Hans R. and Dr. Sudershan A. Narula have lived on the Island for nearly two decades, raising a son and a daughter in Island House.  They moved to Rivercross in 1997 after being on the waiting list for 14 years.

The Narulas have worked for the United Nations for the last few decades and found the Island to be the most convenient place to live.  Hans Narula retired in 1996, while Sudershan, who is Deputy Director of the Medical Services Division, is the most senior Indian woman working at the U.N. Secretariat.

Sudershan Narula was born in 1941 in a village near Rawalpindi, which became part of Pakistan in 1947.  "We moved to New Delhi soon after the partition of India and Pakistan," she recalls.  "I was a good student and graduated at the top of my class in high school.  I had no idea what I wanted to study afterward but someone suggested I should become a teacher or a doctor, so I decided to study medicine.  This was way back in the 1960s when most girls in India were married off after their schooling, or at most, Bachelor's level of education."

When it was time for Sudershan to be enrolled in medical school, a clerk discovered that she was not eligible to attend as she was seven days short of the age requirement.  Letters were dispatched to her village in Pakistan to obtain a birth certificate to prove that she was, in fact, older than what had been wrongly recorded in her primary school register.  Her father asked the Mayor of Delhi to intervene and let her attend medical school until the matter was cleared.  The school agreed to let her attend on condition that proof be provided within the year.  "I attended Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi and lived in constant fear of being held back a year if the document did not arrive," said Dr. Narula.  "Finally, one fine day, a dirty brown postcard came from my village in Pakistan with a hand-written note saying that I should be allowed to attend as I was indeed the right age."

After getting her MBBS degree in 1964, Dr. Narula got a diploma in child health in 1967 followed by an MD degree in 1969.  Her parents began hinting that it was time for her to get married.  One of her friends was married to a person who worked with Hans at the UNICEF office.  "They thought we would make a good couple.  We were introduced to each other by these friends and our families approved the match.  We got married in 1970 and moved to Bombay.  Since then, I have followed Hans around the globe, finding opportunities to work wherever he has been posted," said Dr. Narula.

Their travels working for the UN have seen them on virtually every continent, though they have never traveled on any UN assignment together.  "I have been to over a hundred countries working as a planning officer, field representative or Director for Emergency Programs of UNICEF, and Sudershan has always gone with me, looking for jobs she could do," said Hans Narula.  "In the mid-70s, in Indonesia, she began working for the International Medical Scheme, which provided services to international staff of all international agencies.  In the early eighties, in Afghanistan, she served as the doctor to every embassy still open in that country.  Once we moved to New York in 1982, she established her own links with the UN, working as a medical officer.  There has been no looking back since then."

Sudershan says, "Until my children were in school, I avoided assignments that involved traveling, but now I am free to go wherever I like.  In effect, my professional growth began after 1993.  Before then, I merely looked for an opportunity to use my medical background and occupy myself.  I was immensely adaptable and often worked without either a salary or a fixed schedule.  This helped eventually because I was exposed to different field posts of the UN in various parts of the world.  Now, I am able to plan better, though I mainly operate from the headquarters.  I ensure that UN personnel have access to medical equipment and facilities and can advise them how best to utilize these resources.  I brought in the dimension of field travel to the headquarters and that has been invaluable to the division."

Closer to home, the Narulas' daughter Smita seems to have gained from this lifestyle and exposure.  She earned a degree in International Relations and Development Studies from Brown University before studying law at Harvard.  "I followed my parents' footsteps and my exposure led me to do development work," said Smita, who now works as the head of the South Asia program at Human Rights Watch.  Their son, Gaurav, decided that his interest lay elsewhere and he works for KPMG as a consultant.

Ever since Hans Narula retired, he takes up occasional assignments with UNICEF.  Most recently, he wrote a report on Iraq, which he has visited several times in the past two decades.  "There is a huge difference in the country that I first visited in 1988 and what it is right now.  An entire generation is out of touch with the rest of the world.  There are no new books, no advancement has taken place in any field, and nothing new has emerged.  Iraq's human resources, especially the education and status of women, have deteriorated immensely," he says.

Sudershan Narula sums up their lives together as an adventure.  "We had never imagined it would turn out like this, and we made the best of all that was available.  Now, my family and friends tell me that I should cultivate some hobbies, so I have begun reading non-medical literature and my daughter has just enrolled me in a class to learn ballroom dancing."