Pasang Dorjee Sherpa had never met Prem Dorjee Bhutia but all his life he had heard tales of how on a wintry morning in Darjeeling 21 years ago the doctor had delicately pulled him out of his mother’s womb with nothing but his bare hands, using his fingers as forceps.

So last week, with his grandfather for company, Pasang, now a strapping young man of 21, set out for Siliguri to meet Dr Bhutia, carrying with him a bag full of fresh homegrown vegetables.

Flashback to December 1998 in a remote village in Lava, Darjeeling. Jamuni Tamang went into labour early in the morning. There was no hospital within 60km of the village, Sherpa Goan.

The solitary government-run bus from Gorubathan to Kalimpong that passed through the village had left. The only other option was taking a private vehicle, but that would mean a trek of 8km on difficult hill terrain in punishing cold. Also, there was no certainty the few Willys jeeps in the village would be available.

Enter the messiah. Dr Bhutia, a local boy, was visiting his native village after graduating in medicine.

“That morning, some villagers came to me and said a young woman was in labour,” the doctor recalled. He had all but forgotten the episode, but the meeting with Pasang on July 7 brought the memories flooding back.

The young doctor rushed to Jamuni’s house and found the expectant mother surrounded by five or six women. “Her father-in-law, Goth Kailla Sherpa, urged me to do whatever was needed to deliver the baby,” Dr Bhutia said.

A pair of gloves, sterile gauze, a sterile thread to tie around the umbilical cord and a sterile blade to cut the cord were the bare minimum needed for the procedure, but nothing was available.

An old quilt cover was used as gauze, Goth Kailla’s shaving blade was immersed in boiling water, and with no gloves available, Dr Bhutia, a general physician, could only wash his hands thoroughly to guard against infections.

“I kept washing my hands till the kalo sabun (used to wash dishes) had half-melted,” the doctor said.

Using his fingers as forceps, Dr Bhutia guided the baby out of the womb. “It was a healthy baby boy. There were celebrations all around and I was offered a warm cup of salted tea,” he recalled.

Cut to July 2019. Pasang, a pass course student at Kalimpong College, arrived at the doctor’s house in Siliguri, accompanied by his grandfather Goth Kailla, 82.

Dr Bhutia, who now works in a private hospital in Siliguri, said he got “a bit emotional seeing this young man”.

Pasang said: “I spent three hours talking to the doctor. This meeting was priceless. I cannot even express how I felt.”