By N. Niranjan Nikam
Mine is not a hotel that I can give statistics as to how many patients come, as some people come here without telling their wives for tests. And I also have such a bad memory, unlike my father, Dr. N. Kannan, who even today at 82 has a sharp memory, that in an absurd way, I find my bad memory is a boon. Because if somebody has done something bad for me and he comes back a few days later, I will have forgotten about it and moved on," said Dr. K. Lakshman, sitting in the air-conditioned Kannan Diagnostic Centre, Mysuru, which is celebrating its Golden Jubilee (May 5, 1968 to May 5, 2018), even as he signs the test reports and keeps peeping into the microscope. After he passed out of Mysore Medical College (MMC) in 1988 and did his MD in Pathology from Kasturba Medical College in 1992, Dr. Lakshman returned to join his father in the Lab. "I had done very well in my MD and passed out. But when I came and joined my father, I realised I practically knew nothing. It was just bare bones. I learnt 90 per cent of the practical aspects from my dad, who himself was a teacher," he said. Many of his colleagues had asked him to go and learn the ropes from somewhere else. "When I already had a ready-made teacher and with immense practical experience, I realised that it was better to stick here and learn the ropes under the guidance of my father than under somebody else," he said.
