Published on February 14, 2021
AHMEDABAD: Dr Mehul Pargi, a resident doctor in the dermatology department at BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad, was among the hundreds of doctors pressed into service in early 2020 when Covid struck the state.
“On the very first day of my Covid duty, charts of patients were handed over to me by Dr Sneha Patel, a resident in the gynaecology department,” said Dr Pargi. “We knew each other formally, being in the same friends’ group. But we were never ‘friends.’ In the days that followed, we started chatting and she would also bring me home-cooked food.”
Dr Pargi went on to say: “We shared our dreams and fears, and I got so fond of her that I proposed to her on her birthday in July. She said yes!”
Beneath the PPE kits in Covid wards across the state were humans whose hearts needed to vent their apprehensions, frustrations, and the occasional elation on saving a patient’s life.
Thus, while healthcare workers in green, blue, and white battled the virus, love blossomed among some doctors who spent hours together at wards and isolation facilities and got a measure of their colleagues like never before.
Dr Pargi and Dr Patel will get engaged this summer with their families’ blessings. Dr Bhargav Dave, a community medicine resident doctor, and Dr Urvi Patel, a resident in anaesthesia department, got engaged a month ago.
“My duty was at the medical education department in Gandhinagar as a member of the core team. Urvi was constantly busy with Covid patients,” said Dr Dave, now an assistant professor at a medical college. “In early July, she tested positive; I tested positive in September.”
Dr Dave went on to say: “We felt an emotional attachment. The pandemic, which brought us closer to humanity, also taught us the importance of someone special.”
Parth Shastri Archive 