I was just past class ten, a young boy of seventeen. He was past sixty, retired from a high profile medical career. But we became best of friends.
I come from Burdwan, a small mofussil town hundred kilometres north of Calcutta. Those days Burdwan was more well known for having a St. Xavier's School. Back then, the town hardly attracted anyone to settle down, having nothing to offer in terms of a career or a peaceful retired life. One exception to that was Dr. D N Das who retired as Chief Medical Officer of Ispat General Hospital, Rourkela and decided to settle down in Burdwan. His wife's family hailed from Burdwan and they preferred Burdwan over Calcutta because they wanted to avoid the big city.
Dr. Das is related to the Roys, our neighbours, who are like a family to us. Such strong is our family tie with the Roys that we even share common friends and enemies. Dr. Das was the Pishomoshai (Pupa) to the Roy family. Needless to say he became Pisomoshai for me as well. Pishomoshai opened his private clinic just down the road where we lived. I guess the year was 1989, when I was in class eleven. Pishomoshai was a product of R G Kar Medical College, Calcutta and was one of the lucky ones who were taught by none other than the great Dr. B C Roy! He used to share his incredible experience of being taught by Dr. B C Roy and how great a teacher he was. Once he lamented that the modern teaching methods employed by the Medical Colleges are no match for the methods used by Dr. B C Roy back then in the fifties. His teaching methods gave far more importance to practical aspects of medical education. Just the other day I read an article in the newspaper which said the a new committee appointed by MCI has decided that the medical teaching methods in modern India are inadequate as they do not lay importance to the practical trainings! They have suggested a wholesome change to the teaching methodology. I guess, the realisation came fifty years too late.
Given Pisomoshai's background we expected him to have a roaring practice. But in reality he struggled. He made a decent earning, but nothing close to what a doctor of his standards should have earned. Unlike other doctors he refused to prescribe medicines, prefering to treat the root cause of the ailments. This was how he was taught by Dr. B C Roy. But that meant the ailments took more time to heal, though the healing process was better and healthier. But in the age of antibiotics, patients hardly bother about correct treatment. They prefer quick results! His patients wanted quick-fix solutions. Perceptually, the agrarian patients of Burdwan equated the quality of a doctor with the amount of medicines prescribed! For them a doctor prescribing little or no medicine was a sign of his ignorance! And so the quacks down the road had patients by the hundreds, whereas Pishomoshai was struggling!
Pishomoshai's free hours meant I had the luxury of spending hours with him in his chamber. I was a young boy, who had a great penchant for general knowledge. I was always eager to learn anything. The fact that Pishomoshai was a student of Dr. B C Roy endeared me to him. Dr. B C Roy was one of my childhood heroes, having read about him a lot. My off days and most evenings were spent with Pishomoshai, chatting away for hours. It was thus our friendship was born. He is a great story teller who can weave a magic to his narration. I was the eager listener, who wanted to know more about India of yore. Right from his student days to the days when he became the CMO of Ispat General Hospital, he used to narrate his life stories! Those stories used to transport me to a different world, which existed only in my mind's eye! The bond only grew thicker over time.
Once he told me about a patient who he treated in Rourkela General Hospital. It was late at night and he was at his home when he was called by the emergency to attend to a seriously injured person. What he saw stupefied him. In the emergency ward he saw an adivasi man standing with a spear like object stuck inside him. He spotted no sign of blood loss or general weakness in the patient. The patient could not lie down on the bed as that pained him a lot. Sitting was equally uncomfortable. The injury happened in the evening and the patient travelled for nearly eight hours to reach the hospital, the only good one that served the poor around the area. What baffled Pishomoshai was the fact that the patient was in no great pain, despite the fact that he had more than half the spear-like object inside him! Nor was there too much of blood loss, except for some that he lost due to skin injury. When he cut open the man's belly in the OT, he was stunned to see what he saw. The object had a sharp metal head made of iron. While working in the field, the man somehow fell down from a height onto the object. As he fell down the object pierced his belly and went inside. As it travelled inside the body under the great gravitational force, it managed to sneak past all the organs and arteries before lodging itself on the spine! As it came to a stop in the spinal bone, the head of the spear stopped just millimeters short of the spinal chord. The man was in no pain because none of his organs were injured. He did not lose blood as none of the arteries were scratched! There was no internal haemorrhage either. And he was bloody lucky that the spear did not touch the spinal chord! Otherwise, he could have been paralysed for life! The operation was over in no time and the man walked out of the hospital spring fit in a few days. Pishomoshai narrated this story to me as his most strange experience! He also mentioned that the patient being an Adivasi did not suffer from shock. If it happened to lesser mortals, he was certain the patient would have suffered from shock and would have been in dire mental state.Pishomoshai was considered a hero among the Adivasis of Orissa around Rourkela. He spent almost all his life in Ispat General Hospital, treating them of snake bites, injuries sustained from factory accidents, leopard attacks and many more. He was a hero among the Adivasis because he hardly treated them with antibiotics and medicines. The Adivasis loved his treatment methods, as he treated them in the most natural way. Sadly, the supposedly more progressive city dwellers shunned him for the same reason! What a travesty!
One saturday morning we were chatting away in his chamber when a tractor stopped right in front of the chamber. There was great hurry among the people who were in the tractor and moments later we saw a bloodied man being carried inside. There was so much blood all over the man's body that one could hardly make out what the problem was. From close quarters I could see the skull of the man wide open from the front with blood gushing out. The injured man was tilling his land when accidentally a tractor belonging to the neighbouring land owner hit him. The iron plough of the tractor hit him on the head, splitting it wide open. As Pishomoshai took a first look he opined that he could survive only if he was taken to a large hospital. On second thoughts, he realised that the patient may not survive the journey as it was almost way past an hour since the injury had happened and the man had lost too much blood. On the way, the patient's relatives stopped at several nursing homes/hospitals, but everywhere they were turned away. Pishomoshai had to take a quick call and he decided that he will give it a shot. He explained the facts to the relatives of the patients. I guess even they realised the graveness of the situation and gave their consent. He instructed the relatives of the patients to organise 2 bottles of blood. As he quickly moved in, he asked me to help him out. It took a few minutes for the anaesthesia to set in. Pishomoshai cleaned up the injury and then the damage was clearly visible. The injury was at least ten inches wide with a gaping hole! I was standing by his side helping him by handing over the required equipments. Pishomoshai asked me to slide in a set of gloves and instructed me on how to hold on to the skin as he prepared to do the sutures. He needed someone to assist him and asked me to step in. If I remember correctly, the man needed some thirty odd sutures, criss-crossing at every possible angle. That was the first time I witnessed so much blood and my head was reeling as I stood there helping Pishomoshai out. At times I felt like throwing up, but bit my lips and carried on. My hands were shaking and my whole body was trembling. All along Pishomoshai kept on encouraging me, reminding me that I can help him save the man's life! And all along he never once wavered from what he was doing! Such was his power of concentration. In the end everything went off well. As soon as it ended I ran out straight to the house. As I sat down lowering my head, I lost all feeling. I guess I stayed like that for quite sometime as I did not notice Pishomoshai entering the house. My aunt was worried as to what had happened. I had no energy left to explain to her. I guess the blood and the gory sight did me in. I could not eat for the next couple of days. The strong smell of chloroform and the sight of blood numbed my taste buds. Pishomoshai spoke me out of that feeling. But for him, I would have carried a dislike for such sights for ever. A couple of weeks later, the patient came down to thank Pishomoshai. I was present on that day as well. He had brought along his wife. She gifted Pishomoshai a sackful of their first harvest! That was unadultereted gratitude! The wife was crying as she expressed her thanks. I could see the satisfaction in Pishomoshai's eyes. That pleasure of saving a man's life meant more to him than the money he earned. It happened many times when patients would get treated first and then say that they did not have the money to pay him. Not once did he lose his temper on them. Instead, he asked them to pay him later, whenever they could. The rural patients always came back and paid him to the last dime. It was the city dwellers who cheated him most times. I wonder why our minds have to get corrupt as we become more progressive.
Pishomoshai is now pushing eighty. I met him last january at a family wedding. It was after a good seventeen years I was meeting him. We sat and chatted. And had our dinner together. I left Burdwan right after my graduation. Pishomoshai left Burdwan a couple of years later, around the mid-nineties for Calcutta. He shifted base as his private practise was not doing well in Burdwan. Though I kept myself informed about him through family, I never managed to meet him during the last seventeen years. Last year when the marriage was fixed, I made sure to ask if he would be present. When I learnt that he would indeed be there, I ensured that I travelled all the way from Kabul to meet him. Pishomoshai taught me many things in life. His life experience opened up the world for me. That I was more than forty years his junior and younger than his own children never made a difference to our friendship. He always treated me like a friend. From politics to business to life's lessons, he discussed everything with me. From sharing his point of view to listening patiently to mine, he always ensured that we had a healthy debate. Those hours spent with him for many years taught me the value of a healthy debate. It taught me to respect others' point of view. It taught me to have a positive outlook even when one is down and out. For Pishomoshai, those were tough times with a meagre income. But he soldiered on. I have learnt many of my life's lessons from Pishomoshai, the most important being the will to fight on when the chips are down. I have nothing else but pure love for him. In this friendship, I have been the receipient. I have had nothing to give him in return.
Lst january when I met him, I narrated my uncle's problem to him and asked him if can can suggest any remedy. My uncle's left eye muscle has become weak and as a result he has lost control on the movement of the eye. The loss of control is substantial, to the extent that his left eye will be focused in the opposite direction than that of his right eye, giving an appearance of a squinted eye. He had been to many renowned hospitals in Bangalore, Madras and Calcutta, including the famous Shankar Nethrayalaya. Everywhere the doctors recommended operation, that too with just a 50% chance of it being successful. That left us in a piquant situation and my uncle resisted the operation. It took Pishomoshai just a few minutes to suggest a remedy. And it involved no medicine! He asked for a piece of paper and a scissor. What he did was an eye-opener. He half-covered the left lens of my Uncle's pair of spectacles with a piece of paper. He covered that half of the lens, in which the eye generally rolls out to. Because of the problem, my uncle's eye ball rolls towards the outside, farther away from the centre, near where the eyebrow ends. So he covered the half of the lens that is on the outer side of the centre. And voila! in a few days time, Uncle's eye started getting its strength back. Pishomoshai's theory was very simple. The eye is light sensitive and will always seek the light source out. If he covers that portion of the lens where the eye ball rolls out, the eye will be in a dark atmosphere. This will prompt the eye to seek the light source, thus pushing the eye muscle to go on the reverse direction! And that's what exactly happened! Today, after a year, my uncle's problem is in a manageable stage, without even popping a single pill! And when I complimented Pishomoshai, he told me that he owed all this to Dr. B C Roy. For it was he who had taught them to treat the root cause and not the symptoms! Pishomoshai for me will remain a great doctor. I never saw Dr. B C Roy, but in Pishomoshai I could see the great Dr. B C Roy! He did not have the page long degrees that the modern doctors acquire, but just his MBBS degree was enough to make him a very fine doctor!
Pishomoshai was the one who solved my back problem years ago. I suffered a bad back problem, so much so that if I sat down, I could not get up and vice versa. I picked up the injury while playing cricket, a sport I carried on playing to some serious level. I consulted many major orthopaedicians including a famous sports orthopaedician, to no avail. All of them suggested surgery. Pishomoshai, after diagnosing my problem, suggested that every morning after I wake up, for one month I should use an Indian style latrine. He said that it will be painful, but if I can carry on, I will become alright. He suggested I squat on the loo few times a day, even when I was not required to use it! And that my dear readers solved my problem. In less than a month, the problem was gone. Gone forever. That exercise helped strengthen my lower back muscle enough to take the stress of the sporting activities I pursued. Even during the back-breaking military training that I underwent years later, the problem never relapsed! That is Pishomoshai for you! It felt lovely meeting him after so many years. In the intervening years, I have grown up to become a man, married and fathered two daughters. Time has added years to Pishomoshai's wrinkles and many more old age complications. But he is mentally agile and as sprightly as he ever was! He even stayed over at our house for a couple of nights.
Pishomoshai, this is my way of saying thanks to you. As I said, I never could give back anything to the cherished friendship we have had over the years. You have taught me many good things in life. The lessons have made me a much better person than I possibly would have been. I only have love and gratitude for you. I am an atheist and do not believe in after-life. But if I have the power to grant immortality to a few people of my choice, you would be one of them! You are a great doctor and a very fine human being. This world needs more people like you. I hope I can be like you!
