Gole Bazaar 1960s - Medicine Men

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As you hit the T-Junction you will see a series of Medial Shops on the Bombay-Calcutta Loop. And these will be of all '-pathies', homeo, naturo, kaviraji, unani, and allo.

We were hearing about Dabur then. And the canonical quiz question was: "What does Dabur mean?"

Well, Dr S K Burman did Bengal proud for over a century. His Chyavanpras and Honey are household names in South India. And I guess Dabur has diversified into several products...the latest being Red Toothpaste and Beauty & Health Care. Yesterday there was an interview in DC with the fourth generation Burman, Amit.

Bengalis (including me) love low-cost non-invasive health care...the intervention shouldn't worsen the disease. I guess it is part of the Hippocratic Oath.

When I was at my University in Vizagh, the only non-Western authors we heard of, and bought books by, were Bengalis...their names were exotic for us Moorthies, Reddies, Raos, not to speak of mere Sastries. I was asked to buy Saha and Srivastava (giant size) and P Ray (Chemistry). And my medico friends were happy when they found Chatterjee & Banerjee et al's affordable books on Medicine and Surgery. All in all Bengal nurtured what SDM called the "likha-pora" culture as against the "taka-paisa". He himself was writing till his last breath, just like his chela DB. And as I said the other day, when I read that an Indian wrote a monumental book titled: The Emperor of all Maladies, I knew it must be a Bengali.

My Chief Engineer (Naidu) Friend told me one day that he is praying daily that he should be born a Konkani Brahmin next time around. I don't believe in reincarnation, but who knows? Well, I would rather be a (vegetarian) Sengupta.

Coming back to Medical Shops at KGP, I found this inversion:

In AP, every private-practitioner Doctor would open his shop, however small it is; and as it grows into a popular Clinic or Nursing Home, pharmacists would vie to open their medical shops attached to them.

At KGP it was the other way round: Pharmacists would open their Medical Shops and keep a small anteroom for Visiting Specialists...these dingy cubicles are called by the high-sounding name: Chambers. As the shop grows and expands, the Chamber doesn't. On the other hand, there would be competing Doctors aspiring for a time-slot in these Chambers. And there would be discreet pimping.

The exception is Psychiatrists. These poor guys wouldn't be welcome in any Medical Shop, perhaps as the shop-owners think it would be a bad omen...Bengalis are fond of para-sciences...you would find them wearing several rings with all colors of stones on their fingers and malas around their necks...from veg beads to glass and crystal ones...my hero is Bhappi-da:

http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=bappi+lahiri&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=617&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsol&tbnid=2PA_jT3F1wYMvM:&imgrefurl=http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/11/oct/31-bappi-lahiri-i-have-become-vidyas-fan-101108.asp&docid=h_V3QPAMJa0kFM&imgurl=http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/11/oct/bappi_lahiri.jpg&w=450&h=338&ei=siTBTuusC8HirAeZ08DLAQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=174&vpy=325&dur=42&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=125&ty=152&sig=110171882230473958487&page=6&tbnh=124&tbnw=167&start=114&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:114


So, the 'mental doctors' have to fend for themselves by opening their own clinics...and hope that some pharmacists ask for a room. In the good old 1960s the drugs prescribed by mental doctors were dead cheap; and they worked too. But I guess globalization has changed all that.

And Dentists too have to fend for themselves.

The only authentic Nursing Home we had near IIT in the Chota Tengra area was the Dandapat Nursing Home. It was very popular then because the (granpa) Dr Dandapat was a wizard very renowned for his abilities. His services were sought for each and every trouble, including pregnancies of all subtleties.

Talking of Dentists, there was this Dr Pathak, son of the BNR Hospital Dentist, whose services I gladly sought as soon as my teeth started giving me trouble one by one (thanx to the classy products of W.D. & H.O. Wills). His charges were surprisingly nominal...just Rs 10 for Consultation and Rs 30 for Extraction. He was (and is, I guess) a wizard and saved my wife from serious surgical and other intervention. It so happened that her lips were gradually cracking and their tender skin peeling off making it impossible for her to eat and drink. The wisemen of BCR finally gave up and suspected the worst, gave it a very highsounding name, and asked her to consult the Bigwig in Cal. We got an appointment and were ready to travel the next day. But that morning she developed toothache and I took her to Dr Pathak. He said at once: "Ma'am, you got scurvy...eat lots of oranges." We canceled our Cal trip and she started recovering after a couple of oranges.

A couple of years later, she developed absolute weakness and was hardly able to walk or work at home. The wisemen again referred to a Specialist in Vellore and we booked our tickets. And, as you can guess, she developed toothache that morning and had to visit Dr Pathak. He looked at her and said: "You look so anemic, Ma'am, drink bottles of the Iron Tonic Tonoferon"...the hemoglobin count, we found, was 50%. Bye to Vellore!

Moral: First eliminate mental and then dental.

As I said long ago:

Red Pills for ills mental
Green Pills for dental
Li'l Blue Pills: Fundamental

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/whowritit.html


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