অধ্যাপক ডা. এস এম সফিউল আজম চৌধুরী

Beside the big mosque near PG Hospital in Dhaka stood a pillar. In the late nineties, a cobbler sat at its base. A young doctor often came to him with a pair of leather sandals — their soles worn through, letting rainwater in. The cobbler would stitch them up, for two or five taka.

In July 1999, that young doctor passed the written part of his first FCPS exam. Next came the viva. But you cannot walk into a viva board wearing stitched-up sandals.

"I'd already sat the written exam — no one saw the water coming through my sandals," he said, laughing. "But what would I wear to the viva? I didn't have a shirt, I didn't have trousers."

An elder friend lent him fifteen hundred taka. At the time, his monthly salary from a clinic job was three thousand taka. From Elephant Road's Butter More he bought a pair of Oxford shoes for around five hundred fifty taka, then a white shirt from a discount shop nearby.

In the new shoes and white shirt, he sat the viva — and failed.

That young doctor is Prof. Dr. S. M. Sofiul Azam Chowdhury. Today he heads the Department of Surgery at Cumilla Medical College.

From his grandparents' home in Gilatoli

Beside the Bibir Bazar border in Cumilla lies the village of Gilatoli, his grandparents' home — where he was born and studied through second grade. Then came Ramkrishna Primary School and Niradasundari Primary School in Cumilla's Thakurpara, and then Cumilla Zilla School. He passed his SSC from Zilla School in 1985 and left for Notre Dame College in Dhaka for higher secondary.

Four decades on, he still rattles off his college roll number without pausing: "Eight-seven-two-nine-zero." Then he explains: "Eighty-seven batch, group two, roll ninety."

Back then his dream was to become an engineer. "My whole hope, my whole wish, was to be an engineer," he said. "I wasn't supposed to become a doctor."

But in ninth grade, a great grief entered his life — his mother died of cancer. "After my mother passed away, my father perhaps decided then that he'd make his son a doctor," he said.

After higher secondary, he won a seat at Sir Salimullah Medical College. In the same admission season his name appeared at position 137 on Dhaka University's merit list, and on BUET's waiting list. His father told him there was no need to pursue those. He joined medical college.

"Every day after Maghrib prayers, I'd study from seven to ten. All year round. I still keep to it."

In medical college he set himself one rule: three hours of study every evening, without missing a single day. He passed his MBBS in 1995.

"The thin boy who lives on the ward"

Coming to surgery traces back to a friend's single remark. His final exam's surgery section had gone very well. Walking out of the hall, his friend Abdullah Al Tareq told him, "You did so well in that exam — build your career in surgery."

During internship, he had his first hands-on experience with patients and operations on the surgery unit. He names two people with gratitude for this: Dr. Shahadat Hossain Sheikh, who later became a professor of colorectal surgery, and Professor A. B. M. Jamal, who later became Secretary of the BCPS.

He would enter the ward at eight in the morning, eat lunch, nap briefly, and return. He never worked at an outside clinic. He recalls that time with a smile: "Many used to say, this thin boy just stays on the ward all day."

One salary, two friends

When he was in his second year of medical college, his father retired. The family ran on a small pension, and he had two more brothers. Once his internship ended, he had to fund himself entirely.

In 1996 he took a medical officer's job at an old clinic in Moghbazar — one shift on duty, the other spent studying in the PG library. He lived in a mess on Nawab Habibullah Road behind PG Hospital, two or three men to a room. Later he took a continuous 24-hour duty at a clinic in Narayanganj, entering at ten at night and leaving at ten the next night. For a time he also saw patients an hour at midday, three days a week, at a garment factory. In three months he saved six thousand taka — that funded his BCPS course.

"At the end of the day, you have to eat," he said. "You need money, you need a place to stay, and only then comes study. Study was second, back then."

The warmest memory of that hard stretch is of friendship. A friend, Manjurul Rahim Jewel, worked at the same clinic. Shortly after he got into his MS, his savings ran out. The two friends then split the week's duties between them, one taking a shift, the other taking another — but the salary came in one man's name. "Whoever drew the salary, the two of us split it," he said. At exam time, one would cover the other's duty. That friend is now a professor of ENT.

Seventeen doors

It began with that viva in the white shirt and new shoes, and then door after door kept closing. In July 1999, FCPS Part 1; MS Part 1; the admission test at the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation — he failed every one of them. He has kept his own count: across both parts of FCPS, three parts of MS and the admission test, he failed seventeen examinations in total.

"I was somewhat broken, mentally. But I held on to my resolve."

In January 2000, FCPS Part 1 again. The viva then ran ninety minutes, five boards back to back. "Whoever can hold their composure through those ninety minutes — they pass," he said.

After the exam, back at the hostel eating rice in the dining hall, someone came and told him he'd passed. "The boy who'd just passed FCPS Part One had two hundred taka in his pocket at the time," he said, laughing. Fifteen days remained before month's end. Dinner that night was egg-paratha from a shop below Pubali Bank near PG — two parathas and two eggs rolled together, eaten while walking.

A few days later, an acquaintance came by with a photocopied paper in hand. The lecturer post he had applied for and nearly forgotten about — he'd gotten it. He didn't quite believe it at first. That same year he also passed the BCS exam and joined government service.

The Thursday bus

After the BCS, his first posting was a health sub-centre in Burichong, Cumilla. Then Sylhet Medical College, followed by training at Chittagong Medical College from 2001 to 2003. He returned to Dhaka in 2004 for a postgraduate course. After failing three times in a row from January 2005, he passed FCPS Part 2 in July 2006, on his fourth attempt. He then became a registrar at Mitford Hospital in Old Dhaka.

His father died in November 2006. For nearly nine months after that, he traveled from Dhaka to Cumilla every Thursday, did the household's marketing, set everything in order, and caught the bus back to Dhaka on Friday evening — sometimes leaving at dawn on Saturday right after Fajr prayers, to report at Mitford that same morning.

"It was very hard," he said. "My body could barely keep up."

In 2007 he returned to his own city — Cumilla Medical College Hospital — as a resident surgeon.

The long road

The seventeen years that followed were the hardest chapter of his career. Chauddagram, Chandina, Cumilla Sadar, Sadar Dakshin, Chandpur — transfer after transfer. Sometimes he was posted to a role someone else was already filling. Sometimes he went months without a posting, without pay. At the college in Chandpur where he was sent as an associate professor, there wasn't even a room for him to sit in.

Speaking of that time, he returns again and again to two lines.

"I never sold out my principles. I never compromised when it came to a patient."

Coming home

In November 2024 he joined Cumilla Medical College. Beside him stood boyhood friends from Cumilla Zilla School and Salimullah Medical College, and a few old seniors. Today he is head of the Department of Surgery there, and sees patients in Cumilla as a general and laparoscopic surgeon.

Many years earlier, the first time he'd come to this college as a junior consultant, he had privately decided: "I'll come here, do some work, learn something, and teach the students." Now that wish had found its chance.

In the very city where his schooling began at a primary school, he now gives the next generation of surgeons their first lessons.

From a torn sandal to head of department. In between lay poverty, repeated failure and long uncertainty. He crossed that road with one thing — something he has named himself: jed. Resolve.

At a glance · Prof. Dr. S. M. Sofiul Azam Chowdhury