The Temple Of The Eye: A Kolkata Hospital That Still Keeps Its Founding Promise
A Kolkata hospital that has spent seventeen years quietly doing its thing exceptionally well Representational Image: IndianRepublic.in There is a photograph on the wall behind the reception desk at the entrance. The man in it carries an unmistakable presence but it is the eyes that hold you. They seem to look directly at whoever is standing in front of them and they keep looking as you move, following your gaze until you have walked out of their sight altogether. You notice the eyes because of where you are. This is a hospital that does nothing but eyes and the man in the photograph is late Aditya Birla. The full name is Aditya Birla Sankara Nethralaya, on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass at Mukundapur in south Kolkata. It is a unit of Sankara Nethralaya, which in Sanskrit means the temple of the eye, and the name is more than we think. The institution began in Chennai in 1978, founded by the ophthalmologist Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath after Jayendra Saraswathi, the Sankar...