The Royal College of Physicians is an organisation which represents doctors worldwide. During South Asian Heritage Month, the College has been featuring stories from doctors with a South Asian Heritage.

It’s given me an opportunity to think about some of the really special parts of my childhood that I loved. I feel that being brought up in more than one country and culture has helped me be open minded about human experience, think of people as unique individuals with very varied experiences and perspectives, as well as having humanity. This is important in my line of work. It also meant that I got to see my grand-parents, who would otherwise have felt distant, it’s helped me become familiar with different languages, and experience the beauty of the open Kashmiri landscape.

I wanted to share an excerpt of the blog here:

‘In between being born and raised in a large market town in Warwickshire, as children, my parents used to take us abroad to Kashmir and other regions in Pakistan to visit my grandparents on a periodic basis. My fondest memories from childhood are of dusty roads and open markets, family gatherings and bustling weddings, tropical fruits and pet goats in the garden. Even now, in my mind’s eye, I recall starry nights out on roof tops and oil lamps during power cuts. You don’t have to be a neurologist to know the connection between smell and memory, and the smell of chickens even today takes me back, over two decades ago, standing in front of clucking white feathered hens. Those rich parts of my childhood hosted adventure as well as discovery, and shaped parts of the adult I have become…’

Read the full blog post here: https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/visibility-matters-seeking-strength-and-inspiration

@DrFizzah