Sudhir Choudhrie has built up an international business empire that stretches across the globe – but he himself says that his greatest achievement is to still be alive. For in January 1999, after years of ill health, he had a heart transplant operation just eight months after the death of his beloved brother Rajiv. Rajiv had also been suffering from heart problems and was also waiting for a transplant. Only one of the brothers was to survive.
In this remarkably candid memoir, Sudhir Choudhrie tells the story of growing up in a privileged Indian family but knowing since early childhood that the heart he was born with would one day fail him. Along the way he faced numerous health problems, including a terrifying period of temporary blindness, before finally finding himself in a New York hospital where he was given a new heart by the world renowned surgeon Dr Mehmet Oz.
But that was not an end to the ordeal. As well as adopting a medical regime to stop his body from rejecting the new heart that he will have to stay on for the rest of his life, Sudhir Choudhrie began to experience terrifying visions in the wake of the operation and was forced to undergo further therapy to rid him of the nightmares that were beginning to haunt him before he was finally able to resume his life.Throughout it all, Sudhir wife Anita was by his side, praying and fighting for her husband’s health, while his two sons Bhanu and Dhairya were forced to contemplate the premature loss of their father and all the issue that entailed. This is the story of an extraordinary man and his family, a story told from the heart.
‘Facing death awakens us to reality . . . The wisdom gained from a life
lived with these insights is worth sharing’—Dr Mehmet Oz
