As a child, Dr. Guru once accompanied his mother to see a famous physician in Srinagar for a fee of 50 rupees. While waiting for the physician, his mother made him promise that if he became a physician, he would never charge a fee from poor patients. Dr. Guru grew up to be a trailblazer. He traveled to Bangalore for medical school, as Kashmir had no medical school of its own. He returned five years later after completing his MBBS.

Instead of following the classic path of joining health services, he decided to pursue further training in general surgery. After working in Srinagar for several years, he again chose to follow his dream far beyond anything imaginable: he trained to become a Cardiovascular Surgeon. He went to AIIMS for Masters in Cardiothoracic Surgery and then further advanced his skills in United States of America. He completed a fellowship in Milwaukee, WI under the tutelage of Dudley Johnson and completed a short stint with Sambamurthy Subramanian, “Dr. Superman”, in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, NY in 1980.

His travels and training around the world helped shape his career and develop the vision for training and programmatic future of modern surgical sciences in Kashmir.