The camp starts at 9 a.m. proper, so of course people start arriving at 7.
By the time the doctor sets down his bag, there is already a queue snaking around the panchayat ghar. Old men with warm coats. Young mothers with children on their hips. A teenager leaning on a stick, pretending his leg does not hurt as much as it does.
The engine behind the tarpaulin
What the queue does not see is the machinery behind it: registration slips, a numbering system, volunteers making sure no senior citizen waits standing, a pharmacist sorting free medicines into labelled piles, a retired teacher who has appointed himself chai distribution officer.
And the doctors. Some of Kathua’s finest, giving up their Sunday, working through a queue of three hundred with patience I can only admire.
The case I think about most
Mid-afternoon, a quiet woman in her sixties was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes — for years she had told herself she was simply “becoming old”. She had been slowly going blind without knowing it was fixable.
We arranged her surgery in town, took care of the paperwork and transport, and her grandchildren will forever be able to look into their grandmother’s eyes.
Why camps are not enough
A camp is a beginning, not an ending. The real work is the follow-up: the referral that gets made, the transport that gets arranged, the operation that actually happens. We keep lists, we call back, we do not let people disappear from our memory.
That is the promise I make to every village: we came today, and we will remember you tomorrow.