Hats and Doctors: Stories Read online

  Dr Avasthi was certainly not a degree-holding doctor. He was a senior clerk in the education department of the Secretariat, but he had started practising homeopathy along with working as a clerk, and slowly he had become more of a doctor and less of a clerk. He was cheerful, friendly—a lover of literature and art, and he had earned quite a name for himself. The other clerks handled his work and, when he wasn’t being called before very important officers to listen to their complaints and dole out pills, Dr Avasthi spent his time at the office studying large thick books on homeopathy. Everyone was his patient, from the ministers right down to the errand boys. His practice had done so well that he really didn’t have any need for a job. But when it came right down to it, he was a clerk at heart. He was about to retire in three or four years and the lure of his pension had kept him stuck to the office. There was a popular story in the Secretariat about a particularly strict superintendent who had scolded him once and told him that if he came to the office late, or did any other non-office work on the job, he would be dismissed. But only one month later, the superintendent’s son had fallen very ill. When all the other doctors in the city had forsaken him, he took refuge with Dr Avasthi. He fell at his feet, pleading, ‘Do whatever it takes, just save my son, please.’ Dr Avasthi had made him fit as a fiddle again with just four packets of powder.

  Mrs Goyal praised this story rapturously. ‘That day, same as today,’ she would say when she was telling the story, ‘not just the superintendent—not even the Secretary or the Minister—has had the courage to say a single word of complaint against him.’

  These days, she advised her acquaintances to consult Dr Avasthi for every sickness imaginable and was constantly praising the virtues of homeopathy as compared to allopathy. ‘Sister (or brother), homeopathy hits the mark like an arrow,’ she’d say, ‘illnesses that even important surgeons can’t fix can be cured by these teeny-tiny homeopathic tablets in just days.’ And she would tell them how Dr Avasthi had fixed a tumour in the uterus of a girlfriend of hers with just one round of medicine: after the birth of her child, her friend had started to feel a heaviness below her navel and, when she started feeling pain even when she was sitting in a jolting rickshaw, her husband had taken her to the hospital. The doctor had said, ‘It’s a tumour; we’ll have to operate. Come during the cold season!’ She had practically died right then and there just hearing the word ‘operate’. In the midst of this, someone gave her Dr Avasthi’s address. He gave her four doses of medicine. But she lived in Chowk and Dr Avasthi lived on Park Road. She took the medicine but she didn’t go again. Her husband was a little eccentric. Right in the beginning of December he took her to the hospital, thinking that if she had to have an operation, they should book her a room in time. When the doctor examined her he was astonished and said in English, ‘It is not there. It has completely vanished!’

  And reversing the sentences, Mrs Goyal would repeat that part of the story in her thin voice with its convent-English accent, ‘It’s true! The doctor said, ‘“It has completely vanished. It is not there!”’

  Everything his wife had said about Dr Avasthi passed through Mr Goyal’s mind as he lay there on his bed. Despite his headache a smile spread across his lips. A few moments later he said, ‘Give me two Aspro tablets.’

  ‘But there’s no Aspro in the house,’ said his wife. ‘I’ll call Dr Avasthi and ask him what he thinks.’

  And before he could stop her, Mrs Goyal had gone into the office and called Dr Avasthi. When she came back, she said, ‘That’s what I said, didn’t I, why don’t you just take four Belladonna 30 tablets? That’s exactly what Dr Avasthi said too.’

  ‘Could you just call Dr Chatterji, please,’ Mr Goyal said, mentioning his favourite allopath, of whom his wife had taken leave long ago.

  ‘Did he ever tell you what medicine to take over the phone,’ Mrs Goyal said with irritation, ‘that he’ll tell you this time? If you want I’ll call him, he’ll come and take a look, but if I call now he won’t come until nine-thirty. He leaves his Care Centre at nine o’clock. Just do what I say, I’m going to give you four tablets of Belladonna. If you don’t feel better, I’ll call whatever doctor you want.’

  Before he could object, his wife picked up a small bottle lying on the portable coal heater and tore off a scrap from the newspaper. She dropped four pills into it and said, ‘Open your mouth!’

  Mr Goyal opened his mouth reluctantly. He tasted a light pungency on his tongue along with sweetness. The pills must have been soaked in the medicine, because one or two marks were left on the paper.

  Half an hour later, Mr Goyal’s headache had disappeared.

  The next day, Mr Goyal, wearing one of his old boat-shaped hats, went with his wife to Dr Avasthi to get some more medicine. While he was preparing the medicine, Dr Avasthi asked him how the pain in his head felt now. Mr Goyal told him that he had taken Belladonna and that it had made him feel much better. Dr Avasthi then began to enumerate the merits of Belladonna.

  He was praising the miracles of homeopathy and telling him which deadly illnesses he had cured for whom, when Mr Goyal revealed to him the real reason behind his headache and said, ‘All the world wanders about bareheaded: I’m the only one who has to walk around wearing a hat, not just in winter but even in the middle of summer. Let’s see if you can cure me of that.’

  They say that even a rock will get worn down if a rope moves back and forth across it often enough. His wife’s chatter had finally made an impression on Mr Goyal.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Dr Avasthi, as he prepared the powders. When he was done, he placed a large book in front of him and began turning the pages. After a few moments, he said, ‘Here we go, found it.’

  And he read aloud in English: ‘A Person Who Wears a Headdress Even in Summer.’ He closed the book, took some pills out of a bottle, shook another bottle, dropped one or two drops of medicine on to the pills and said, ‘Open your mouth.’

  Mr Goyal opened his mouth. Dr Avasthi poured the powder into his mouth and told him, ‘There. God willing, your hat will come off in three days.’

  In three days Mr Goyal’s hat did come off, but he started feeling so jumpy he had to go back to Dr Avasthi. Dr Avasthi made him up another powder, told him to open his mouth and poured it all in.

  After three days he didn’t feel any better: the jumpiness had increased, his appetite had completely died, his urine had turned yellow. Mr Goyal moved back to Dr Chatterji’s Care Centre.

  There was always a large crowd there. The round table and the round bench around it in the middle of the big hall outside was for the middle-class, cultured, educated patients: it was packed to the gills. There wasn’t an inch of free space on the benches which were set aside on either side of the door for the lower-class patients; in fact, some women were even sitting on the floor next to the benches. Mr Goyal parked his scooter near the door and went inside. He took an old edition of a weekly paper from the round table and, propping his elbows on the right side along the counter, he stood and waited. He had opened the newspaper, but he couldn’t get himself to read it. All his attention was focused on his turn coming up.

  Mr Goyal liked the cleanliness and order of Dr Chatterji’s clinic quite a lot. What he didn’t like was this crowd. Whether you came first or last, you would definitely have to sit and wait for your turn for an hour and a half to two hours. Dr Chatterji was on duty from eight in the morning until noon, and then in the evening, from six to nine o’clock. He never saw anyone out of turn, no matter how important they were. He never went on visits during clinic hours. If someone got there early to take the first turn, he would most definitely have to sit and wait just as long for the doctor to get there and, if he got there late, he would have to wait for him to take care of the other patients.

  After an hour and a half, Mr Goyal’s turn came. Dr Chatterji was sitting all neat and tidy behind his little table in his little room. The books on his little table were arranged in order, and he wrote out his prescriptions—which only his
compounder could read—very quickly on small slips of paper. Under the piece of glass that covered his table he had pasted three typed directives for his patients:

  —Please do not rest your elbows on the table!

  —Please do not touch anything lying on the table!

  —Please keep your children away from the table!

  Behind him there was a partition, on each side of which were two doors that led to the two examination rooms—one for the middle-class patients, the other for the lower-class patients. Mr Goyal was always amazed at the speed with which Dr Chatterji took care of his patients. When he came out of the examination room after looking at a patient he always hit the bell before writing out the prescription, and then motioned to the next patient to go into the other examination room. He would write out the prescription and give it to the previous patient and then go in to look at the next one. As soon as he heard the sound of the bell, the compounder would send in two more patients.

  Sometimes, Mr Goyal felt truly amazed by Dr Chatterji’s speediness and he wondered how many miles the doctor must cover in one day, walking back and forth between his table and the examination rooms.

  As soon as he entered Dr Chatterji’s room, he greeted him; the doctor acknowledged his greetings without looking up from writing out the previous patient’s prescription.

  A fake cockroach had been pinned to the partition behind the doctor. Under the cockroach hung a lizard with its tail crooked. The first time Mr Goyal had come to Dr Chatterji’s clinic, both these creatures had looked completely real to him, and for quite some time he had waited for the lizard to leap up and seize the cockroach in its jaws. Even though he had since learnt that both were fake, he always found himself riveted by the cockroach and the lizard when he went to Dr Chatterji’s clinic.

  As he sat gazing up at them now, Mr Goyal nearly rested his elbows on the table without thinking about it, when his eyes fell upon the directives under the glass. Quickly he sat up straight. Just then the doctor addressed him, ‘Tell me, how can I help you today?’

  Mr Goyal told him his problems: his heart felt all heavy, his appetite was gone and his urine had turned yellow.

  The doctor motioned to him to go inside. Mr Goyal went in and lay down. After a few moments the doctor came inside. He checked his pulse, looked at his tongue, felt his stomach a little and then said, ‘You work night and day, you travel around on a scooter. You need to do a little walking.’ He left the room. When Mr Goyal came back outside, Dr Chatterji put the prescription in his hand and said to him, ‘I’ve prescribed medicine for three days. You’ll have to get injections of calcium and vitamin B. Take your medicine, take the injections, do some walking, everything will get better.’

  And he got up and went into the other room, where a lower-class patient was lying on the brown oilskin spread over the rough table. He stepped inside and pulled the curtain shut.

  Mr Goyal went outside and gave the prescription to the compounder, for which the compounder took five rupees and sixty paise. It was ready after half an hour. When he was walking down the stairs of the Care Centre, Mr Goyal cast a glance at the sweepers and labourers sitting on the benches, those lower-class patients for whom Dr Chatterji made no concessions. And he laughed involuntarily at the name of that clinic which announced its so-called concern.

  It had recently snowed in Kashmir, Shimla, Nainital and Mussoorie. A cold wave came through the town so that even though the days had been getting hotter and the sunlight was unbearable, it was suddenly so cold that people had to dig out their overcoats. Mr Goyal seldom went out when it was cold, but recently, according to the doctor’s orders, he had been going out walking every day. Sometimes, he felt so overheated that he would walk without an overcoat, muffler or hat all the way to Gautam Palli, and sometimes even as far as Shivaji Street. But despite all the walking he didn’t feel the slightest bit better. His heart felt even heavier than before, and his appetite was almost gone.

  He had already been given three rounds of injections, when one day his wife exclaimed, ‘Your eyes look all yellow!’

  Mr Goyal made it to Dr Chatterji’s that evening and told him he had jaundice. The doctor pushed down the skin beneath his eyes a little and looked carefully. There was no way he would be able to see that pale yellow in the electric light. He said, ‘You people have very active imaginations. There’s no jaundice here at all. Come in the morning, we’ll see.’

  The next day Mr Goyal came again. Looking at his eyes this time, Dr Chatterji remarked carelessly, ‘Yes, it seems like a little bit of jaundice; this medicine won’t work! You’ll have to take another injection.’

  Mr Goyal was going to tell him—as he had already told him several times before—that his urine was also looking yellowish. Dr Chatterji never listened to what he said. He wrote out the prescription on a slip of paper and gave it to him, instructing him not to have any milk or ghee or bread for a few days and to eat plenty of fruit and boiled vegetables. Then he went into the examination room to examine the next patient waiting for him.

  By this time, Mr Goyal had already thrown away twenty-five or thirty rupees. He felt extremely angry with the doctor. ‘I told him, the colour of my urine is yellow now, I feel jumpy, I’m overheated … and he gave me vitamin B injections!’ And for the first time Mr Goyal felt irritated by the speed with which Dr Chatterji managed to take care of three patients at once, that speed which he used to admire so much.

  When he came home he cursed the doctor up and down, picked up all his medicines and dashed them to the ground and told his wife that from today onward he would drink only sugar cane juice and eat only fruit and boiled vegetables. His younger brother had once had jaundice and he had found some relief from drinking only sugar cane juice. He was going to take the same cure and he would never let his head be turned by another doctor.

  Mrs Goyal remarked once in a subdued voice that perhaps Dr Avasthi had given him some high-potency medicine, maybe he should just ask him for an antidote.

  But that suggestion prompted such an enraged glance from Mr Goyal that she did not have the courage to say anything more on the subject. She quietly sent the servant out to get some mosambis and oranges, and some vegetables.

  Mr Goyal’s health had become particularly terrible by now. His entire body had turned yellow along with his eyes, but he would take refuge with no doctor. His wife sat in the chair next to his bed all day, constantly embroidering or knitting something and talking about this and that; but she never ever mentioned Dr Avasthi or the word homeopathy even by accident. Slowly Mr Goyal’s health started getting a little better, he started getting hungry; the yellow in his eyes began to fade. Then one day, his wife mentioned Hakim Mehboob Alam Chishti.

  Mrs Goyal was knitting a woollen beret for her nephew. Every year her nephew went to the mountains and she wanted to knit him warm clothing and send it to him in time. Suddenly she said, ‘Pandey’s wife is really taken with Hakim Chishti. Her sister got typhoid, then somehow lots of heat went to her head and she went crazy. All the doctors tried to cure her and failed, even Dr Avasthi was treating her for a few days’—she said this just to make Mr Goyal happy—‘but nobody could do anything. In the end he suggested they send her to Agra, Bareilly or Kanki. Everyone recommended Kanki. Her sister was so young and so beautiful—they were planning a huge wedding for her. That summer was the most auspicious time for the marriage to take place. Mr Pandey was not prepared to send her to Bareilly or Kanki, but there was no way she could be looked after in the house. Just then someone told them about Hakim Chishti. He is seventy years old and he is a very famous doctor. He travels all over; from here to as far as Calcutta and Amritsar. He made her better in six months. If you want, I’ll call for him.’

  Mr Goyal wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. He was watching her hands knitting the almost-finished red beret. All of a sudden he asked, ‘Can’t you knit one or two hats like that for me?’

  ‘Hats!’ His wife looked at him with surprise.

&nb
sp; ‘That colour is too flashy, it would be best if you could knit me two hats, dark blue or dark gray, to match my suits.’

  ‘I’ll get some wool and start today.’ Then she again suggested calling for Hakim Chishti. She said, ‘You’ve grown weak. I’ll have Hakim Chishti called here, he’ll give you such strong medicine you won’t feel hot any more and your body will get strong again.’

  ‘I’m better now,’ chuckled Mr Goyal, ‘because my head just started to feel cold again. You didn’t notice, today I sneezed two or three times. Why don’t you just get some wool the colour of my suits and knit me a couple of hats.’

  One week later, when Mr Goyal, now healthy, emerged from his home wearing a blue suit, there was a woollen beret on his head which drooped a little to the left and matched his suit. His friends were sorry he had grown so thin, but their admiration for the new hat he sported made Mr Goyal forget all his abuse at the hands of doctors.

  The Ambassador

  The stranger’s beard was scraggly, his salt-and-pepper hair brittle and unkempt; he wore a dirty shirt with no buttons, a loose coat full of holes, baggy trousers patched and torn, and boots that seemed worn down by centuries of use. The houseboy thought he was crazy and was chasing him out of the bungalow, when the stranger saw me. He advanced towards me, brushing the houseboy aside.

  ‘Hello, Bakhshi!’

  He held out his hand to me warmly and, in perfect English, told me that my houseboy was impolite—a complete fool—and should be turned out at once.

  His English pronunciation was perfect; there was such confidence in his tone. Inadvertently I reached for his filthy hand as I tried to recognize his face. In the whole face there were only eyes: sharp, stubborn, careless, but deep, nonetheless; they looked quite familiar. But I had lost the rest of his features in a haze of forgetfulness.