I grew up in a quiet Himalayan valley, where candle-lit nights and the crackle of fire shaped my earliest sense of wonder. The surrounding mountains nurtured a life of reflection and simplicity. When my father survived multiple heart attacks, I witnessed what it meant to live with heart disease, but also what it could mean to help treat it. That experience, coupled with a natural love for physics, inspired me to pursue medicine — to understand the heart and hopefully one day, how to heal it.
Soon the quiet crackle of flames turned darker and louder into that of gunfire as conflict engulfed our once serene valley. Eventually we had to leave for a small desert town in the Middle East. There, among friends of every faith and language, I learned that compassion transcends every boundary. Through the support of family and the kindness of teachers from every background, I found my way to Canada for medical school, to Harvard for leaning how to restore blood flow to the heart, and eventually to Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, where I learnt to repair and replace heart valves at the busiest center in the world. Looking back, the boy dreaming by candlelight in a remote valley could never have imagined this path.
My hope is to remind others that when guided by something greater than ourselves,
we can reach farther than we ever imagined. And though individual effort is essential, nothing meaningful is ever built alone. The “village” that shapes us is all of us — humanity itself — adrift together in the vastness of the universe on Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot”.
Over time, I’ve come to see that the seemingly disparate practices of medicine, art, music, physics, and spirituality are not separate paths, but threads of the same tapestry. Together they weave the fabric of our lives—waves resonating in unison, composing a melody of beauty, truth, and kindness. Through the harmony of these practices, I hope to serve—for I believe that every life is a universe unto itself, and that healing one heart is, in essence, healing all of humanity.
