to embrace the situation. “You can be your own hero. You are like a soldier now, please abide by your duties.” Her generation is a tough one. They can take any curveball that life may throw at them .
“We shall overcome!” she says with a gentle twinkly smile as she continues her stitching. So till when will you make the masks? – she is asked . “Masks till needed,” she sternly says. But now the number of masks stitched has dropped to 50 a day – she has run out of old shirts and sheets.
Watch out COVID-19 – you are outranked!
She was also the first in our extended family to get vaccinated – her example encouraged others to also get the jab .
The son Dr Harinder Singh Bedi is Director of Cardio Vascular Sciences at the Ivy Hospital in Mohali, Punjab. He and his team operated upon a number of cases with active Covid .
Dr Bedi explained that in Covid infection surgery is generally avoided for 2 reasons – firstly the risk to the patient is high of complications and secondly the risk to the medical and paramedical staff is high to get the deadly infection from the patient . In fact quite a few hospitals turn away such cases. However there are some patients who would die from their disease if not operated . These include patients with critical heart disease , patients with blockage in their leg arteries with impending gangrene and patients with traumatic injury to blood vessels . In Ivy Hospital such acutely ill patients are not refused . Dr Bedi explained that all due precautions like full PPE kits are taken along with vaccination of all staff . Dr Bedi and team have operated on a number of such cases mostly refused from other centres and by God’s grace have saved all of them .
Dr Bedi has been giving his services to the people of Punjab and Haryana for the last 25 years , He was earlier at the Escorts Heart Delhi and the St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney . He has been honoured by various Chief Ministers of Punjab and the Health Minister of India for his contributions . He is a pioneer in beating heart surgery having a Limca Record for the World’s first series of such cases and having started the first open heart surgery centre in the private sector in the area covered by Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and J & K .
June 19,2021
