My mentor couldn't share a video.
A simple surgical exposure video. Another surgeon had asked for it—we were visiting his hospital, and he wanted to learn my mentor's approach. A reasonable request between colleagues. I asked my mentor several times over the following weeks. "Shall I send it to him?" The answer was always delayed. A dodge. A vague promise to get to it later.
When we finally returned to that hospital months later, the surgeon asked directly: "Doctor, did you get me the video?" My mentor looked him in the eye and said, very casually, "Oh, I just forgot."
He hadn't forgotten. He'd been deliberately avoiding it the entire time. I had watched him do it.
I felt something break inside me that day. Not anger—something worse. Disappointment. Here was someone I held in such high esteem, failing at something so small and silly. A video. An exposure technique he'd done a thousand times. What was he protecting? What was he afraid of losing?
That was the moment I stopped believing in the mentor myth.
All my life I'd been looking for a mentor. Like most of you, I looked to the consultants I worked with—that was the natural evolution. You watch them operate. You probe them with questions. You absorb their answers and let them mould your clinical judgment, your technique, your approach to recovery.
And in transmitting surgical knowledge, my mentors were extraordinary. They could teach you how to handle a patient once the patient became a patient. They could walk you through the anatomy, the approach, the precise moment when the tissue gave way and the hardware found its home.
But there were entire territories they couldn't enter.
When a complication happened, what did you do with the mental turmoil? When the guilt crept in at 3 AM, who taught you to handle that? When a medico-legal case threatened your career, where was the wisdom for that? These questions hung in the air, unasked and unanswered, because the stance was always the same: the senior consultant was always correct. There was no room for being wrong. No room for uncertainty. No room for the truth.
I remember one consultant standing on stage at a conference, declaring with complete confidence: "I've done thousands of these cases. I've never had a complication." A visiting fellow—younger, braver—stood up and said, "It can't be possible that you've never had a complication. There had to be one. You've just missed it." My consultant got defensive, turned it into an East versus West attack. But the fellow was right. In Indian private practice, when there's a complication, the patient doesn't come back to you—they go to the surgeon next door. You never see the failure. You never learn from it. You maintain the illusion of perfection while your actual complication rate remains invisible.
This is the false camaraderie of medicine. Seniors who never make mistakes. Consultants who are always right. And juniors who are conditioned to believe that somewhere out there is a perfect mentor who will hand them the keys to the kingdom.
Nobody's coming.
The gatekeeping runs deeper than you think. I watched a junior surgeon get an offer for a prestigious fellowship—high-volume cases, excellent training, the kind of opportunity that could define a career. His current consultant refused to give him leave. "We need you here." That was the reason. Not a legitimate conflict. Not an irreplaceable role. Just possession. Just control. The junior lost the fellowship. His current consultant lost nothing.
Why would a senior surgeon create their own competition? Why would someone who spent 25 years climbing a hierarchy share the shortcuts with you? The video my mentor wouldn't share—it wasn't about the technique. He knew the technique was valuable. That's exactly why he kept it.
The lie we tell ourselves is that good mentors are selfless. Some are. Most aren't. And even the selfless ones can only give you what they have. A brilliant surgical mentor will make you a better surgeon. Your income will stay flat. A "successful" senior will let you copy his practice. You'll become a cog in the same machine that trapped him.
The mentor you're searching for doesn't exist—not because good people are rare, but because no single person can hold all the answers to a life as complicated as yours.
While I was mourning the mentor myth, I discovered something unexpected.
There was a guy in the ER—I'll call him Madan Sir. Clinically, he struggled. He wasn't the person you'd want managing your patient. But after hours, we'd talk. Philosophy. Yoga. Religion. Politics. He had immense opinions and a range that shocked me. We'd go deep into topics that had nothing to do with surgery and everything to do with surviving as a surgeon. Stability. Resistance. Endurance. The things that hold you together when the cases don't go your way.
Madan Sir couldn't teach me how to reduce a fracture. But he taught me how to reduce my own suffering.
Then there was a man I never met. He ran an organisation called Value Research, which evaluates mutual fund performance. I learned from him entirely through letters he wrote—long, thoughtful explanations of how wealth actually works. This was my financial mentor. Someone whose face I'd never seen, whose hand I'd never shaken, but whose words rearranged my relationship with money.
The pattern finally clicked. My surgical mentors taught me surgery. Madan Sir taught me stability. The Value Research founder taught me wealth. Each one held a piece of the puzzle. None of them held the whole thing. And none of them were waiting to "become my mentor"—I had to assemble the relationship myself.
Different mentors are required for different fields. As diverse as our context is in this human world, it's natural that we're going to need guidance in multiple directions. Health needs one person. Wealth needs another. Relationships need a third. And to orchestrate all of it, you don't find someone to do it for you.
You become your own Sutradhar.
The Sutradhar is a concept from Indian classical theatre—the narrator who holds the strings, who orchestrates the performance without being the star of any single scene. That's what you need to become.
Stop looking for a mentor. Start assembling a board.
Research confirms what I discovered through failure: the most effective professionals don't rely on a single advisor. They build what business literature calls a "personal board of advisors"—5 to 10 people across different domains who provide guidance without the traditional mentor-mentee dependency. One study on healthcare leadership showed $7.8 million in positive financial impact over 11 months from a structured advisory approach. Not mentorship in the traditional sense—a system of targeted guidance.
The American Medical Association reports that one-third of nurse practitioners and physician assistants switch specialties at least once in their careers. How many seek formal training? Only 17%. The rest figure it out through on-the-job learning—cobbled together advice from multiple sources, never from one guiding hand. This isn't failure. This is how real development works.
The personal board model looks like this. You need someone for clinical edge—the technical excellence that keeps patients alive. You need someone for financial decisions—because high income without financial wisdom is an expensive way to stay broke. You need someone for visibility—because excellence nobody sees is just invisible excellence. You need someone for operations—systems, scaling, the machinery of practice. And you need someone for negotiation—contracts, hospital politics, the game you were never taught to play.
Five domains. Five different people. None of them your "mentor." All of them your advisors.
Here's how to build it without awkwardness, without begging, without the desperation of "Will you be my mentor?" that makes everyone uncomfortable.
You don't ask anyone to be your mentor. You ask for 30 minutes.
Pick one domain where you need guidance. Identify one person who excels in that area—not a friend, an expert. Send them a message: "I've been thinking about [specific problem]. You've clearly figured this out. Would you have 30 minutes for a conversation?" Most people say yes to 30 minutes. Almost nobody says yes to "Be my mentor."
Come with three specific questions. Do your homework. Make the time count. At the end, ask if you can check back in a quarter. That's not mentorship. That's a quarterly advisory conversation. It's low commitment, high value, and completely under your control.
Do this five times across five domains. Document what you learn. Track the actions you take. In six months, you'll have a functioning board of advisors, and you'll never have waited for permission from any of them.
The surgeon waiting for a mentor is the surgeon waiting for permission.
Permission to charge what they're worth. Permission to say no to exploitation. Permission to build something beyond their scalpel. That permission isn't coming from a senior. It's not hiding in a fellowship. It's not waiting on stage at a conference.
The permission is yours to give.
I wasted years searching for someone who could teach me everything. I found people who taught me pieces. That turned out to be better—because a single mentor is a single point of failure, and your career is too important to depend on one person's willingness to share.
Don't find a mentor. Assemble a board.
Audit one domain this week where you need guidance. Identify one person who excels in that area. Send one message asking for 30 minutes. That's not networking. That's not playing politics. That's taking control of your own development without waiting for someone to anoint you.
The surgeon you'll be in five years is watching what you decide today. Are you waiting for permission? Or are you assembling the people who will help you become who you already could be?
Nobody's coming to save your career.
That's the good news.