Nepali women\u2019s team skipper Jamuna Gurung has been relieved of a pain in her left knee. The pain that she had been enduring for past eight months, as she picked up an injury while playing for Nepali team against Sikkim, last November. She had to leave field within ten minutes of play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the football fans celebrate her successful surgery and pray that she will be back in the sport that she\u2019s been playing since 1999 (for the national team), they should also take some time to thank the person who made it possible. The person: A Good ol\u2019 Doctor: Doctor Chakra Raj Pandey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sports pages of a newspaper are filled with the exploits of sportstars and their feats. And why not, if it wasn\u2019t for their performance, many a country would not see their flag fluttering in cities of another nation. That\u2019s why Jamuna\u2019s surgery should be a reason for elation. Apart from the sports administrators \u2013 who often hail from political parties (in this part of the world) and don\u2019t necessarily have sport background \u2013 the mention of non-sportspeople in sports pages is rare. Mention of a doctor is even rarer. This is exactly why performance of Dr Pandey needs to be celebrated.
For, if it was not for his scalpel and endoscopic instruments, we would have had to say goodbye to Jamuna Gurung\u2019s football. Also because, for last eight months, ANFA \u2013 football governing body in the country \u2013 did not show much concern about her injury. Eight months is a significant time in a player\u2019s career, as Jamuna missed the first ever national women\u2019s league, watching it from sidelines. Yet there was no concern on the part of administrators, for a player that has been felicitated by a government medal \u2013 Janasewashree \u2013 and a motorcycle plus 100 thousand rupees at Rupak Memorial Award, only this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1988, in a football match between Asia and Africa, in a tourney among medical schools \u2013 in Turkey \u2013 a player hurt his knee. His knee was operated, through open surgical method. The surgery was successful, but the injury meant that he could no longer play football. The player was Chakra Raj Pandey, in his 3rd or 4th year of medical study. He remembers the incident vividly, perhaps that\u2019s the reason he has a soft corner for players. Perhaps that\u2019s the reason he announced that he would conduct at least two such surgeries for players, all for free, every year. Perhaps that\u2019s the reason why GoalNepal \u2013 Nepal\u2019s premier football portal \u2013 contacted him after learning of Jamuna\u2019s condition. Perhaps that\u2019s why we cannot thank him enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For him, it could be just another surgery, in the process of his \u2018Service to God\u2019 \u2013 as he terms his free treatment of orthopedic patients. But for scores of followers who believe in Jogo Bonito \u2013 or The Beautiful Game \u2013 it was nothing short of a sensation. It was a person doing the job of entire football association, to rid Nepal\u2019s premier women\u2019s player of a career threatening injury. We should be mindful here that Jamuna is 28 year old, not an age where players think of hanging up their boots. The doctor says, she could be playing the game again in eight months, if her recovery training goes well. Moreover, she has already scored 25 goals for Nepal. Among the menfolk, the top scorers for the country are: Hari Khadka and Nirajan Rayamajhi \u2013 both with 13 goals apiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ask Doctor Pandey what made him do this, and he would tell you, \u201cI feel this is my duty, a national responsibility.\u201d It sounds as if the media-shy doctor \u2013 who stands almost as tall as Jamuna Gurung \u2013 does not know what he has done, or is just being modest about it. The surgery performed on Jamuna, to reconstruct Anterior Cruciate Ligament, is a world class treatment and would have cost a fortune, if Pandey didn\u2019t waive the entire fee. Rather, the surgery would not have been done at all \u2013 knowing the apathy shown by ANFA \u2013 if it wasn\u2019t for the waiver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Talk to him and you learn that the doctor \u2013 who has faced hardship in his life too, coming from a modest family \u2013 knows what Nepali sports people go through. This sounds almost like an old school product, believing in charity for fellow citizens, while his compatriots are signing deals with several hospitals at once, to gather more money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And for this old school graciousness and help for the players, one cannot but stop from saying: Thank you, Good ol\u2019 Doc!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PS: This write-up appeared in yours truly\u2019s weekly column in The Kathmandu Post \u2013 OFFSIDE \u2013 on 22nd June, 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nepali women\u2019s team skipper Jamuna Gurung has been relieved of a pain in her left knee. The pain that she had been enduring for past eight months, as she picked up an injury while playing for Nepali team against Sikkim, last November. She had to leave field within ten minutes of play. As the football […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[188,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somesh.com.np\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}