Love Grows with Sharing

DR. ARUN BUDHA

Many hospitals outside the capital are without doctors, simply because of the lack of enthusiastic doctors willing to work in Nepal’s remote hilly region. But Dr. Arun Budha, who was born in Dadeldhura, chose to work in his district after earning his medical degree. Dr. Budha has become a pillar of Dadeldhura Hospital, which renders health services to the nearly two million people in the region. Dr. Arun Budha believes in the power of love and care and sharing them both.

Love Grows with Sharing

My father used to carry me and take me around the village. He did not have many fingers. Not just my father, many others in the village had the same problem. Some had lost their limbs. Many were with bad faces and bodies dotted with marks. But a nearby settlement in the same village was different. People there did not hear any such marks. My father used to tell me it was all because of leprosy. Despised in the village as being cursed, my father left Kalikot for Dadeldhura for treatment. After I discovered more about the disease, I was reductant to go the village for fear that I would also be despised as the leper’s son.

At the hospital in Dadeldhura, my father was treated poorly. People in Kalikot who despised my father as a leper and loathed me as his son also visited this hospital. I used to be furious. But my father was helpful to them and I wondered why. Why should he care for those who hated him? In response, my father always said love grows with sharing.

In 2003, I had a wish to work in some good hospitals in Kathmandu after returning from China with my medical degree. Just then, senior doctor Bijay Pandey invited me to a health camp at Bandarjhula in Parsa. The health camp was at small primary school in remote Parsa. I conducted normal health check-ups and dressed the wounds of patients who could not afford to go to a hospital. The people were extremely happy with me. They were as gratified as if God was at their doorstep. I felt overwhelmed.

My brief service at Bandarjhula helped me to understand my father’s words about love. I knew then that love grew with sharing. Such love was missing in Kathmandu where every other street has a hospital. I decided that if I were to share love, I should go to a village.

I have been serving the people in Dadeldhura for the past four years. Hundreds of people come here for treatment every day, some with serious head injuries and others with their backs pierced by twigs. Women in labor struggle to reach the hospital. How would I have received all of this love if I had not stayed in Dadeldhura?

Locals who don’t understand the Nepali language get overjoyed when I talk to them in their local dialect and they express their problems more openly. I am happy when I can translate the Doti dialect into Nepali for other doctors.

A doctor’s job is not great in itself. What is great is love and compassion, which I have been able to share with many patients in fare western Nepal. It is my belief that the more you share love, the more it grows. Hatred does not exist where love finds its place. My goal in life is to share love. This is my belief.