In my opinion, [Dr Albert Schweitzer] was probably the greatest human being [to have lived] in the latter part of the 19th century, till well past the middle of the 20th,” Dr Farokh E Udwadia, a physician, Padma Bhushan awardee and author of books such as Tabiyat: Medicine and Healing in India and Other Essays, tells us over the phone. He had known about and admired the Alsatian-German theologian, medical missionary and humanist for a long time, but it suddenly dawned upon him to write a tribute piece. The result is Oganga, written about a year ago, about Schweitzer who lived and worked as a doctor in the jungles of Equatorial Africa. Oganga is the term for ‘healer’, used by the locals to address him.    

Two people, Dr Udwadia tells us, encouraged him to write this play about Schweitzer: The first, a young patient who is unfortunately no more; and the second, screenwriter, photographer, and filmmaker Sooni Taraporevala who has also directed this staged reading. “It was written with the intention of being performed so that people got to know of a man like him. He is not very well known among ordinary people,” he admits. “I personally connected with the fact that here was a man who looked after people who were the least cared for and loved and in desperate need of help. What an example, I thought, in a world which is mainly ruled by power and money.”