They were on call that night, three of them. They were expected to be available at any time of the day or night. Whatever accident happened in Manchester, they were the first to receive the call. It was an anaesthetist at the Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester who received the call on the night of May 22, 2017. There has been an attack at the Ariana Grande music concert. Shobha Manesh, a practitioner in the Acute Block Theatres, took charge. She called up all the staff living nearby, specialists, and asked them to come to the hospital and within seven minutes they did. A few more minutes later, the injured began coming in. Shobha didn’t know this, but her colleagues who watched her at work, decided to nominate her for the annual Women of the Year Awards held in London. And she became the only Indian among the eight women to win the award, receiving it from the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla. She and the seven other women were chosen from around 500 nominees.
“I live in a small world, with my family, doing the normal day-to-day activities. Receiving the award is a big deal for me,” says Shobha, who is in Kerala, visiting her husband Manesh’s family in Puthoor, Kottarakkara, on a holiday. She hails from Karnataka, near Hubballi, where she grew up in an orphanage. It is the marriage that brought her to Kerala, which she considers her home.
“I have no parents, so it is through an online matrimonial site that I met Manesh. He was in London and I was in Manchester. We met and got the blessings of Achan and Amma (Manesh’s parents) and got married in 2005. I really want to thank the family for adopting me — Mr and Mrs Ravindran, my in-laws,” she says, in sweet Malayalam that she picked up from Malayali friends during her hostel days.
Shobha wants to thank the late Brigath Dhawale, a CSI pastor’s wife in Bengaluru, and Prashanth Salomon, director of Child Care, CSI, for all the support they gave her in her growing years, with the hostel facility and everything, through her student days.
She took a diploma in nursing from Bengaluru before going to Manchester for work in 2001. There she continued her studies, taking a degree in nursing and PG in general surgery. She is now replacing junior doctors, working as a practitioner. On that night of the terrorist attack, her seniors were away. So she had to take the lead. “I am trained for such emergencies, how to deal with such situations. We had to have all the facilities. Patient care is priority, that’s the pledge we take as nurses. It was my duty to take charge. It is not my expertise alone. We worked as a team,” says Shobha.
But she didn’t panic. She has seen the usual bout of emergencies that come to any hospital but not one of such a huge scale. The colleagues who watched her knew what a big responsibility lay on her shoulders. “I was only doing my duty. I wasn’t expecting an award. But my colleagues — surgeons, anaesthetists, seniors and juniors — nominated me. I was not aware,” she says. She is quite grateful to them for it. Mainly because a lot of the time, the hard work of nurses, of those who work day and night, are often unrecognised. “I am blessed now with everything. But I came from nothing. I didn’t have a really happy childhood. But then God has given me everything,” Shobha says.
