Hyderabad: Her prefix is doctor. But it could well have been an author. Faced with a career choice, she picked up the stethoscope. But later she plunged for the pen as well. And now she wields both of them with equal ease. So much so that sometimes it becomes difficult to tell the doctor from the writer.
That’s Dr. Azra Raza for you. An oncologist by profession and a writer by passion. This Pakistan-born Professor of Medicine is making waves as a cancer expert and also as an author of no mean repute. While her research on myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukaemia showed that low blood counts were not a result of bone marrow failure but the effect of a hyper-proliferative state in the marrow tissue, her books have received critical acclaim and brought out the sensitive writer in her. Dr. Raza expresses her passion best by quoting Hamlet:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man
It might sound unusual for a health professional to be so passionate about poetry. But Dr. Raza thinks otherwise. For her poetry and science are the two sides of the same coin since both require creativity to unravel the mystery. “Knowing about human genomics is pure poetry. Both poetry and science go for the grand themes of life,” she once remarked.
Right from her childhood Dr. Raza was attracted to both science and literature. Her obsession with ants led her to read all about biology and pathology of myeloid malignancies. “If I had grown up in the West, I am confident that I would be a scientist and not physician,” she told an interviewer many years later. In pursuit of her dream she landed up in the US soon after graduating from the Dow Medical College, Karachi. She started working at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. A bright student, she became a full-fledged professor at the Rush University in Chicago when she was just 39. Later she was named the first Director of the Division of Haematology and Oncology at the University of Massachusetts.
As her career looked up, Dr. Raza dedicated herself to grander themes. She focused all her expertise in finding the cause and cure of cancer. All through her research it was humanism that was the guiding principle of her philosophy. She realised that human conduct is governed by a series of incidents where one act is the result of another. She started harnessing all her knowledge and desires for the service of humanity. Her practice and ultimate goals underwent subtle changes. “Each individual patient acquired a special place in my life and caring for their physical and emotional needs became my prime concern,” says Dr. Raza who lost her husband, Harvey Preisler, to cancer. Interestingly, both of them had worked hard to find a cure for the disease.
In an interview given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen of In-Sight, she reveals many facets of her life. Her exemplary work in cancer research helped her bag many awards including the prestigious Hope Award for Cancer Research. After the death of her husband, she became a voracious reader. She gobbled up the 100 Great Books of the Western Literary Tradition right from Euripides and Aeschylus to Rushdie and Morrison. Poetry also proved a great motivator for her. She loves to read Shakespeare, Dante, Milton and quotes Ghalib at the drop of a hat. Her perfect recital of long ghazals by rote leaves one speechless.
While contributing to numerous medical journals, Dr Raza has made a mark as a creative writer. She has written a total of six books. Her book, The First Cell, makes an interesting read. It explores cancer from every angle – medical, scientific, cultural and personal. She has also come up with an interesting book on Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, one of the greatest of Urdu poets. In her book, A Tribute to Ghalib, Dr. Raza reinterprets 21 ghazals of the maestro along with co-author, Sara Suleri Goodyear. The book tries to illustrate the great range of the poet’s work.
Dr. Raza continues her dalliance with medicine and literature. Despite her awesome credentials she persists with hard since she believes success is not something to be achieved but must be won continuously. As Mark Twain remarked, continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.
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