[My
childhood memories, both sweet and sour, are many and varied. They still linger
in my heart as I cherish them and safe keep them from the onslaughts of Time.
One such dramatic and sad experience that stands out still in the vault of my
memory is my encounter with a quack. It happened when I was early in my teens.]
Faced
with pecuniary hardships, DU [Doctor Uncle, my neighbor], had decades back,
discontinued his medical studies and become a doctor … a self-made-pseudo
doctor. His working in a clinic as a paramedic gave him the audacity to call
him a doctor.
As
luck had it, he soon became famous and most sought-after doctor in my area.
For, people believed that he had some mystical healing power in him and his
mere touch on the patients would cure them of their ailments. However, aunty
[DU’s wife] never gave a fig to such beliefs, calling them rubbish and DU a
quack.
Though
past 50, DU looked smart with his French goatee and neatly groomed hair. [Hair!!!
He had only strands and that too at the back of his head, which, with much
effort, he had combed it and brought it to the front just to hide his gleaming
pate]. I always saw him wearing dhoti in a Diwan-like style, sporting a black
coat over his shirt.
Saturn
led my dad to take me to DU when I had an earache for days on end. Leaving me
to the doctor’s custody, my dad went on his official tour. DU peered into my
ear with the help of a flashlight and tweaked it gently. He then became
contemplative for a while and said: ‘Only people afflicted with brain tumor
will have such unbearable earache.’ I hardly heard what he said as I felt like
blasted and blown into pieces. I screamed my head off and my body trembled.
However,
DU was cool. He consoled me saying that he could cure all kinds of tumors, both
benign and malignant, with his ‘Touch Therapy’, a device he had acquired after
a long research. I stood wonder-struck. Later, when I was watching the film
Munna Bhai M.B.B.S, an involuntary thought about DU flashed my addled head.
More
grueling was the following day. I went into tears and refused when DU asked me
to get a tonsure. He then took me to a dingy lab and had me undergone all the medical
tests he knew by his books/journals. We also went to an ENT specialist as DU
wanted a second opinion on his diagnosis. ‘Hell with his diagnosis; this cad
only takes me for a ride,’ I moaned.
The
ENT was a baldie, had untrimmed bushes of hair falling on the sides of his
head. I was scared of his bushy mustache and pock --marked face. He had a cache
of medical instruments displayed on his table. Not allowing me to take a second
look at his ‘stockpile’, he lifted up my chin and peered into my ear as DU did
before.
To
my great shock, the ENT took out a small tong from his cache, shoved it into my
ailing ear, twisted it a bit and pulled it away as fast as he could not minding
my screams. Gosh, out came with the tong was a bit of a broken pencil, which I
recalled I had thrust into my ear a week back. ‘Had been searching this bloody
stub for long’, I shouted with joy and tried to release me from the grip of the
ENT.
But,
he didn’t let me go. He poured some stingy jell into my beleaguered ear and
covered it with a big bandage, which ran across my face and covered my left eye
too. I felt looking like another Moshe Dayan. ‘Sure, it’s a value-added to my
semi-deafness’, I moaned again.
‘Who
the nut?’ the ENT snarled at me throwing the pencil bit into the dustbin. ‘Who
got you into all those bloody tests when you’re in perfect health?’
‘Doctor
Uncle’, I mumbled.
‘Why,
did you call me uncle?’ the ENT growled, twirling his mustache. ‘Yes … no’, I
sputtered. He looked at me sternly for a moment and then blared out, ‘uh, you
mean that old bloke with a black coat. I saw him sneaking out of my room when I
was taking the pencil bit from your ear.’
Aghast
I stood, cursing DU and calling him names. I didn’t know even today how I
escaped from the ENT’s ominous spell.
I went to the DU’s house again after
six months. Aunty was persistently inviting me home as she was outraged over
the ordeal I underwent due to her quack husband’s wrong diagnosis. I was
puzzled seeing DU sitting on a bench in his room which was once his clinic. He
was clean shaven. His pate was more gleaming than ever due to the conspicuous
absence of even a few strands of hair. ‘Who robbed his black coat?’ I thought.
His table too was clean and tidy. There was no
trace of medical books/journals. It was now decked up with volumes of Ramayana
and Mahabharata. Reading my mind, Aunty said: ‘Easwar, I’ve banned his doctor
business; I’ll never allow him to play that game again after what he had done
to you.’ She went to the kitchen to brew tea for me.
I
smiled triumphantly at DU, but he, the maverick, took a bunch of papers from
one of the volumes of Ramayana and showed them to me. No doubt, they were
patient’s call sheets tucked away cleverly in between the pages of the two
epics. The call sheets hinted DU’s calling on the patients at their homes instead
of having them called him at his clinic.
‘A
mobile clinic. Tell your dad that he too can call me to your house if you
people like,’ DU murmured and smiled at me rather impishly.
And
that triggered my running away from his house abruptly without waiting for
auntie. I ran home so swiftly and recklessly, which I never did in the past nor
would do it in my lifetime.