In the temple city of Jammu, on 16 December 1950, a boy named Yog Raj Sharma was born into a family that valued quiet perseverance. He grew up in the Rehari neighbourhood and studied at Government Sri Ranbir Model Higher Secondary School, where the hills of Jammu watched over his early dreams.

As a young man he carried a private sorrow. In 1962 his mother had undergone surgery for retinal detachment in Amritsar. For three long months her head was immobilised with sandbags. The operation failed. The trauma lingered for years.

“I will never forget what she suffered,” he would later say softly. “That pain became my purpose.”

Yog Raj earned his MBBS with honours from the University of Calcutta in 1974. He went on to PGIMER Chandigarh, completing his MS with merit of the first order in 1978 and serving as senior resident. In 1979 he cleared the ECFMG and crossed the ocean to the United States. He joined the faculty of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Yale University School of Medicine, then continued at the University of Maryland Hospital until the mid-1980s, deepening his expertise in the delicate structures of the eye.

In 1986 he returned to India and joined the Vitreo-Retina Unit at the Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, AIIMS New Delhi. What began as an assignment against his initial preference soon became a lifelong calling. He rose to Professor of Vitreo-Retinal Surgery in 2002 and later became Chief of the entire centre. Week after week he performed 20 to 45 complex vitreo-retinal surgeries. Over the decades the number crossed twenty thousand. He trained generations of surgeons who now practise across India, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Middle East.

One day a young CRPF jawan arrived, both eyes severely damaged in the Dantewada attack. After four intricate surgeries, Yog Raj restored useful vision to one eye.

“You have given me back my life, Doctor,” the jawan whispered.

Yog Raj only smiled. “The eye is a window. We simply clean the glass so light can enter again.”

He served as Advisor (Ophthalmology) to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, directed the WHO South-East Asia Collaborating Centre for Ophthalmology, and chaired national task forces on diabetic retinopathy and retinopathy of prematurity. In 1992 he became the first ophthalmologist appointed to an academic post at the United Arab Emirates University.

His 2005 research comparing pars plana vitrectomy with scleral buckling for retinal detachment was later ranked among the top 100 publications on the subject in more than a century— the only Indian paper on the list. The American Academy of Ophthalmology honoured him with the Front Row Surgical Video Award and the Academic Achievement Award.

In 2015 President Pranab Mukherjee presented him the Padma Shri.

Looking back, Yog Raj often thought of his mother. “She would be happy,” he said, “to know that a little of what she endured helped others see again.”

From a boy in Jammu who carried his mother’s pain to a surgeon who restored sight to thousands and trained a generation of healers, Dr. Yog Raj Sharma’s life has been a steady journey of light—patiently, precisely, one eye at a time.