GOAN TOP CARDIOLOGIST IN US TAKES TIME OFF TO WRITE A NOVEL

PANJIM, Jan 16: A Goan-born top-ranking cardiologist working at the prominent Mount Sinai Hospital has recently completed his manuscript for a novel that weaves his homeland on India's coast with life in the West.

Dr Anthony Gomes was quoted as saying that the work was "something like Arundhati Roy's book", referring to the Booker Prize-winning Indian author.

Reporting this recently, the expatriate weekly newspaper India Abroad said that when he began writing after the death of his wife Marina, who also is from Goa, in 1989.

Gomes is the author of more than 150 published articles, chapters in several scholarly books, as well as a book on cardiology.

Most recently, his interest has been in "common instability" or "atrial fibrillation" -- the very irregular rhythm of the upper chamber of the heart which can result in strokes, palpitation, dizziness, and blackout spells.

He is also listed in the respected Castle and Connolly guidebook, How to Find the Best Doctors: New York Metro Area and in the New York magazine's recent annual publication titled The Best Doctors in America.

Gomes, 55, studied Portuguese in Goa after finishing high school in Bombay, following the ouster of the Portuguese from Goa by New Delhi in 1961. He completed his studies in medicine from the Goa Medical College in 1970 and came to the United States immediately after.

He married Maria Raquel Flores before arriving in the US.

Having finished his training in medicine at Mount Sinai, Gomes held a fellowship in cardiology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx, before becoming research associate and then assistant chief of cardiology at the former US Public Health Hospital in Staten Island, New York.

In 1979, he moved to Downstate Medical Centre in Brooklyn as assistant professor of medicine and rose to become associate professor there before moving to Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1984 as an associate professor.

He currently holds a tenured full professorship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and is director of the Section of Electrophysiology at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre.

Gomes takes credit for building one of the more outstanding electrophysiology labs that is very active in research on "risk stratification" in myocardial infarction.

"There are certain people who have heart attacks who are at risk of dying suddenly," Gomes was quoted as explaining. "I and the lab have been at the forefront to determine which of them is at risk of electrical instability".

Meanwhile, he and his teen-age daughter Tanya Raquel, 17, live in Staten Island and he "works very hard" at his writing, adding, "My writing is for pleasure".

A year after his wife died, he explained, he sat down one day and started writing. "It was a sort of catharsis... and I did not stop. I feel a tremendous urge (to write). I was a born writer".

Dr Gomes told this correspondent recently that his novel is now complete and he is on the lookout for a suitable publisher.

- Fred Noronha    fred@goa1.dot.net.in