A neurosurgeon’s cabin is rarely just about the brain as an organ. In his debut work Bheja Fry (Juggernaut), Dr Mazda Turel, a neurosurgeon at Wockhardt Hospitals in Mumbai, draws from encounters that start off with symptoms but quickly expand into a more layered experience of memory, belief systems, fear and identity. As he writes, neurosurgery operates in “millimetres and lives in uncertainties”, where what is being handled is not just anatomy but “identity, memory, language, fear and hope”. The work positions itself within this overlap, attempting to move beyond the clinical into the experiential.
The book is divided into different sections like Consulting Room Confessions, Clinical Crossroads and Curious Characters, and each has short, case-based stories. The anecdotes move between clinic and surgery, but mostly stay in conversations. Patients come in with symptoms, as well as their own beliefs, explanations—superstition, denial, sometimes just confusion. There are cases of people misreading their bodies, or holding on to certain beliefs even after diagnosis. The writing does not rush into medical clarity, but sits with these interactions for a bit.
If it helps to heal
The essence of the book is the coexistence of medicine and belief. Patients don’t always approach illness in a purely clinical way–there are deep emotions and personal experiences linked to a diagnosis. And the doctor often has to work their way around it. Turel says, “I’m the kind of person to allow superstitions even if it may sound hilarious or ridiculous to others… but this seems to help in the healing process.” This approach plays out across chapters, where authority is replaced by accommodation.
The tone of the book keeps shifting throughout, sometimes within the same story. In one instance, a patient’s obsession with food turns out to be a symptom, but also a source of levity. There are stories that hinge on irony, where expectations of recovery are disrupted, diagnoses arriving too late or too early, and others that lean into absurdity. Turel, while talking about the almost absurd situations where doctors are approached for medical advice, recalls a peculiar incident during a funeral: “A lady was complaining about headaches, leg pain, stomach ache… and I said it’s your turn next.” But the book is careful not to stay in this register. “The aim is to also educate and not just tell funny stories… and not all of them are funny,” he notes.
An issue with form
At the same time, a recurring concern in the work is the limits of medicine itself, that it does not fully control outcomes. As he writes, it is “not a linear science but a landscape of uncertainties,” where similar cases can have very different endings. This unfolds in multiple stories where the outcomes don’t follow expectation. At times, the anecdotal structure seems to hinder an in-depth exploration into these ideas.
Coming out of years of column-writing, Turel’s style is conversational, often anecdotal, and rarely weighed down by technical language. “Since these are real incidents, the writing part was not difficult… it does not require mindspace like fiction,” he says. Much of it was written in fragments,“between OPDs, kids’ school, flights”, and that immediacy carries into the text, where stories feel more observed than constructed.
There are also threads that remain outside the book. One such story, about a professor diagnosed with the same illness he once treated, stayed with the author but did not make it in, possibly because of how it does not necessarily align with the theme of the book. “I wonder if there’s a karmic connection somewhere,” Turel says, almost as an afterthought.
The title itself, Bheja Fry, gestures towards humour and irreverence, though it occasionally sits at odds with the emotional weight of the contents of the book. Several of the narratives move through loss, vulnerability and ethical uncertainty, making the lightness of the title feel slightly misleading rather than reflective. For readers, the book may also provoke a heightened awareness of their own bodies. For overthinking readers, Turel’s response is direct: “Don’t ignore symptoms… symptoms are blessings.” It is one of the few moments where the narrative moves from observation to advice, though even here, it avoids certainty. Turel suggests there are “many more stories to tell,” and Bheja Fry reads less like a definitive account and more like an ongoing record of encounters.