With Dr Frank Garlick leaving from our midst on 13 January, 2023, Anna and I like to recall our association with Frank and Val during the years between 1970 to 1976, which led to the formation of the Evangelical Medical Fellowship of India.
Dr. J C David was the General Secretary of the Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI) when I was doing my undergraduate training (1967-1972). I used to meet him when I attended the Sunday services at the All Saints Cathedral, Nagpur. On one occasion he invited me to visit his office at the head quarters of CMAI, which was located in the Civil Lines, Nagpur at that time. He was then preparing for the biennial conference of CMAI. He showed me a map of India with all the mission hospitals belonging to the protestant missions in India marked with green flags. There were a few places marked with red flags, which indicated the medical colleges where the CMAI had contacts with medical students. He got up from his chair and fixed one red flag over Nagpur, mentioning that the CMAI has now got a student contact at the Medical College in Nagpur. During the two hour long conversation he elaborated the functions of CMAI and its interest to revive the medical student's group. He invited me and others in the student group at the Nagour Medical College to come for the CMAI biennial conference. Following Dr. David's home call, Dr Daniel Isaac took over as the general secretary of CMAI. He too was concerned that students find a vocation in their medical profession. Dr Isaac's interest majored on reviving mission hospitals at a critical time, when the ex-patriate health professionals were leaving and some mission hospitals were facing closure.
It was at this time that I wrote a letter to Rev. P T Chandapilla of the Union of Evangelical Students of India (UESI) and enclosed a copy of a general letter, 'What happened at Nagpur' recalling the series of events leading to the formation of the medical student's fellowship group in Nagpur. Dr. Frank Garlick had joined the UESI, around that time, to pursue his interest to be an itinerant surgeon to help doctors in mission hospitals. He was keen to contact medical students to engage them to consider the practice of medicine as a calling. Rev. Chandapilla passed my letter on to him and Frank got in touch me and visited us in Nagpur in the winter of 1970.
Frank chose to stay in my room. He had minimal physical needs. He needed coffee and not even three meals a day. It was during the four days, two days being week ends, we had enough time to talk about the 'dual mission' in his words, to encourage doctors to pursue their calling to serve the sick in areas of need and bring encouragement to medical students to have a sense of calling. It was the time, when young medical graduates were moving to work overseas in large numbers and health-care professionals from overseas working in mission hospitals were leaving the country. The closure of some mission hospitals was imminent. Of the one thousand mission hospitals in pre-independent India, only 600 remained functional at that time.
At the closure of our four day meeting and conversations, Frank suggested that we meet again. I offered to travel to Madras (now Chennai) and he agreed to come from Kotagiri to Madras for our meetings during the week ends. That is how we met at Chennai between 1970 and 1972 once in two or three months to explore the formation of a fellowship for medical students and doctors.
Frank continued travelling to meet doctors and medical students. He was also an itinerant surgeon visiting mission hospitals to help young doctors to update their surgical skills.
The first attempt to bring together doctors and medical students for a three day conference at Madras in December 1972 brought an encouraging response. We had about 175 in attendance. The conference was a meeting place for those who were already longing for a fellowship of like-minded people. There was an overwhelming affirmation of the idea of forming a fellowship of medical students and doctors to bring a focus on missionary vocation, ethical practice of medicine, promoting health, and work for healing and wholeness in health care.
Frank having known the interest of the CMAI to revive its student group and support health care through mission hospitals, wondered whether formation of a new fellowship would be necessary! That led to several conversations with people such as Dr. A K Tharien, Dr. K Thirumalai, Dr. R D Stevens, Dr. Ray Windsor, Dr. Keith Sanders, Dr. Jacob Cherian, Dr. Raj Arole, Dr. K N Nambudiripad and some from overseas like Dr. Douglas Johnson who was the founder general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship in Britain. Frank encouraged me to have conversations with as many students and younger doctors as possible. Finally an ad-hoc committee was formed to explore this further.
While this process was going on, Frank helped in persuading us to think about ethical matters in the practice of medicine and the approach to medical education. Values were changing their character in India, with many new medical schools coming up, most of which were to be in the private sector. With the emphasis of bringing a missionary awakening among the medical professionals and students, a series of camps and conferences, starting with the medical student's work camp in Periyakulum and missionary conferences in Nagpur and Jhansi, and a medical education workshop in Pune, between 1973 and 1974.
By this time I had moved on to my junior residency training and following our marriage, Anna and I moved to Pune to work in the N M Wadia hospital. This gave us time to be associated actively with the formative process of the EMFI which was referred to initially as the Medical Auxiliary of the UESI. This involved periodic meetings of the ad-hoc committee to envision the structure and function of the fellowship. Frank continued visiting doctors and students and drawing them into the fellowship and this resulted in the national conference of this fellowship being held being held in Nagpur in 1974.
It was during that national conference that Frank articulated the 'Ethos of the Fellowship in Formation'. He gave five foundational values for our pursuit as a fellowship of doctors and medical students - to consider medicine as a vocation; to practice medicine holistically; to be a fellowship of pilgrims; to up-build one another in faith and to be a witness to the healing work of God.
This articulation was the bedrock on which the ad-hoc committee worked in the formation of the EMFI. Dr. K N Nambudiripad, a neuro-surgeon from the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana was designated as the Chairman of the fellowship. The responsibility of being the general secretary fell on my shoulders. It was time for Frank and Val to return to Brisbane as their children were ready for higher education. Dr, R K Nghakliana, stepped in to be a travelling secretary, to continue the net working that Frank had been engaged in for some years.
Between 1974 and 1976, the ad-hoc committee moved to become one of the professional associates of the UESI and focused on getting in touch with Christian medical and dental students and doctors and bringing them into the fellowship. Frank was in regular contact with some of us during this period when he was getting trained in Emergency medicine in the process of starting a new department in the teaching hospital at Brisbane. The news-letter, "Far and Near" was the link bringing together those associated with the fellowship. Subsequently the journal, "Voice" was also published twice a year.
Frank returned for a short visit to India to coincide with the national conference in 1976. It was Dr Frank Garlick who gave the keynote address at the national conference, following which the formal announcement of the fellowship was made. It was during the general body meeting held during the conference that the working constitution of the EMFI was finalised with four objectives. Frank wanted the constitution to be simple, functional and practical. His input in drafting it was valuable. Frank regularly reminded us through his letters that fellowship and encouragement would be easier if the members of the fellowship had informal times of meeting and conversation.
Dr. Nambudiripad continued as the chairman and Dr. Jayashree Chougley was nominated as the general secretary. Dr Vinod Shah functioned as the general secretary for a while after that. Dr. Nghakliana decreased his involvement and travel following his illness. However the meetings of students continued in different medical colleges and meetings were held at different places to bring together doctors and medical students for fellowship.
I remember some medical students taking interest to visit medical colleges to widen the net work of the fellowship. Isaac Jebaraj and Suseel Tharien from Vellore, Margaret Thangaraj from Coimbatore, Kuruvilla George, Jacob Chacko and Prasanna Elias from Manipal were active in this role. Some young doctors who were absorbed in the mission of the EMFI at that time, whose name I remember now are Philip Kuruvilla, Paul Christian, Christopher Salins, and Geeta Gnanaolive. Late Dr Sheela Gupta. working at the Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission in Kedgaon, Pune was mentor to all of us.
Frank and Val visited during the next national conference two years later and this was the time to have a review of the initial two years of the fellowship. There was a unanimous decision to be steadfast in the efforts to pursue meeting medical students and doctors to assist them in their spiritual formation and missionary vocation. Frank in his conversations would refer to the tensions that health professionals would face in their lives, on account of the choices they made. The choices they made of a life partner, their place of work, how they set up a home and maintained healthy relationships and living free of self imposed burdens of dogmas and beliefs would make it a 'fellowship of the uncomfortable'. However the uncertainties we face would never diminish the certainty we have of a God Who is loving and unchanging. He would often challenge us to live integrated in conduct and character. A book, by George Verver, the founder of the Operation Mobilisation, Hunger for Reality published around this time, referred to the risk of slipping into living a dichotomous life. Frank in his conversations and messages helped us to be forgiving of ourselves and others. This brought a liberating ambience for spiritual formation.
Anna and I had moved on to complete my post-graduate training by then. It was while working at the Christian Medical College in 1981, there was an invitation for me to return to be the general secretary one more time. When Anna and I left CMC Vellore to relocate at Chennai to start the Child Development Centre for developmentally challenged children, a national office of the EMFI began functioning with an office secretary from the adjacent room of the Child Development Centre at 18 Varadarajulu Road, Egmore, Chennai. This facilitated to streamline the functioning of the EMFI which had its presence in different parts of the country with regular regional meetings. At the end of the National conference in 1984, Dr Joy Thomas took over as the general secretary, who subsequently handed over the responsibilities to Dr Kuruvilla George, a psychiatrist who returned from England to take over as the first full time general secretary of the EMFI. From then on, Dr George gave a new impetus for the expansion and diversification of the activities of the EMFI.
After this new development took place, Frank mentioned to me during a visit, that it had taken ten years of contacting, meeting and relating to doctors and students to prepare them for a missionary vocation before we could arrive at the formation of the EMFI. There were young doctors wanting to go to work in mission hospitals at that time. The mission hospitals under the Emmanuel Hospital Association became a natural choice for doctors to go to for short or long term service. Seeing this trend, Frank had a sense of fulfilment for having spent six years in envisioning the formation of EMFI. I found him rejoicing and feeling deeply grateful for having been led to leave CMC Vellore for being part of something beyond his surgical role!
During the period from 1970 to 1976, till Frank returned to Brisbane, there were frequent occasions for me to meet with him and ponder over the opportunities for creating an ambience for medical students and doctors to consider the practice of medicine as a calling. Subsequent to that till 1984, Frank remained opened to receive communication and respond to help in articulating the pathway for the EMFI to grow into its mission. Since then in our meetings which were occasional, I could feel a sense of the joy he felt in the way EMFI was evolving to pursue its mission.
Frank saw what most of us could not see at the time when he was leaving CMC Vellore. He sensed the need to create a forum to support medical students and doctors who believed in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and desired to live as a witness to Him in the practice of medicine. His way of living his mission was by caring and serving. He lived with a pilgrim orientation. Frank and Val became the path-finders for many of us, who had set out following a call, and needing a light to guide us on the path Jesus of Nazareth presented to us through His life and teaching!
On one occasion when I visited Frank and Val at Kotagiri, probably in 1973, they were living in Highfield, the UESI retreat centre. Frank was often available to help at the Kotagiri Fellowship Hospital. He was at the prime of his career as a surgeon when he left CMC, Vellore. Referring to the occasional times when a doubt surfaced in his mind, he shared how God responded to encourage him. When Dr Geoff Shead, a surgical head of a unit at CMC Vellore was going back to Australia on furlough for few months, Frank was asked to replace Dr Geoff. Referring to this invitation which surprised him, he told me that God gave him another chance for active surgical practice when he was beginning to miss it!
Frank made space for others and lived searching for ways to be a neighbour to those around him.
On one occasion, while Frank and I were at the Katpadi railway station, a porter came towards him and lifted his shirt to show the well healed abdominal scar following a surgery Frank had performed on him. He needed emergency surgery for a perforated duodenal ulcer with no money to pay for the surgery. The porter expressed his gratitude with folded hands and bowed head. He was one among the many who found a Good Samaritan in Frank!
M C Mathew
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