<p>Dr Jehangir Anklesaria has come up in life the hard way. Graduating from medical college in Bombay in 1914, he acquires money and smarts by working as a ship’s doctor during World War I and then launches a career in Rangoon. Life is good until December 1941, when the Burmese city is bombed by the Japanese, and everything changes overnight.</p>.<p>Seconds after Jehangir’s wife and daughter board a ship for India, an enemy aircraft screams down, raking the wharf with death. Duty-bound, he decides to stay back and join the war effort, working tirelessly to quell a cholera epidemic. Under relentless attack, the army falls back towards the Indian border, where Jehangir suffers an ambush, losing all he has to rogues at gunpoint. Now he is just one of the many crawling their way up and down the 5,000-foot-high, jungle-clad mountains of Assam, his body ravaged by malaria, dysentery, blood-sucking leeches and starvation.</p>.<p>In The 24th Mile, Tehmton S Mistry, part of the next generation of Jehangir’s larger family, evocatively recreates the story of his grit and heroism in his death-defying journey to safety. Jehangir’s life story meshes neatly with our contemporary emphasis on public health, epidemiology and the acute need for leaders with character and conviction.</p>
<p>Dr Jehangir Anklesaria has come up in life the hard way. Graduating from medical college in Bombay in 1914, he acquires money and smarts by working as a ship’s doctor during World War I and then launches a career in Rangoon. Life is good until December 1941, when the Burmese city is bombed by the Japanese, and everything changes overnight.</p>.<p>Seconds after Jehangir’s wife and daughter board a ship for India, an enemy aircraft screams down, raking the wharf with death. Duty-bound, he decides to stay back and join the war effort, working tirelessly to quell a cholera epidemic. Under relentless attack, the army falls back towards the Indian border, where Jehangir suffers an ambush, losing all he has to rogues at gunpoint. Now he is just one of the many crawling their way up and down the 5,000-foot-high, jungle-clad mountains of Assam, his body ravaged by malaria, dysentery, blood-sucking leeches and starvation.</p>.<p>In The 24th Mile, Tehmton S Mistry, part of the next generation of Jehangir’s larger family, evocatively recreates the story of his grit and heroism in his death-defying journey to safety. Jehangir’s life story meshes neatly with our contemporary emphasis on public health, epidemiology and the acute need for leaders with character and conviction.</p>