by Ali Gripper
Tibetan features. Ruit falls unusually quiet as he props open her eye with a fine wire speculum and inspects the damage.
A massive cataract has calcified into a rock- hard white mass in her right eye, obliterating her vision. Usually, Ruit will chat to his team, sometimes teasing them in a sing- song banter, as Bollywood classics play from speakers from his iPod.
But, in this patient’s case, he goes into an almost trance- like state, utterly absorbed in the task of removing the disc, almost the size of a small coin. For twenty minutes, he remains as
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movements until he frees the cataract, cajoling it out of the lens through the tiny incision, before dropping it into a silver tray, to the palpable relief of everyone in the room.
‘I get maybe two or three cases per hundred that are as
difficult as that,’ he says.
What is he thinking when he’s dealing with such a case?
‘I give it my all . . . Everything else I find secondary. Everything just falls away and I feel that I am dealing with the very life of the patient. I feel I have been given an opportunity, if I do it well, for the patient’s life to be saved. I shut down everything else around me and focus on the safe outcome on
the patient.’
Ruit is halfway through his pre- operation examinations
the next day when Princess Ashi Kesang Wangmo Wang chuck
stops to talk about the next outreach camps. Like most of her family, she’s strikingly beautiful, with flawless skin, delicate features and silken black hair.
‘I’ll never forget the patients who looked up and said,
“I can see! I can see again!” It’s always such a wonderful
moment,’ the princess says. ‘There is still a lack of awareness amongst some of the villages that, if you get to a clinic, and a doctor, you can have your sight restored. They think that
God made them blind, so we are raising awareness that if you
can come to one of Dr Ruit’s camps or come to the hospital
here, we can help them see again. We started from nothing
and the ophthalmology here at the hospital has become the
most modern facility in the whole hospital thanks to Dr Ruit.
We love him because he is not arrogant. He’s world famous
but he comes across as the same as everyone else.’
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27
Dragon of the Sky
It wasn’t until 2009, after many years of prompting by his
cousin Tenzing Ukyab, that Ruit finally bought a substan-
tial family home: a four- bedroom, two- storey house about
ten minutes’ walk from his parent’s temple, Swayambhunath.
As Nanda tends the peach, orange, lime, lemon and avocado
trees in her front garden, she looks like she finally has everything she’s ever desired. As a boy, Ruit would probably never have imagined he would end up living in such a comfortable
home in the heart of Kathmandu. And yet, just like the simple timber house he grew up in, high in the Himalayan village
of Walung, his new home is permeated with the sound of
tinkling bells and the chanting of prayers.
When the American journalist Lisa Ling covered a story
on Ruit for National Geographic, she allowed the camera to pan around his cramped apartment, asking the viewers
rhetorically, ‘And where do you think one of the world’s
most famous eye doctors chooses to live?’ Her motivation
was to highlight his humility, but many of Ruit’s friends
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found it confounding. Why did he live in such a modest place for so long?
As a successful businessman, Ukyab felt the injustice
keenly. He explains it this way: ‘The reason why Sanduk and
Nanda stayed in what I called “a dump”, close to the stinking Bagmati River, was a matter of priorities. Sanduk could have
stayed in Kathmandu, concentrated on his private practice
and been one of the most prosperous doctors in Nepal. If he
had stayed in Australia or gone to the US, he would probably
be a multi- millionaire. But instead he chose to stay and serve his own country, curing hundreds and thousands of people
around the world from blindness. The reason he did not find
a proper place for his family to live for so long was because he was always going about doing his free eye camps rather
than making money from his private practice. And he didn’t
want to burden his relatives and others with his personal
problems. After many years of staying in that small flat, I kept urging him to shift to a more comfortable place, if not for
himself, then at least for his family. I told him that for once he had to stop thinking of others and think about himself.
Finally, I managed to convince him and we went hunting for
a proper house. We all felt he had sacrificed his own well-
being for too long, and, quite frankly, I can’t think of anyone more deserving.’
The catalyst to move to a better place finally came when
Kasang was injured in a bus accident one morning on her
daily trip to the Swayambhunath temple, leaving her with
bruises and cuts to her face which Ruit had to stitch up
himself. As Kathmandu’s population began to swell, and the
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Kasang and Sonam’s daily pilgrimage had become increas-
ingly dangerous.
When Ruit and his cousin found the house for sale through
friends, they were both immediately seized by the idea of
buying it. Ruit took a deep breath and a big home loan. His
nervousness was quickly assuaged when he realised what a
haven the place would quickly become for his whole family.
His sister Chhengjing, a single mother, moved in with
her teenage daughter and, for many years, spent two hours
every morning taking Sonam to the Swayambhunath temple.
The masterstroke of the house was that Ruit’s parents could
simply get up from the living room, walk out the front gates, and within minutes, walk up toward the pine- studded hill
and be spinning the smooth timber prayer wheels set deep
into the temple’s walls.
Ladenla also lived there for several months, before setting
himself up in his own house in Kathmandu once his health
was recovered.
With Serabla and Sagar living back at home after moving
away to complete their degrees, and Satenla coming home
during her university breaks, Ruit’s house—and his life—is
at full tide.
Kasang enjoyed some of the happiest years of her life there
before she passed away in 2013 at the age of 85. She always
took great pride in her eldest son’s work. If she didn’t know which country he’d been working in, or the latest award
he’d received, her friends were quick to tell her. Her faith
remained as undented as her husband’s right up until the end; their days revolved around the temple, and followed the religious calendar, lighting butter lamps or donating to beggars
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> on auspicious days, and saying prayers for auspicious circum-
stances on the waxing or waning of the moon.
Sonam probably would have had no idea, as he trekked
across the Himalayas to take his seven- year- old son so far
from home to gain an education, that he would be living
under the same roof as his son 50 years later. If he had, he
could only have smiled. Sadly, about three years after they’d settled into their room upstairs with a view of the temple’s
golden spires, Kasang was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
A gastrectomy to remove part of her stomach was performed,
prolonging her life by two years.
‘It was wonderful having Mum at home under our roof
during her last years, knowing she was so close to the temple, with her family all around her,’ Ruit recalls. ‘We talked every day, mainly about happy times. We held hands a lot. She
was usually cheerful, even though her life had almost run its course. She would think of certain things she was worried
about. She’d say, “You’ll have to look after this, my dear,
and you have to look after that.” I was so lucky to have a
mother who was so devoted to me and my brother and sisters.
There’s nothing quite as powerful as that unconditional love.
I always knew she believed in me and was always so support-
ive of my dreams. That gives you a lot of inner strength as a person. I know Nanda does the same with our children. It’s
the greatest thing you can give a child.’
Ruit was setting his usual furious pace at an Indonesia eye
camp when Nanda rang him to tell him that Kasang’s health
had suddenly deteriorated and the doctors said they couldn’t
operate again. Ruit flew back to Kathmandu on the first flight available. The day he arrived, he was able to talk to Kasang
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just before all her senses started to dissolve. Toward the end of that day, she was no longer able to talk, or see, but Ruit sensed she could still hear him.
‘I held both her hands and told her that I loved her, and
that our whole family loved her, and that she had done a
wonderful job bringing us all up. I kept reassuring her that
we would all be fine, and that she was free to leave us. The
next day she passed away. I think she was waiting for me to
come home and to reassure her that everything was going
to be all right, that Nanda and I could take care of everything from now on, before she could finally let go.’
Just before she lost consciousness, Ruit and Sonam organ-
ised for two lamas, Namkha Rinpoche and Manage Rinpoche,
to conduct a Buddhist ceremony to guide her soul in the
afterlife. They kept her body at home for four days before
cremating her at the convergence of two rivers in Kathmandu.
‘I know Dad misses Mum a lot, they used to tease and
joke with each other so much, so he was very quiet for quite
a while after she passed away. He just kept to himself in his room, but, after a few months, he came good again. He’s very
devout, and one thing that made him very happy was that she
died in the presence of a great teacher.’
At 90, Sonam has slowed down greatly, but his faith
remains as deep as the Tamor River that charted the course
of his treks to Tibet and India for decades. For the last
two decades, after his daily temple visit, he would nap in
his bedroom, then watch the Dalai Lama or World Wide
Wrestling on his television. He’s so deaf that he has to put
his ear right up to the television set. Of late he has become forgetful, and is too weak to go to the temple. He stays at
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home and, on sunny days, sits in the garden. In the winter,
Chhengjing or Nanda tuck blankets around him, and brew
hot lemon and honey tea for him to sip. ‘He’s still very, very faithful,’ Ruit says. ‘His faith has kept him agile and healthy.
He might forget to eat, but he never forgets to chant or to say his prayers. His devotion is part of him, it’s always with him.’
~
After more than 30 years together, people often ask Ruit and
Nanda what makes their marriage work. He puts it down
to three things: a deep respect for each other, a great deal of trust, and an abiding love of their children.
‘One of the things we were both very clear about was that
we wanted to raise our children extremely well. Nanda gave
up her job so she could be there for the children. She was very good at her job—she would have been the head of nursing if
she had stayed. She’s very meticulous, very smart, very good
with people. But it was her choice to stay at home. In doing
so, she has given the children—and me—great stability in our
lives. She’s a wonderful mother: she encouraged the three of
them to succeed, but she didn’t drive them, and all that hard work she’s put into them has paid off.’
As is the case in many good marriages, Ruit and Nanda
have slogged away through tough times, and gone on to
outlive many of their problems. Both say the hardest time was when they returned to Kathmandu after eloping to Holland
and Australia and were ostracised by both their families.
The years when Ruit broke away from the establishment—
as well as his battle with the bottle, and the insomnia and
high blood pressure that accompanied the stresses of that
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time—also placed a considerable strain on the marriage.
There was also the ongoing stress of travelling to danger-
ous, remote places with his field hospital, such as Mustang
and North Korea—long before the instant communication of
Skype and mobile phones.
What binds them together is uncompromised trust. ‘The
trust is just so incredibly important. I was never concerned
during our times apart that Nanda would be attracted to
someone else. And that goes for me, too. She knows that I’m
faithful to her. Every year the trust between us has grown
from strength to strength.’
Although her family is Hindu, Nanda has slowly adopted
Buddhism.
‘She has such a strong ethical character beyond any man-
made religion anyway,’ Ruit says. ‘She’s gentle and extremely well- mannered and always seems to know the best way to
approach things with the family. Much of the wisdom of the
two different faiths is exactly the same anyway. It’s about
being kind. She’s a font of good advice; I can be headstrong
and stubborn and really quite cranky, and she always calms
me down, tells me the right thing to do. At the end of each
day, I still love just being around her. The simplicity of her dress, the way she walks, the way she talks. The choice of
colour of what she wears. I love her and admire her all the
more, the older I’ve grown. I can’t imagine life without her.’
It’s not a perfect relationship by any means. As Nanda
says: ‘He gets angry when things don’t go his way, and of
course sometimes we might disagree ab
out something.’ So
how do they resolve conflict? ‘Usually I don’t respond very
much when that happens,’ she says. ‘I just don’t say anything.
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Then ten minutes [later] we are carrying on as if nothing has happened.’ Resentments don’t smoulder for too long.
They still love the simple pleasures of eating together, going to the movies, and they plan to go on more treks, preferably
around Kanchenjunga.
Love after three decades together, says Ruit, is not the melo-dramatic passion it was in the early days when he was prepared to slash his wrist to win Nanda’s heart. These days, there are many small acts of kindness. He likes to surprise Nanda with
presents, such as a bag or a watch. ‘She’s quite fussy, so I know if she gives me a little laugh that she really loves it.’ Nanda will cook one of his favourite meals, such as roast lamb or beef
curry, if he grumbles he hasn’t had enough meat.
Ruit says that after 30 years together, they are ‘truly reaping the benefits’ of their marriage. For many years, he rose early to play badminton several times a week until a knee injury
forced him to stop. But now, every morning, he and Nanda
rise at about 5.30 a.m. and walk together for an hour and a
half. ‘Walking together really helps nurture the relationship.
As does talking. You have to talk about everything, from the
big to the little things. Especially when you are apart.’
Most days, their feet take them to Swayambhunath. There,
they light butter lamps at the feet of the three giant Buddha statues, who sit in serene and humble dignity next to the
busy road.
They listen to the comforting whirr of the prayer wheels
being spun by hundreds of local devotees. As they make their
way up the 365 stone steps, one for each day of the year,
they inhale the familiar aroma of incense and juniper sprigs
being burnt.
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Over the last decade, as Ruit’s work has spread around
the world, his medical teams have operated on patients with
multitudinous beliefs; on Muslims in Indonesia, Hindus in
Nepal, Buddhists in Bhutan, and Christians in Ethiopia. The
ancient temple of Swayambhunath, which pulses with spiri-