In a modest home in Cuttack, Odisha, in 1953, a boy named Digambar Behera was born to parents who could neither read nor write. The family had little money, but they had dreams. Young Digambar was the first among his siblings to step into the world of books and medicine.

Winters in Chandigarh were harsh when he arrived in 1978 as a junior resident at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research. He sometimes borrowed a coat to keep warm. One senior doctor noticed the thin young man from Odisha studying late into the night.

“You come from far, Behera,” the senior said. “Will you manage here?”

Digambar looked up from his notes and answered quietly, “Sir, the lungs of this country need doctors who do not turn away. I will manage.”

He completed his MD in 1981 and joined the Department of Pulmonary Medicine as faculty in 1984. Over the decades he rose steadily—Professor in 2000, Head of the Department, Dean of Research. For five years he also directed the National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases in New Delhi.

Lung cancer was still a field with few specialists when he began. He became a pioneer of chemotherapy for the disease in the region and founded the Indian Society for the Study of Lung Cancer. He chaired the National Task Force for India’s Tuberculosis Elimination Programme, pushing research, new diagnostics, and better treatment across the country.

Colleagues sometimes asked how he kept the same steady energy after forty years. He would smile and say, “Every patient who breathes a little easier is payment enough. The rest is duty.”

In 2004 the Medical Council of India gave him the Dr. B.C. Roy Award as an eminent teacher. In 2020 the nation placed the Padma Shri around his shoulders for his contribution to medicine. He received the honour with characteristic humility, thanking his teachers, colleagues, and patients at PGIMER.

Today he continues as Director of Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care at Fortis Hospital, Mohali, and recently took over as President of the National Academy of Medical Sciences. More than five hundred research papers and several books carry his name, yet he still speaks of the borrowed coat and the long nights of study.

One evening a young resident asked him the secret of a long career in a difficult specialty. Digambar Behera answered the way he always has: “Start with the patient in front of you. Treat the breath first. The rest—awards, titles, even the Padma Shri—will follow if the work is honest.”

From a small house in Cuttack to the highest ranks of Indian medicine, Dr. Digambar Behera has spent a lifetime helping people breathe again.