For most people, the pursuit of happiness is the purpose of life. All actions and thoughts are fuelled by the desire to be happy. No one wants to be unhappy, yet unhappiness and dissatisfaction are prevalent. Perhaps serving others can be one’s higher purpose, leading to deep satisfaction rather than fleeting happiness. Two brothers I met are living examples of this.

I met Dr Vishnu Swaroop Reddy, the renowned ENT Surgeon, when he returned from the UK and joined Care Hospital, where I was engaged in interdisciplinary research, working on developing India’s first coronary stent as a defence technology spinoff.

The idea of developing cochlear implants—tiny sensors that enable hearing—has become common ground. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam instantly liked Dr Reddy and invited him to be his guest at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. With his clinical and audiological team, Dr Reddy examined the entire staff and 600 children from the Rashtrapati Bhavan Estate Schools, focusing on their hearing status, and submitted a report, to the great joy of the people.

The Naval Science & Technological Laboratory (NSTL), Visakhapatnam, a centre of excellence in the science of sound waves, called sonars, undertook the development. A team headed by Dr V. Bhujanga Rao eventually achieved success in developing indigenous cochlear implants, which brought down the cost manifold—Rs. 1 lakh (1100 USD) compared to between 7,000 USD to 21,000 USD for imported implants—and helped many profoundly deaf children hear sounds and, as a result, develop speech. Dr Reddy furthered cochlear implantation surgery using cost-effective local anaesthesia, which cost merely a hundred rupees. He has performed the most procedures in India under local anaesthesia, which very few surgeons worldwide can do.

Through Dr Vishnu Reddy, I met his younger brother, Vinod Reddy. They hail from the coastal village of Mypadu, in the Nellore district. Their father, N. Kodanda Rama Reddy (NKR), an M.A. in Political Science (1953-1955) from Presidency College, Madras, was fondly called ‘English Kodandaram Reddy’ for his imposing personality and gracious manners.

The elder brother chose to become a doctor. After his MBBS and MS in ENT from S.V. Medical College, Tirupati, Dr Vishnu Reddy went to England in 1993. He did his FRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Scotland, and DLORCS from England. Dr Vishnu Reddy trained with the best surgeons across the world—at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles, USA, under Prof. Derald Brackmann; at Marien Hospital, Stuttgart, Germany under Prof. Wolfgang Gubisch; at the University of Hannover, Germany, under Prof. Thomas Lenarz; at University of Paris, under Prof. Jean Abitbol; and at Graz, Austria, under Prof. H Stamberger. The world’s best hospitals were now open to him. He worked as a Consultant ENT and Facial Plastic Surgeon at the Staffordshire General Hospital, Stafford, England, and at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary University Teaching Hospital, Aberdeen, Scotland. Today, he is considered the top ENT surgeon in this part of the world.

The younger brother became an engineer, graduating with a Computer Science and Engineering degree in 1990 before earning a master’s at the University of North Texas. Vinod Reddy worked in the travel and transportation industry at American Airlines, applying operational research to understand customer needs better. When the Indian economy opened and new technology arrived, Vinod Reddy returned and led the American firm Broad Vision in India. He created an e-commerce platform under the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) that made visiting the station and filling out travel detail forms a thing of the past. It was a watershed moment. In 2009-2010, daily online ticket bookings surged from just 30 individuals at launch to 500,000.

Pursuing excellence leads to a deeper, more profound sense of satisfaction than simply achieving a goal or winning an award. Like his brother, who made restoring hearing to the deaf his mission, Vinod Reddy chose customer service. He created his company, CRMIT, headquartered in Bengaluru, to live his dream of developing information technology in customer relationship management. Breaking the one-size-fits-all barrier, his company developed industry-specific solutions unique to business goals. It has become a global company operating in the USA, the UK and Australia.

CRMIT has become a leader in optimised healthcare delivery by partnering with America’s largest healthcare company, UnitedHealth Group. Here, the paths of the two brothers converge, like the confluence of two rivers. When I recently met them at Dr. Vishnu’s home in Hyderabad, we passionately discussed how technology can free Indian healthcare delivery from the inefficient and corrupt referral system.

Digital platforms enable seamless, trackable and standardised referrals between providers, reducing delays, errors and opportunities for corrupt practices like unnecessary referrals or kickbacks. Centralised databases consolidate patient records, referral histories and treatment plans, ensuring transparency and reducing duplication or misuse of resources. Technology-driven scheduling minimises favouritism or manipulation, ensuring fair access and resource allocation.

Analysing referral patterns and health data can help easy identification of anomalies indicative of corruption or inefficiencies, enabling authorities to take corrective action. Blockchain technology can create immutable records of referrals and resource transactions, fostering trust and accountability. Above all, mobile health platforms can empower community health workers and patients with access to referral information, promoting transparency and community engagement.

Why is it not happening? Unfortunately, inertia is a terrible force. Once people become used to bad habits and unfair arrangements, it is difficult to change them. Who does not know that consuming tobacco leads to cancer? Everyone knows the benefits of nutrition and exercise, yet one can see people paying scant attention to their health everywhere. The health insurance industry has become a conduit for funding tertiary care hospitals, destroying primary healthcare in the process. If you have a headache, undergo a CT scan; if you have stomachaches, get an endoscopy done. Do you suffer from back pain? Get an MRI done. Chest pain? Undergo an angiogram, followed by angioplasty.

While upgrading technology in primary healthcare is a vital step towards improving public health, it is generally most effective when combined with other elements such as infrastructure development, workforce training, policy reforms and community engagement. Technology can enhance diagnostics, record-keeping and communication, leading to faster and more accurate care. However, a multifaceted approach that addresses social determinants, education, sanitation and access to care is also essential to achieve comprehensive, improved public healthcare outcomes.

But someone must bell the cat. How about a pilot in one district, where 10,000 patients are screened using an integrated digital system that captures their identity, history, symptoms and possible ailments? Those who need to see a doctor, say 1000 or 2000, are referred ‘directly’ to the specialist. A few hundred who need tertiary care go to tertiary care hospitals. The rich and powerful do not crowd them and block the needy. Who will allow this? I think this is not a valid question anymore. Instead, the question is—who can stop this? This is what I feel after meeting people like the Reddy brothers.

Caves are inseparable from human imagination. When the Vanara army searches for Sita in the Ramayana, they are clueless and lost in the dense forest. Tired, thirsty, and hopeless, Hanuman sees some birds flying into a cave, which he infers is where water must be. The group enters a deep cave. Brightly illuminated, the cave is full of running streams, fruiting trees, and blooming flowers; it is encrusted with priceless jewels, mountains of gold and silver and platters stacked high with delectable roots and fruits. A female ascetic, Swayamprabha, has been meditating there for thousands of years. She uses her Yogic powers to help them reach the seashore. Her soul is freed from her mortal body (trapped in physicality) and ascends to a higher plane. 

The ancients had a knack for embedding coded intelligence in the guise of folklore, rich in symbolism, which, though fanciful in appearance, carries more profound meaning. Here, the frustration of the monkeys led them to meditation (entering the cave) and intuition (the ascetic there is thoughtfully named Swayamprabha, which is the Sanskrit term for self-illumination). Jewels, gold, and silver symbolise past knowledge we carry in our DNA. Those who meditate know well about this treasure embedded in the perennial consciousness. It also keeps appearing in dreams, but we often ignore it as a fantasy.

I am blessed to have the friendship of Nagpur-based Santosh Pathakji, with whom I got acquainted through Dr Ashok Tiwariji, my long-standing friend. We started interacting when Santoshji shared information about a handwritten copy of the Ramcharitmanas, which a Brahmin Kripa Ramji wrote in Chitrakoot. He marked the date in the Samvat calendar, corresponding to May 21, 1838. It was a tradition in Brahmin families to write scriptures by hand for deeper study and veneration. It was preserved in the extended family for 187 years. Later, we often spoke on the phone and exchanged information on WhatsApp, which is the trend today. Pathak ji is an electrical engineer and senior to me. He worked for almost a lifetime with the Maharashtra State Electricity Board. I found an evolved soul in him and consider the material he shares a great blessing.

Recently, through Santosh ji, I learned about French geologist Michel Siffre (1939 –2024). He explored deep caves, a branch of geology called speleology. Unlike the recent trend of doing science by inference, confined to well-equipped laboratories and sustained within an echo chamber of conferences and journals, Siffre chose to be an explorer, spending time alone in deep underground cavities. He was fascinated by space explorers, who spent a long time alone. Of course, he must also have been curious to know why some hardened/heinous criminals were condemned to solitary confinement—the ultimate punishment that can be given to a human being. Indian scriptures emphasise meditation, which is, in essence, shutting out the external world by withdrawing the senses inward and exploring the inner world, which is imagined as vast and limitless as the Sky (chidakash).

After living in several caves, cut off from sunlight and carrying no watch for extended periods, Siffre decided to stay for six months in a 440-foot-deep cave in the southern Texas region of the United States. He made a simple scientific protocol and, without knowing it, shaped the field of human chronobiology. Siffre counted from 1 to 120, taking one pulse as one second. It took him five minutes to count to 120. In other words, Siffre was experiencing everything twice as slowly as on the surface of the Earth.

His mind failed to capture time without sunlight and a watch, and his memory was in disarray. It was like living one long day without sleeping. Sometimes, he would sleep for two hours and at other times, eighteen hours, but he couldn’t tell the difference. Siffre concluded that his body adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle without time cues. Instead of experiencing divine bliss or peace in consciousness, he developed a sense of overwhelming lethargy and bitterness in isolation.  What is a man but a little tent with a flickering light under a vast, starry sky?

The absence of time can lead to a disorientation in consciousness. In most societies, time serves as a framework within which people live.  Clocks govern everyday routines. However, when stripped of time, the mind loses the sense of the past, present, and future. This temporal dislocation can heighten awareness of the present moment, leading to a form of mindfulness. In solitude, individuals may be deeply immersed in the immediacy of experience—sounds, sights, and feelings become magnified as distractions fade. This heightened state of awareness can foster creativity, allowing for innovative thoughts and insights often overlooked in the busyness of life.

Conversely, the lack of temporal markers can initiate a psychological unravelling, as the mind may struggle to impose meaning without the structure that time provides. The human brain is wired to seek patterns and predict outcomes, and chaos may ensue without time as a guiding principle. Days may blur into one another, anxiety may heighten as uncertainty grows, and existential questions about meaning and purpose may surface. This confrontation with the self can lead to a profound sense of clarity or a descent into despair. The reactions are often influenced by individual temperament and prior experiences with solitude.

Moreover, solitude can amplify internal dialogues. In the utter darkness, one can see the vast imaginary world through one’s inner light. With fewer external distractions, the mind may begin to engage in extensive self-referential thinking—a process known as metacognition. The mind’s need for social interaction can provoke loneliness and isolation in solitude. This craving can manifest in heightened anxiety or a longing for reconnection, fundamentally altering one’s perception of identity and belonging. Experiencing an absence of this connection can lead to feelings of insignificance or a rediscovery of autonomy, where individuals, away from societal expectations, dive into the unconscious and embrace their thoughts and feelings. Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri (Canto Five, lines 747-748):

The vague Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave

His only sunlight was his spirit’s flame.

Living in solitude without a sense of time can be both a transformative and tumultuous experience for the mind. The interplay between heightened awareness, emotional disorientation, and internal dialogue shapes a unique psychological landscape. Through this lens, one can see that solitude is not merely the absence of others but the presence of an opportunity to reflect, create, and ultimately redefine one’s relationship with the self. Embracing this process can lead to deeper self-understanding, an enhanced appreciation for life’s fleeting moments, and, potentially, a newfound clarity in navigating the complexities of modern existence. This truth is conveyed when Shri Krishna defines a Stithpragya (anchored in universal consciousness) as a person satisfied within himself – आत्मनि एव आत्मना तुष्टः स्थितप्रज्ञः तदा उच्यते (Shrimad Bhagavad Gita 2. 55). The immortal Self inside is our guide, and the Infinite Self outside is our goal. The handwritten Ramcharitmanas was a brilliant way to fill the solitude.