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    With Christ from East Pakistan to Bangladesh
    With Christ from East Pakistan to Bangladesh
    With Christ from East Pakistan to Bangladesh
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    With Christ from East Pakistan to Bangladesh

    By Ian Patrick

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    Ian Thomas Patrick was born on May 3, 1924, in Dennistoun, Glasgow. His father was a senior member of staff in the Glasgow Corporation Rates Department. Before his parents were married, his mother also worked there.

    When Ian was four, the family bought a semidetached house in Kelvindale, a new estate in the west end of Glasgow. He and his younger sister attended Hillhead High School until war broke out in 1939, when they both became evacuees.

    Ian was resident in the hostel attached to Dumfries Academy. He spent two happy years there obtaining his Higher Leaving Certificate in 1941. He spent his sixth year back in Hillhead, then entered Glasgow University Medical School, graduating in 1948.

    His parents were churchgoers; Ian became a Sunday school teacher in his local church, Westbourne Church of Scotland.

    His call to the mission field developed over his student years. Two of his close undergraduate friends had grown up as children of medical missionaries, one in China and the other in Africa. He read several books about missionary lives.

    During his final year as an undergraduate, he volunteered to the Church of Scotland. He had felt attracted to China, but the communists were spreading throughout the country, and Christian missions were sending home overseas staff. India seemed more possible.

    However, the only vacancy was in the Punjab. Partition occurred in 1947, so a more experienced candidate was needed. However, the Church of Scotland referred him to the Presbyterian Church of England.

    After graduation, Dr. Patricks first job was to spend six months as house surgeon in Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. He applied during this time and was interviewed and accepted to serve in Rajshahi, the third-largest city in the new state of East Pakistan. He was making plans for further posts to gain experience, but the mission board instead arranged for him to spend his first year training in the Welsh Mission Hospital in Shillong, the capital of the hill state of Assam in India, under a very experienced missionary, Arthur Hughes.

    After the first year, which included a three-month Bengali language study course in Darjeeling, he began work in September 1949 in Rajshahi, supervising the conversion of a former student hostel into a hospital.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse UK
    Release dateMar 19, 2013
    ISBN9781481785372
    With Christ from East Pakistan to Bangladesh
    Author

    Ian Patrick

    Ian Thomas Patrick was born on May 3, 1924, in Dennistoun, Glasgow. His father was a senior member of staff in the Glasgow Corporation Rates Department. Before his parents were married, his mother also worked there. When Ian was four, the family bought a semidetached house in Kelvindale, a new estate in the west end of Glasgow. He and his younger sister attended Hillhead High School until war broke out in 1939, when they both became evacuees. Ian was resident in the hostel attached to Dumfries Academy. He spent two happy years there obtaining his Higher Leaving Certificate in 1941. He spent his sixth year back in Hillhead, then entered Glasgow University Medical School, graduating in 1948. His parents were churchgoers; Ian became a Sunday school teacher in his local church, Westbourne Church of Scotland. His call to the mission field developed over his student years. Two of his close undergraduate friends had grown up as children of medical missionaries, one in China and the other in Africa. He read several books about missionary lives. During his final year as an undergraduate, he volunteered to the Church of Scotland. He had felt attracted to China, but the communists were spreading throughout the country, and Christian missions were sending home overseas staff. India seemed more possible. However, the only vacancy was in the Punjab. Partition occurred in 1947, so a more experienced candidate was needed. However, the Church of Scotland referred him to the Presbyterian Church of England. After graduation, Dr. Patrick’s first job was to spend six months as house surgeon in Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. He applied during this time and was interviewed and accepted to serve in Rajshahi, the third-largest city in the new state of East Pakistan. He was making plans for further posts to gain experience, but the mission board instead arranged for him to spend his first year training in the Welsh Mission Hospital in Shillong, the capital of the hill state of Assam in India, under a very experienced missionary, Arthur Hughes. After the first year, which included a three-month Bengali language study course in Darjeeling, he began work in September 1949 in Rajshahi, supervising the conversion of a former student hostel into a hospital.

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      Book preview

      With Christ from East Pakistan to Bangladesh - Ian Patrick

      © 2013 by IAN PATRICK. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse   03/12/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-8535-8 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-8536-5 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-8537-2 (e)

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      CONTENTS

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 12

      CHAPTER 13

      CHAPTER 14

      CHAPTER 15

      CHAPTER 16

      APPENDIX

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

      I wish to thank my daughter, Mrs Ailsa Evans, for her work in typing the manuscript, and for copying and printing photographs. Without her my task would have been impossible.

      This book is dedicated to the following colleagues who have passed away over the years:

      Alan MacLeod, Arthur Hughes, Upendra Nath Malakar, Mina Malakar, Priya Barui, Elizabeth Connan, Dudley Paterson, Mary Miller, and Phyllis Vacher.

      In my father’s house are many mansions.

      CHAPTER 1

      It was 2.00 p.m. on Tuesday, 20 September 1948. I was standing on the tarmac at Northolt Aerodrome, about to board the twice-weekly air service to Singapore via Tripoli, Cairo, Basra, Karachi, and Calcutta. I was bound for Calcutta to start work as a medical missionary based in Rajshahi, in the eastern wing of the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

      Some months earlier I had been accepted by the Overseas Mission of the Presbyterian Church of England to reopen medical work in a district that had a missionary presence since 1842.

      Photo%201_Westminster%20Hospital.jpg

      Westminster Hospital, Rajshahi

      My experience since graduation at the beginning of 1948 that would enable me to cope with the running of a small hospital was six months as house surgeon to John Neilson in Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

      I was to spend a year in Shillong, the headquarters of the Welsh Presbyterian Church in Assam, under the tutelage of Arthur Hughes and his gynaecologist colleague Drynsingh Hynweta, an Assamese graduate—both of wide-ranging experience.

      Our air transport was an Avro Tudor, a conversion of the wartime Lancaster. It could take twelve passengers, but only six of us were on take-off.

      I sat beside a very nervous middle-aged man, a rubber planter from Malaya, who was returning with trepidation, as the Malayan emergency, as it was called, had just begun, and terrorists were targeting rubber plantations.

      Across the aisle was a smartly dressed lady in her forties and a teenage girl—the wife and daughter of the British Ambassador. In front of them was a dapper young man who was also going to Cairo, to be tutor to the family of King Farouk. By himself in the front seat sat a smartly dressed middle-aged man: the king’s messenger, with a bulky briefcase for the embassy padlocked to his left wrist.

      We took off and circled London, giving me a view of a city I had only just become familiar with. We crossed the Channel and were soon alongside the Alps, awesome in brilliant sunshine.

      The sun was setting as we crossed the Mediterranean to our first refuelling stop—Tripoli. The trip along the coast of Libya to Cairo was in darkness, and we were allowed to stroll around the airport while most of my fellow passengers disembarked. We were able to snatch some sleep as we flew over Sinai and Arabia to Basra. Dawn had broken as we descended towards the Shatt al-Arab, the marshlands at the mouth of the Tigris-Euphrates delta. With my sole companion from Malaya I enjoyed a pleasant brunch of boiled rice, spiced fish, and fruit salad, while looking towards the waterway, lined with date palms and camel trains, carrying Arabs in flowing robes along the road in the morning sun, a relaxing sight.

      About midday we set out for the next leg of our journey, across the Gulf, Iran, and Afghanistan to Karachi in West Pakistan. This part of the flight was bumpy, the result of a desert storm below.

      We were able to spend the next night more comfortably, as we were allocated a twin bedroom in the airport hotel. We passed our final day crossing from West Pakistan across the width of India—a patchwork of desert and green fields of rice and other crops. At last we reached my destination—Dum-Dum airport in Calcutta—where my Malayan companion gave me a tearful farewell.

      Dum-Dum around five in the late afternoon was very quiet. There was no one at the arrivals to meet me, so I boarded the airport bus for central Calcutta, arriving at the Great Eastern Hotel in Chowringhee, the centre of the European part of the city. Nobody was there. I had been told I would be staying at the Baptist Mission House, so I looked it up in the phone book and rang them. A voice at the other end assured me I was expected and told me to take a taxi.

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