I first heard about Red Beard from Dwarika jethu. The story of how I came to know the film is, in itself, partly interesting and partly poignant. Comrade Dwarikanath Rath had always been ‘Dwarika jethu’ to me. As a child, I knew him simply as Sani bhai’s father and the husband of Comrade Binapani Das – our beloved Bina mausi. He had left Odisha and the familiar lanes of Cuttack long ago to work in Gujarat, making Ahmedabad his base for the Party’s activities. Though, for people like him, ‘settling down’ is perhaps the wrong expression. Revolutionaries never really settle anywhere; they merely continue their journey from one battlefield to another.

My acquaintance with him deepened during the final days of Bina mausi’s illness. She was admitted to the ICU, directly opposite my Gastroenterology OPD. Between patients, Dwarika jethu would quietly sit in my chamber, watching me work. He spoke little, observed much. Then one day, almost casually, he said, ‘I see traces of Red Beard in you.’ That was my initiation.

Soon afterwards, Bina mausi passed away. Those were turbulent days. I still remember her funeral and the memorial meeting at Shahid Bhavan. People came in large numbers – cutting across political affiliations, professions, generations, and social identities – to pay homage to a woman whose life had touched so many. But that, perhaps, is a story for another day. And then came Red Beard. Akira Kurosawa had fascinated me long before.

I had watched Rashomon and Seven Samurai, admiring the master storyteller who understood human frailty like few others. But Red Beard was different. It did not merely impress me. It unsettled me. It took my breath away. It left me in the midst of an inner conflict – a conflict that continues to this day. The conflict between what I do and what I ought to do as a doctor. Between what I prescribe and what I am duty-bound to prescribe. Between what I tell my patients and what I ought to tell them. Between the assurances I offer others and the questions my own conscience asks me when the day is over. I blame, without hesitation, this cruel capitalist system for hollowing out the very soul of medicine. A profession built on compassion is increasingly measured in revenue. Suffering has become a market. Illness, a commodity. Hospitals compete where they should care. Yet, amidst this darkness, Kurosawa gave us Red Beard.

Behind the gruff exterior of the old physician flows an inexhaustible river of compassion. His anger is never born of arrogance; it is born of love – love for people who have been abandoned by society. In him, I found the living embodiment of Virchow’s timeless words: ‘Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale.’ And also the physician as the natural attorney of the poor. Through Yasumoto’s transformation, Kurosawa quietly takes us through society itself – its poverty and privilege, ignorance and wisdom, dignity and degradation, ethics and the frightening erosion of ethics. It is not merely a film about medicine. It is a meditation on what it means to be human. More importantly it is a call for the need to cultivate a new medical ethics, a higher ethics in medicine born out of a higher social ethics.

Long before I encountered Red Beard, I had travelled across the length and breadth of Latin America with two unforgettable companions – Ernesto and Alberto. Along that journey, I too dreamt of becoming a doctor who would serve ordinary people before serving himself. Years have passed. Today, I am a gastroenterologist. But every now and then I ask myself questions.

Have I truly been able to comfort the parents of the young girl with leukaemia who have sold everything they owned and still cannot afford the care she deserves? Have I done enough for the labourer who quietly postpones his much needed endoscopy because missing a day’s wage means his children will sleep hungry? Have I merely treated diseases, or have I stood beside those who suffer? I know the answers are incomplete. I know there is still a long road ahead.

Perhaps that is why Red Beard continues to walk beside me asking me those uncomfortable questions.  It reminds me that medicine is not merely a science to be mastered or a profession to be practised. It is a moral responsibility. A lifelong struggle against disease, certainly – but also against injustice, inequality, indifference, and the silent violence that the system inflicts upon its most vulnerable.

I remembered, one fine day, not long ago, at Prabhabati Bhawan in Cuttack, my friend Sunil had spoken to me about Red Beard. I had listened that day, but perhaps I did not pay enough attention. Thank you, dear Sunil. Thank you, Dwarika jethu. And thank you, Red Beard, for refusing to let my conscience fall asleep.