About Cloud Messenger:
An
idealistic medical student travels to India intending to study preventive
medicine at a medical college in Lucknow. Instead, she falls in love with a
young Indian pediatrician, sharing his dream of doing medical work in the Himalayan
foothills. These ideas capture the young med student’s imagination, because she
longs for an unusual life that crosses cultural boundaries. After a
long–distance romance lasting four years, she leaves her homeland to marry. As
she participates in the ceremonies of a traditional Hindu wedding, she steps
into an entirely different cultural world and begins the adventure of a
lifetime.And so starts the vivid saga of Dr. Karen Trollope-Kumar’s breathtaking journey in her award-winning memoir, Cloud Messenger: Love and Loss in the Indian Himalayas.
In this poignant, heart
warming, and gently humorous memoir, Dr. Trollope-Kumar recounts an unusual
eleven-year chapter of her life. She and her husband Pradeep worked as medical
doctors in the Himalayas, first in a rural hospital and later in remote
mountain villages. When disaster struck — an assassination, an earthquake, a
political crisis — their ideals, their safety, and their relationship are put
at risk. Cloud Messenger is a story of adventure and idealism, culture and
medicine, faith and love, and it raises enduring questions: How can we cross
religious and cultural boundaries? What happens to our dreams in the face of
danger and disillusionment? And when dreams diverge, what path do we choose?
About Karen Trollope-Kumar:
About Karen Trollope-Kumar:
After returning to Canada in 1996, Dr. Trollope-Kumar completed a PhD in medical anthropology, the study of health in its social and environmental context. She has been actively involved in medical education, developing curriculum that blends medicine and anthropology. In 2008, she was appointed Co-Director of the Professional Competencies program in the medical school at McMaster, a position she held for six years that develops students’ competence in the “soft skills” of medical practice, such as communication skills, ethics, and professionalism.
She currently works as a family physician, and she and Pradeep spend part of every year in Dehradun, India, where they lived and worked early in their married life.
Questions and Answers:
1. Can you share what led you to leave her
home country, move across the world and start all over in a different
culture? Many
people who have read Cloud Messenger say to me – “I just don’t understand how
you could have decided to leave Canada is the way that you did.” I believe that
some decisions are made on a deep intuitive level, and that was certainly the
case for my decision to leave Canada. Somehow I knew that by moving to India I
would embark on a great voyage of self discovery. There were many hardships and
crises during those years I lived in India, and the work we tried to do had
only limited success. But what an adventure it was.
2. What
was your experience working as a doctor in the Himalayan
foothills? I
had worked as a family physician in Canada for two years before moving to
India. I had to learn so much after I began to work with my husband in the busy
rural hospital where we initially lived. I was seeing patients with
tropical diseases that I had never experienced before, and also we were working
with very limited medical resources. It was a steep learning curve! I also came
to realize that our culture affects the way we think about our bodies, and also
shapes the way we decide to seek healthcare. So much was different about
working as a doctor in the Himalayan foothills. And yet the most
important thing was the same – wherever you work in the world, as a doctor you
need to treat your patients with compassion and understanding.
3. What were the biggest life lessons
you learned while living and working abroad? My greatest insight of the journey
was the realization that it is possible to build connections of the heart
across the divides ofculture, class and religion. I formed deep friendships
with my Indian extended family, with medical colleagues and the nurses we
trained, and with the village people we worked with. As human beings, we
can reach across so many differences and form bonds of the heart. By crossing a
cultural barrier, you learn so much about yourself. The experience of
learning to see through someone else’s eyes changes you forever.
4. Can you share some of the challenges
faced and you advice to anyone marrying or entering a relationship with someone
from a different culture? My husband Pradeep is from the Hindu background, and
grew up in very different life circumstances from mine. After we got married we
naturally ran up against lots of cross-cultural conflicts! We were married
in a traditional Hindu ceremony – it was a beautiful wedding, but at the time I
did not understand the language so it was all rather confusing. Our first
cross cultural conflict came just couple of days after the wedding, when my
husband invited his sister and their family on our honeymoon! In India,
the concept is generally “the more the merrier”, and he didn’t see anything
unusual about going on a honeymoon with his relatives. Anyway, we worked
through that conflict, but there were others that followed- arguments about
politics, religion and ways of life. However, our love remained strong
throughout and we were able to focus more on what we had in common rather than
what our differences were. We have now been married for 32 years, and we are
still very happy. Although we live in Canada primarily, we have deep
connections to India and we spent part of every year there.
5.
You experienced an earthquake, assassination and political crisis
while working abroad – How did you overcome fear, devastation and
disillusionment after experience so much tragedy During the 11 years that we lived in
Himalayan foothills, we had a number of experiences that were frightening and
disillusioning, and at times we faced problems of corruption and violence.
All these events took a toll on our physical and mental
health. But these negative experiences also taught me a lot about human
nature, and about my own strengths and limitations. My youthful idealism was
gradually replaced by a more mature understanding of the world. Overall, the
negative events in our lives were far outweighed by the beauty and joy of those
years in India.
6. What is your message to anyone who
doesn’t understand the importance of building bridges of understanding across
culture? By
crossing a cultural barrier, you learn so much about yourself. The
experience of learning to see through someone else’s eyes changes you
forever. The decision I made to leave Canada and move to the Himalayan
foothills changed my life in every possible way – and I don’t regret it for a
minute. My worldview has been broadened by the experience of living in
another culture, and marrying someone so different from myself has been a
fascinating journey. I believe that many of the conflicts facing our world
today could be improved by building bridges of communication and understanding.
7. You
experience depression as you were leaving India. Can you share what
you went through and how you got through it? Many of my
youthful idealistic dreams about our work in India were not realized because of
the difficulties that we faced. And of course, I’d had unrealistic expectations
what might be possible. I felt very sad about the collapse of some of
these dreams, and I ended up experiencing a significant bout of depression.
But with the support of family and friends I slowly came through it, and I
began to realize that we had accomplished a lot in India, even though it wasn’t
what we had hoped for. I also began to realize more about my own strengths and
limitations, and that was an important personal discovery.
8. Why did you decide to share your
story through this book? What saddens me most about the world
today is that instead of moving towards a greater sense of unity among people,
we seem to be moving in a direction of deeper divisions. This will diminish us
as human beings. Our challenge should be to deepen our understanding of
others, not to focus on differences. That is the most important message of my
book – that it is possible to build bridges of love across the divides of culture.
In writing the book, I began to perceive so much more about those eventful 11
years in India, and subtle patterns emerged that I had never considered
before. It was a wonderful experience to try to capture that period of my
life in prose.
My Review:
Cloud Messenger: Love and Loss in the India Himalayas by Karen Trollope-KumarBook sounded interesting and I know I will learn a lot from it, especially about the Himalayas.
Memoir about the authors life.
Starts out with Karen and she's in the medical field and has a stint in India where she meets Pradeep and they like one another. Love the tours he takes her on while she's there.
They write continually getting to know each other much better-he visits her in Canada after her time has ended and she surprises him with a visit to India where she agrees to marry him. Love that the words spoken in foreign language are stated in English.
Over the years they continue on with their medical help to the people who live far away from hospitals. She finds his is more interested in spirits then medical and she gets help from other Canadians in the area and attends services to help her understand.
Through harsh medical conditions and outbreaks their lives are often in danger and they are separated as Pradeep tries to save the BNA.
Interesting to learn how and what the children must learn once they attend school.
So many challenges, struggles to make a difference in the women's lifes.
Received this copy from the author in exchange for my honest review.
Link to buy
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