Savita Rani | Doctor, Artist, and Poet

That’s a great question and it’s not been a straightforward journey in terms of trying to combine of all those interests in the way that it’s manifested now.  It’s taken me a little bit of time.  When I first started medical school I think I did put my creative passions and endeavors a little bit on the back burner. In a free moment I would do a quick drawing here or there but I hadn’t quite yet established how I could integrate my creative work with my clinical world.  But, as a  post-graduate I actually switched tracks in my specialty choice. I started out in Family Medicine, clinically focused, but then transitioned into public health and preventive medicine.  And, in the public health preventive training that I’m doing now, I had the opportunity to take a Master of Public Health as part of that training.  And, within the Masters curriculum, I had the opportunity to take a couple of elective courses that really kick-started things and allowed me to integrate the creative and medical aspects, both my interests.  I took an elective in graphic medicine. This is the use of comics as a mode and method of communication in medicine, or in healthcare more broadly which can be in terms of communicating with patients, communicating with other practitioners in the field, as a form of medical or healthcare education. It can also be a form of self-expression, a kind of memoir;  patient-practitioner memoir. Thus the medium of comics can be used in a variety of different ways in the context of healthcare. That was pretty awesome- to be able to have a whole semester with dedicated time, a class to make comics. 

Making comics as part of that class was, for me, pretty cathartic, self revelatory, and I came up with some revelations about my place in medicine.  I’ve always maybe felt a little bit like a fish out of water in medicine and, realizing that allopathic medicine at least in this country, is very much underpinned by colonial, hetero, patriarchal, sexist, racist, ableist- all of the “isms”.  It’s no wonder that someone like me might feel out of place in the mainstream medical culture. Being able to express myself in that creative manner really helped solidify that for me and I didn’t come to that realization until I had this creative means of expressing it.  That’s one of the big things that led me towards this fellowship with the Journal ( Canadian Medical Association Journal) because there are so many ways of decolonizing medicine as a broad term.  One way is to look at knowledge, ways of knowing, and how medicine, allopathic medicine, the current culture, favours certain ways of knowing and doing.  Methods of creating knowledge and presenting evidence favours certain types compared to others.  For example, indigenous ways of knowing and doing are systematically under valued or have been, at least historically.  And so, something I’ve been interested in, when coming into the Journal, was trying to expand the vision of how knowledge can be created but also consumed- taking down the veil of elitism and secrecy and ‘Black Box’ mystery of what a medical journal is and how things work.  Change in medicine happens on the pages of a journal so I think it is important to be cognizant that you have quite a bit of clout and power and the ability to change discourse through the vehicle of a medical journal.  I’m very interested in visual means of communication.  There are many different types. As a visual artist, I have an inclination towards visual means so, things like infographics and all non-traditional ways of presenting text on a paper.  I’m interested in kind of pushing boundaries.

DMacA: Let me take you back to the beginning because I’m interested in the way people get to medical school.  So when you were at high school, were you always interested in art and the humanities, how did you combine these when trying to focus on the scientific subjects?

SR: I have always been interested in art. As a kid, if somebody asked, what do you want to be when you grow up, my two were artist and archaeologist.  Medicine was not.  Actually, I actively didn’t want to go into medicine because it was a bit of a stereotypical thing to do, but then I entered grade 11 biology, and I realized- oh man this is interesting stuff.  So, then I started thinking more seriously about medicine. Throughout High School I was always doing art even curricularly.  So it was always part of my days.

DMacA: Tell me a little bit about your art , why you paint this way, why you have such vibrant colours, and what you’re trying say.

SR:  Vibrant colours, I guess, does tend to be a cross-cutting theme.  But, you know, I use acrylics, watercolour, pen and ink, alcohol markers and I actually started doing pyrographic arts – wood burning.  I guess there is something- if you don’t believe in a higher power- in that I seem to have this innate ability to be able to use different media and it’s fun for me to be able to experiment and create, and I like the results.  Other people have that in sports, like my husband. He’s a super athlete and can do different sports really well and doesn’t even need to try. I don’t have that in the athletic world but, within creative domains, I feel very blessed to have this kind of propensity towards just experimenting and using different media and just seeing what happens and liking the results.  I like what ends up coming out of my experimentation.

Probably I’ve been influenced by my Indian Heritage as we have lots of bright colours generally, culturally, in our clothing, in our decor.  I just mix colours and there’s no real rhyme or reason. But, another thing, which is deliberate, I don’t do realistic work in my art.  I find that it’s putting pressure on myself, a form of stress, if I try to recreate an image that’s supposed to look like real. That doesn’t feel good to me. I just want to feel that I can freely experiment and that’s why, I guess, my art is more representational as opposed to creating an exact image. So that’s a very deliberate thing I do. Probably the one deliberate thing!

DMacA: Well it’s funny that you say that because, although your art is abstract and unstructured,  you’re also a poet and you can’t write poetry that’s abstract and non-structured. Tell me a little bit about your poetry.

SR: I’ve not called myself a poet until very recently. I haven’t hesitated to call myself an artist, a visual artist, and that might be because of the quantity of work that I’ve created visually. As a poet I’ve been fortunate to have a few pieces published in health humanities spaces in the last couple years and I think that’s probably why I have started feeling more confident about calling myself a poet.  Of course, you’re still a poet if you write poetry for yourself. But, you know, with the written word I like creating images which maybe relates to my visual arts. I like creating vivid imagery through words-  really lush descriptive language. Playing with images through words is something I just tend to do. But, at the same time, in writing I try to follow, I think its was Hemingway who said, you want every word to have heft. I don’t like superfluous words for the sake of it which might sound the antithesis to lush and descriptive imagery, but I try to do both. I try to create a vivid image through words, not words for the sake of words, but every word has a meaning.  That’s why, I guess,  I tend to do shorter form poetry and Haiku. I enjoy the challenge of kind of creating an image within certain constraints.

DMacA: Now I’m going to spring a surprise on you.

SR: Another one!

DMacA:I’d like you to read one of your poems, and the poem I’d like you to read is- Giving Pause 

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