A Cardiologist Speaks from the Heart

I was recently participating in a room on a new social media platform, Clubhouse, when a very amiable gentleman was invited to the stage to speak. He related how he had written a book of poetry about his experiences, and life in general. As it turns out, he is an interventional cardiologist. As such, he literally holds the destiny of his patients in terms of life or death, in his hands, on a daily basis. And he has used these experiences as the basis for a book of poetry, Ibadah, that explores meaning, the role of servitude, love, and loss. Here’s more about him:

Dr. Ankur Kalra is medical director of clinical research for regional cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, section head of cardiovascular research at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, a university professor at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine (Associate Professor) and NEOMED (Adjunct Associate Professor), and founder of the non-profit startup, makeadent.org. He is director of Barry J. Maron Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center in New Delhi, India. He is also the host of the cardiology podcast show, Parallax. He has presented late-breaking science at national and international scientific cardiovascular meetings, and has published over 200 scientific manuscripts in various peer-reviewed journals.

And here’s Dr. Kalra’s description of his book Ibadah: When love transforms into transcendence, life transforms into servitude.

Through these poems, I have tried to capture the vulnerability of true love and its loss. Don’t let losses hamper your innocence or vulnerability or morph you into an emotionally-inert/impenetrable individual; you will rob yourself from enriching your life with abundant love.

Convert your loss into a mission (read again, I used the word mission, not “goal”—goals are short-term, missions are for life); through the energy and the power of true love and its loss, yearn to catalyze the world into a better place—let your love be legendary.

This was one of the most moving interviews I have done on the podcast. Looking forward to hearing your comments.

You can learn more from Dr. Kalra on his Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.