There was nothing on his wrinkled face or in his demeanour, to give an inkling of the remarkable life that he has led over the past four decades. Age has withered him, but has not broken the indomitable spirit of this octogenarian.
Dressed carelessly, he stood with just a little stoop, talking affably, shaking hands with people whose paths have crossed his. After about half-an-hour, he had to be coaxed to take his seat at an auditorium, where a film on him was about to be shown.
Meet Dr Jack Preger, a 86-year ‘barefoot’ doctor from the UK who acquired his medical degree in his 40s after feeling ‘an inner urge.’ Till then, he was happy working on his farm in Wales.
Yet his life since then has been anything but a bed of roses. Actually, it reads almost like a film-script, which has now been documented in celluloid ‘Doctor Jack - One Man, One Life One fight,’ by Benoit Lange a Swiss photo-journalist. It was previewed here recently.
Dr Preger has been hounded by locals while trying to treat the poor for free, through pavement-clinics. He has faced deportation from one country and been jailed in another. “I have stayed in servant quarters” he says, reminiscing his early days here.
But he has survived these ordeals -- learning some valuable life-lessons.
His journey as a doctor began with the Bangladesh war when, following a call for medical volunteers to help war victims and refugees affected by the 1971 war, he packed his bags and left England.
Throwing himself headlong into it, he started offering free treatments to the poor and the refugees there. However, even as he did so he sniffed a child-trafficking racket, resulting in his deportation from Bangladesh.
Roadside clinic
Dropping anchor in Kolkata he joined Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity which he left later. He began by running a free roadside clinic in Central Kolkata. They were makeshift clinics much like a gypsy caravan.
The doctor himself treated patients for burns, ordinary ailments and diseases like TB and leprosy. However, aside from run-ins with local goons to whom the milling crowds were a disruption, Dr Preger ran into problems over his travel documents.
He was thrown into Alipore Central jail.
“The court case went on for eight-and-a-half years, although my jail stay was short,” he chuckled adding that many joked at that time, that his visa problem would not trouble him till the case was resolved.
Not one to give up easily, he stood his ground, got registration for his NGO, Calcutta Rescue, and now runs a cache of free clinics.
There are also two mobile clinics, an arsenic filtration plant in Malda and two schools, one of which is located in an erstwhile brothel in one of the city’s largest red-light districts.
Given his roller-coaster experience would he like to be in this country again if he could turn the clock back?
“Yes!” comes the pat but firm reply.
Published - March 07, 2017 08:37 am IST
