My love for karaoke where I can create tracks myself has been really a stress relieving feature of my life writes Dr Dilip Shah, music helps me calm down and relax…
I am Dr Dilip Shah, a senior Orthopaedic Surgeon from Mumbai. Attached to Saifee, Nanavati, St Elizabeth Hospital and Cumballa Hill Hospital.
I am from South Mumbai, Malabar Hill. As a Professor at University of Mumbai I have trained more than 400 Orthopedic Surgeons and been a humble recipient and winner of the highest fellowship from the World Orthopedic Surgeons SICOT, Italy in 1985, and AO Fellowship in 1995 to West Germany.
Additionally, I am Editor – in – Chief of ASOR, Journalism & Editor of many Orthopedic Journals and an examiner for postgraduate exams.
At heart, I am an ardent music lover and I love to create karokes on my synthesizer. I have traveled to many countries, essentially I am sports man and a passionate photographer with many prizes.
“Music to me is a source of stress relief. It helps me calm down or just to relax, on a bad day. But on a good day, music just helps me get through the day.” “Music is a way of expressing me and being able to relate to other people.”
My early music influences were inspired by R D Burman, Kishore Kumar, and Mohammed Rafi, I did undertake formal training from Pandit Kishanguruji and brother of Khemchand Prakash, Pt Hazari Prasad. My favourite singers are Kishore, Ravi, Jagjit Singh and my interests other than singing: Traveling, Photography, Sports. I also play most music instruments like key board, synthesizer, table and dholak.
I took part in Seniors Have Talent because I love music and singing and it’s a good platform
My story:
I want to share a different kind of experience which happened to me due to trying to be a good Samaritan.
I distinctly remember it was 19th October 2004 when I was trying to return from Nanavati Hospital to go back to my clinic at Grant Road. On the way I decided to meet my auditor cum chartered accountant and finish office payments, so I got down at Bandra station and tried to go towards his office. When I was going down on the side of platform 1 on top of that bridge I saw a person who was about to fall off the bridge so I tried to hold him, but as I was trying to hold him, the rush behind me was so much that I was actually thrown from top of that bridge all the way down on the ladder!
I realised that I had got a fracture neck femur. I could get up from with help of few people, I could stand up and I could realise that my left hip was not in proper shape.
I requested to people to give me support and make me comfortable in a taxi to go towards Bombay south and being an Orthopaedic surgeon I realised that I should be operated within 6 hours of this fracture, so I got hospital eyes in Breach Candy Hospital and got operated but I had the bad luck and my eye surgery was almost like a day 1 failure.
For couple of months I carried on surgeries by standing only on one leg.
Pre operative X ray POST OPERATIVE X RAYS
I had to walk with a walking stick and almost 28” gap between 2 feet. But this could not have carried on for long so I decided to get my hip replaced by none other than the best surgeon Dr Ranawat in the US.
My children studied in Greenlawns School which was near the US Consulate and my wife always used to curse those people for making people stand in queue from 3 a.m. just to get visa. It was our opinion that even if they give Visa on a platter we would never go to USA. But due to the circumstances, we had no choice but to procure the visa to go to USA.
I didn’t want anybody from either Mumbai or any part of India to get a bad reputation of failure of second surgery since the whole episode was also covered by newspapers in Mumbai. It was very easy for me to procure the visa and proceed to go to USA and we packed our bags.
However, when things have to go wrong they just go wrong in any situation – that’s Murphy’s Law! Although we were in business class none of our bags came to USA and the worst part was all my investigations Express ECG 2D echo reports were in the bags which did not arrive. However we could receive the bags prior to the appointment of Dr Ranawat and a date was fixed for surgery.
I had three request to Dr Ranawat:
- You will open and close my wounds.
- I should be the first patient on the day of surgery.
- I would like to go back to India as soon as possible.
She was kind enough to agree to all this requests. I was operated for total hip replacement on 15 th March, 2005.
My progress was pretty good and I was discharged within 4 days of surgery.
I didn’t want to go home buy an ambulance so my sister had brought Jaguar for me which was pretty low, but anyhow I could manage and the whole Hospital staff was really surprised to see me negotiating in my seat in such a low vehicle!
Days passed off and I was recovering well once we went to Gentleman’s house whose name is Mr Paul. Here, most of the great musicians stayed at his estate for months together like Zakir Hussain, Rashid Khan, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi to name a few. He had a Grand Piano and can you believe I just played piano for practically 2 hours and enjoyed myself!
I was about to leave to come back to India when my sister with whom I was staying insisted that I postpone my return journey by 2-3 days because it was her birthday and we had a grand karaoke night which I only conducted and I could fulfill my dreams having a grand karaoke party all the people who were present enjoyed it.
This love for music persisted and in 2005 December, when we had the golden jubilee of of Indian Orthopaedic Association I actually conducted Indian Orthopaedic Idol, with Pyarelalji, Ila Arunji & Sanjeevani Bhelande as Judges and Sonu Nigam Show of 2 hours.
A group of us Orthopaedic surgeons used to travel in month of August to various parts of the world and I used to be the main person looking after the entertainment part and whenever we had long journey’s in buses or coaches, our karaoke singing used to be really entertaining to all performing as well as listening.
This love for karaoke where I could create tracks myself has been really the stress relieving feature of my life.
