Who can ever say if dying hurts? Paul Anderson's come as close as it's possible to finding the unanswerable answer.
It doesn't lie in knowledge gleaned during his career as a specialist surgeon but from being centre stage at a 1973 massacre of mass proportions.
The Rotorua-raised doctor was among a congregation of 1500 when five members of a Pan African Congress splinter group with the motto "one white person one bullet" burst into Cape Town's St James' Anglican church, tossing grenades and firing randomly.
Fifteen died, Paul was among the 50 critically injured. It's a horror story of the kind novels and moves are made of. Paul's written the book entitled Does It Hurt To Die, a fictionalised account of the massacre, now Hollywood's all a-twitter about its blockbuster potential.
A major star wants to make the film. The news came the day before Paul talked to Our People. The email came with the caution "don't celebrate just yet but you have reason to smile." Paul's smiling . . . cautiously.
Back in the town he grew up in Paul Anderson gave us a graphic account of the bloodbath which smashed his left arm so badly it took five hours to repair, sent a bullet below his skin, narrowly missing his stomach and another "greasing" off this head.
"It was a modern church, tiered seating, that's where I was when these men burst in shooting randomly, we were like sitting ducks at a fair ground. The chap beside me was killed, the one behind shot between the eyes before falling over the top of me, the back of his skull was missing. Grenades with nails and screws in them were thrown to inflict maximum damage."
Denied trauma counselling, "I was told to man up", Paul wrote his book as an emotional catharsis. "There were times when the pages were wet with tears, if a balloon popped I'd duck, I was having nightmares, that's what really made me start writing and as the story developed I realised I had a little talent as a story teller. I didn't think being shot could turn into such a positive in terms of creative writing." His book lay fallow until a chance meeting three years ago with an Adelaide film producer.
"He asked to read the rough manuscript, he did and wanted to option it."
Paul predicts a backlash from any movie made but is unrepentant. "It [his book] deals with issues like secrete germ and chemical warfare in South Africa and that country's covert nuclear arms programme. When it was published the Cape Times wouldn't review it, they said it was too controversial, that there were things in it that should be left unsaid."
What we don't want to leave unsaid is Paul Anderson's "other" story, his Rotorua years, the four seasons he spent as a junior All Black and the path to his medical career. Now Adelaide-based, he specialises in surgery for the obese while working on a potential cure for Type 2 diabetes. In addition, he's founded and heads the Specialists Without Borders aid organisation.
Paul Anderson did not have a privileged upbringing. Born to a solo mother in Auckland's Home of Compassion he was adopted "at zero".
Five years on his parents brought him to Rotorua where his father Barry ("Binks") Anderson ran a cycle and mower shop on Fenton St. Schooling was at St Mary's, then Edmund Rice.
"I wasn't particularly academic but played a lot of sport, making it into the Bay of Plenty schools' rugby team."
Initial intentions had been to teach but his sporting instincts directed him into sports science and nutrition at Waikato University, meanwhile playing rugby for the Mooloo men. His Junior All Blacks tenure, playing as a Number 8, spanned 1969-'72.
The wider world beckoned. At Glasgow University he acquired a diploma in anatomy, physiology, biomechanics and psychology. A bursary took him to the University of California, graduating with a Masters in sports science. In 1978 he was offered a scholarship at South Africa's Stellenbosch University where the legendary rugby great, Danie Craven, reigned supreme. "He was director of rugby, director of the university, the man who wielded the power."
Craven quickly had Paul in the university's 1st 1V, 13 of the team were current Springboks.
Could Paul have been tempted to defect to the green and gold jersey? "I was still a Kiwi and had too much else to achieve."
That achievement was to become a doctor. To finance his Cape Town University studies he worked with the South African Eye Bank Foundation. "We'd go to homicides and cut the victim's corneas out, sending them around Africa for transplants."
By the time he graduated he'd married a South African surgeon. His homeland beckoned, the couple (since divorced) worked at Auckland then Dunedin hospitals. When his wife became pregnant they returned to South Africa. Escalating violence that eventually took him to Adelaide.
But his roots remain Bay of Plenty-entrenched. Ten years ago he acquired an Ohope apartment spending at least six weeks a year there. "It's where I do my writing." He's presently two thirds of a way through a Does It Hurt To Die sequel. It's grown considerably since a broken ankle's forced an extended 2013 stay.
Inconvenient as it is he's not complaining.
"This area will always be my home."
Paul Anderson
Born: Auckland Home of Compassion, 1950.
Education: St Mary's and Edmund Rice, Rotorua; Waikato, Glasgow, California, Stellenbosch, Cape Town Universities.
Family: Son Jordan, 21, a third year med student; sister by adoption Gabrielle (Ohope); has traced seven half siblings through Zigsaw organisation "I'm good friends with one of my father's daughters."
Interests: Writing, nutrition, sport "I'll always support the All Blacks", exercising, cycling, running "I started as a boy running through the Redwoods to the Blue Lake [Tikitapu]", Specialists Without Borders, the recipient of his book sales' profits.
Personal philosophies: "Do as much good to others as you can with the talents you've been given.". "Life's wonderful."