Rhythma Kaul picks her favourite read of 2024

When Dr Shiv Sarin asks in the preface to Own Your Body, A Doctor’s Life-Saving Tips: “Are you a manufacturing defect’, or ‘Do you want to know if you have inherited some unhealthy traits’, the reader is bound to grow curious about the state of her health no matter how health-oblivious she generally is. The feeling grows when he adds, ‘You can easily self-test if you are healthy or unhealthy’. What’s more, you don’t just learn where you stand as far as your overall health goes. The author also guides you step-by-step through the process of course correction, if you happen to fall into the ‘defective piece’ category.

Nothing works better than first person accounts of patient ordeals to spread the message that ‘prevention is better than cure’. A clinician for nearly five decades, Dr Sarin, who established the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in Delhi, the largest liver hospital in India, uses exactly this strategy to highlight the larger implications of neglecting liver health.

Divided into seven sections, the book includes 21 stories that present everything you need to know about the organ. Dreadful diseases related to the liver, transplant surgery, and even cancer is dealt with. All of it is narrated in a reassuring way. This is essentially a book of hope. Those who know Dr Sarin know that this is how he is as a doctor and as an individual. No matter how grim the prognosis, he will never allow you to lose hope, and his book is a reflection of that.

The epilogue states: “It is worth stressing two things: one, medicines can treat diseases, but they seldom give good health... money can buy most things, but probably not good health... earn good health and regularly invest in your body.”

These lines resonate long after you are done reading the book.