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Green fields to green card

Deriving joy in helping the needy back home, Apparao Mukkamala is content, says K. SRIMALI

A 24-year-old MBBS student, barely a week after receiving his degree from the prestigious Guntur Medical College in July 1970, took a flight to the US, with just seven dollars in his pocket, in search of a bright career in medicine.

He landed at St. Margaret Hospital in Pittsburgh and began a two-month rotating internship with a monthly fellowship of $ 600, a princely sum then.

Since then, there is no looking back for Apparao Mukkamala, now the president-elect of Michigan State Medical Society, a 15,000-member body of doctors. The honour, recently bestowed on him, came the way of a non-American for the first time in the long history of the society. Apparao will be anointed the president of the society in April 2007 after serving a year as president-elect.

Boy from Buddhavaram

"I was born in Budhavaram, a tiny village near Gannavaram airport and had my schooling at Guduru and Gannavaram," Apparao proudly recalls his roots in the rural backwaters of Krishna district.

It is this longing for people here that made him play an important role in the setting up of NRI Medical College and Hospital at Chinnakakani between Vijayawada and Guntur, a multi-crore super speciality medical college and hospital.

"From Pittsburgh I moved over to Detroit for a residency post-graduation course. The peak of Vietnam War and the country's necessity to have as many permanent doctors as possible helped me get a green card easily in 1972," Apparao reveals. He later got American citizenship in 1979.

Apparao shifted his base to Flint, a city in Michigan, to study radiology at Hurley Medical Centre, from where he received his PG degree in May 1975.

In the years that followed, Apparao entrenched himself firmly in Flint, becoming an acclaimed professor of radiology and chairman of the department in Hurley Medical Centre.

He also played a role in the setting up of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) in 1981, which was headquartered in his office till 1987.

AAPI went on to become the biggest and most widely recognised lobby group in the US.

Divine cause

"But the biggest and most profound impact in my life occurred in 1977 when I met Swami Chinmayananda in Ottawa," Apparao reveals with a sense of spiritual satisfaction.

The interaction that turned the course of his life led to the founding of Chinmaya Mission West in California, of which he was president too. Apparao brought 80 Indian families in Flint together and helped construct Paschima Kashi Sri Vishwanatha Temple, which was inaugurated in 1982.

Apparao says he has the satisfaction of playing a role in the creation of Telugu Association of North America (TANA) too in 1978. The TANA, in fact, was born in his house.

Married to Sumathi, who is also a reputed doctor in the US, Apparao is a contented man having seen his son Srinivas, an ENT specialist, and daughter Aparna, a physical medicine specialist, settled down in the US.

"I think I am going through Vaanaprasthaashramam in the Indian tradition when the phase of earning gets over. My immediate botheration is making NRI College and Hospital a truly world-class centre of excellence by working along with other directors of the board," Apparao signs off.

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