Superstition, science & seven doctors

Author Image: 

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Patralekha Chatterjee

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By Yatish Agarwal [4]

Rs 195

It is not the world which most English-speaking middle class newspaper readers are familiar with. Many of the stories here are soaked in a brand of rusticity which is fast disappearing even from rural India.

This is a world where “once a week, the village chowkidar visits the police station in a nearby town to mark his attendance,” where “every ditch and pond is covered with lotus leaves.” But quaint as it may seem to the average urbanite, A Hundred Lamps: Classic Stories about the World of Medicine is a valuable addition to the expanding universe of physicians’
stories. It offers a vivid glimpse of how doctors work and live in that complex space where Bharat meets India. This is a book not only about the doctor as a clinician, but also as a human being with all the attendant frailties, drama and excitement.
Edited by Dr Yatish Agarwal, a doctor-writer, and published by Rupa Publications, this slim volume of short stories consists of mostly translations from the works of some of Hindi literature’s best-known proponents. The anthology of seven stories touches on the moral code, the social pressures and the political pulls that doctors and the communities they work with have to navigate in village India. Some of the stories also explore the wider universe where allopathic doctors have to learn to share the complex space where science and superstition collide.
The stories are not about the science of medicine. They seek to delve into the private world of those practising medicine, their victories and vulnerabilities.
“While medical researchers and doctors continue to wage a war against disease and death, tinker with man’s genetic code, reset the length of the telomere — the terminal chromosome — on human cells in a bid to prolong the human lifespan, the practice of medicine, however, is fast losing the singular divinity it was once celebrated for. The tearing of socio-economic fibres, the stresses and straints of greed
and commerce, political pressures, and the inequitable distribution of human knowledge has overrun
the garden of medicine,” writes Dr Agarwal in his introduction.
One of the finest stories in the book is A Hundred Lamps by Phanishwar Nath Renu, among the most successful and influential writers of modern Hindi literature in the post-Premchand era. It tells the tale of an idealistic doctor who struggles to save lives and bring comfort in hamlets of rural Bihar, against daunting odds. Its protagonist is Dr Prashant, a young man with an MBBS degree who turns down a government scholarship to go abroad and requests a minister to post him near Purnea, Bihar, where malaria and black fever cause a surge of deaths every year.
Though the story, excerpted from the Hindi novel Maila Anchal, was first published in 1954, many of the vignettes ring true even today. “That was Parvati’s mother. She’s a witch. She has devoured three families — didn’t spare a single soul! First her husband, then her brother-in-law and his wife, and after that her son and daughter. Now all she is left with is her grandson, and she has started eating him as well.”
This is the terrain Prashant, the young doctor, has to
navigate as he tries to live up to his own dreams. It is a
totally “new world”, he
confides in a letter to a friend. “I am presently carrying out a general survey and examining the blood samples of people. Pyaru tells me even the crows in this area are infected with malaria.” Through Prashant’s narrative, we see and experience the crests and troughs, the joys and the passions of a doctor who is trying to get used to being treated like a demi-god.
Mantra by Munshi Premchand is another powerful story. It is a compelling portrayal of a successful urban physician who loses and rediscovers his humanity through a series of accidents. The golf-playing Dr Chadha is too busy to attend to a seven-year-old child though his father, a poor man, begs him. The child dies. Years later, Dr Chadha’s son is saved by the same man whom the doctor had turned away. The story ends on a note of inner turmoil, with the doctor’s confession: “He had once come to me with a patient. I was going out for a game of golf and refused to see his patient. When I recall the events of that day, I feel so terribly guilty now. I shall find him, touch his feet and ask for forgiveness. I’m sure he won’t accept even a small gift.”
In another story, The Doppelganger, the protagonist continues to be haunted by what he went through as a young man.
A Hundred Lamps has its luminous moments. It also has its shadows. If there is one thing that disrupts the enjoyment of reading this book, it is the uneven quality of the stories in the anthology. Powerful stories which capture the agony, ardour and angst of physicians sit alongside weak narratives. This could be partly due to weak translation.
But on balance, it is a book I would recommend to anyone who wants a more rounded view of the medical profession. There are many books about doctors and by doctors, but these are mostly about those who practise overseas. It is to Dr Agarwal’s credit that he sought to contribute the rich and challenging experiences of Indian doctors in villages and cities to this genre.