Flying on One Engine

Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet is a plastic surgeon in Brooklyn, New York. In his younger years, he earned a lot of money operating on well-to-do Americans. Since then, however, his life had changed drastically in various ways. After a car accident left him partially paralysed, he has battled esophageal cancer and suffered two heart attacks and a heart hemorrhage. His health is delicate, to say the least. In his own commonsensical words, "I'm a four-engine plane running on one engine. If that one goes, we crash." His daughter wants him to take it easy, but his physical complaints seem to have only motivated him to keep going. For a number of years, he has been coming to the aid of poor families in India, travelling regularly to the land of his birth to operate on children for free. In surgical sessions that last for days, he corrects deformities such as harelips. His work has garnered him eight nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in India he is worshipped like a god. Filmmaker Joshua Z. Weinstein got to know this special, driven, but occasionally exasperating man and followed him for an extensive period of time in order to make this intimate portrait.