Hospitality

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This is the 'true' story of my one and only encounter with the Campus B C Roy Hospital, which took place in 1967. That was a long while ago but the event is etched in my memory.

When I joined IIT KGP in 1965 as a youth of 21, the showpiece of the Campus was this newly constructed BCRH building. It was laid out in a sprawling maidan with lots of greenery, shrubs, winter and summer flowers, and the inevitably beautiful bakul trees with their umbrella-canopy.

And the building itself was a two-story affair that looked like an architectural marvel, with broad staircases, and sunlight and breeze wafting through the building. Rumor had it that the building was designed by a promising faculty member of our own Architecture Department and it became such a feather in his cap that he was recruited elsewhere on a triple jump.

But sadly there is this line: "where every prospect pleases and....."

The trouble with BCRH then was Calcutta.

Post-Independence Calcutta was like Boston a century before that. Listen to our Autocrat:

"Boston is just like other places of its size;--- only perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire-departments, superior monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling English language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. I'll tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will not itself be drained..."

First-rate folks of Calcutta were reluctant to leave it and join KGP (till the Naxalite killings in the 1970s.) So, good doctors were tough to find for our BCRH. And it didn't help that their salary structure was so skewed that their patients (like me) were drawing more pay than themselves. So much so that the only doctors willing to join BCRH were those fed up with Calcutta.

And as the saying went: "He who is fed up with Calcutta is fed up with life itself."

Anyway, I was then staying in our Faculty Hostel, smoking like a chimney and eating little of the uneatable mess food. And so was having this constant burning sensation in the stomach. But got used to it, and would miss it if it skips a day or two...which it rarely did.

One fine morning there was this new boarder in our Mess and by and by we came to know that he was Dr Bose, who joined BCRH leaving his Calcutta job. And in our Hostel we had this other Bose (my life was full of Boses and Bosons), by name Sanjoy Bose. Sanjoy was the representative of the Calcutta Aristocracy at KGP...he had it in his very bearing. Moreover he was an IITian from Nehru Hall and charmed us all with his breadth of knowledge and depth of info.

And he discovered that Dr Bose was a direct descendant (if not the very son) of the celebrated Devaki Bose.

And one day when I was talking about my tummy troubles on the dining table, Dr Bose asked me to come to his chamber in BCRH, which I did, of an evening.

Without touching me, he wrote something illegible on a slip of paper and asked me to see the Matron with it, which I did, of the same evening.

The forbidding Matron in her white overalls and lenses asked me to come the next morning at 6 AM with an empty stomach (that was no problem...it was always empty).

When I landed there at 6 AM, the Matron escorted me to a High Table in her Lab and asked me if I had any last wish, so to speak, because the 'test' would take quite a while. I went out for a couple of fags and returned and took up my supine position, in wild expectancy of what is in store.

She came up with a long thin rubber tube and asked me to close my eyes. Before I could say, 'no!', she pushed it not very gently through my nose right down into my tummy, much like a vet.

And brought a beaker full of some colorless liquid and poured it down the tube before I could sense what was happening.

And she went away.

Strangely, I was soon transported to a fairy land and was relishing the sensation, before a soothing sense of drowsiness enveloped me.

The Matron came back after about half an hour or so and woke me up and 'drew' some stuff from my tummy into a test tube and went away.

I made a signal asking if I could jump down and run away. She shook her head and asked me to keep shut.

The pleasantly dizzy sensation was slowly fading and it was another half hour before she came and 'drew' some more stuff and went away.

By then I was wide awake and dying for a smoke...but you know...I was sort of handicapped by that tube.

When she next came for her 'draw', I was protesting and she was threatening...

After about 6 hours and 12 'readings' she released me and asked me to come tomorrow for her Report.

I asked her discreetly what was the liquid she poured into me (and if I could have some more of it).

She peered through her glasses, and liked my face, and uttered secretively:

"Ethyl Alcohol"

The next day she gave me her Report which was a graph (or more like a bar chart) with time on the x-axis and water on the y-axis, maybe.

I could then see what went on...my tummy on empty stomach possibly was full of hydrocholric acid and even a sixth grader would tell you how it interacts with the blessed ethyl alcohol that she poured in...it was one of those 'exchange' reactions, leaving a salt and water.

I took the Report to Dr Bose, who examined it critically, and without speaking much, as was the style of physicians fed up with Calcutta, wrote down on his prescription pad:

"Tab...Digene"

ThanQ!

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