While families gather to celebrate Eid, Christmas, Gurpurab or Diwali, someone is absent from the dining table. While most of us spend Sundays with our children, someone is making hospital rounds. While heavy snowfall blocks roads in Kashmir, ambulances still move. While rain lashes the streets at midnight, lights remain on in emergency rooms. While the world sleeps, monitors continue to beep, operating theatres remain occupied, and doctors continue to fight battles that most people never see. That is the life behind the white coat.

A doctor misses birthdays to attend emergencies. Cancels holidays because a patient cannot wait. Leaves a child’s school function because an accident victim has arrived. Answers calls at two in the morning, knowing that every ring may mean the difference between life and death. The profession is not confined to working hours. Illness does not respect weekends, festivals or family occasions, and neither can those entrusted with treating it. These sacrifices rarely make headlines.

Patients remember the doctor who saved a loved one. They may not know that the same doctor had already worked a thirty-hour shift, had not eaten since morning, or had not seen his or her own family for days. Medicine demands knowledge and skill, but it also demands endurance, emotional strength and personal sacrifice.Perhaps that is why the theme widely cited for National Doctors’ Day 2026—“Behind the Mask: Who Heals the Healers?”—is so timely. The question is simple but profound.

Who listens to the doctor after breaking the news that a patient could not be saved? Who comforts the physician who quietly carries the burden of losing a child in the intensive care unit? Who supports the surgeon after hours of operating, knowing that despite every effort,........

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