The portions where the caste people lived had better houses. But even they were small, one or two-room structures with tiny doorways through which you had to bend to get in. Windows were non-existent or wee-sized pigeon-hole like structures set high on the walls. Most of them had native tile roofs. None of the houses had toilets except a few—the previous headman’s house being one of them. Of course, they had no headmen now that democracy had reached even this remote area. The chief now was an elected representative of the people—the panchayat president. The present president’s house had a toilet; he even had a concrete roof. As for the rest of the people, they used the fields around, any public land, forest land or the side of roads. On the second day of his search, Dr Ravikumar located a two-room house with some land around. It had brick walls. The roof was made up of row after row of crude half-barrel-shaped native tiles. These, with their convexity facing up, interlocked with another row of tiles that you could not see that had their concavities facing upwards. There was no toilet. Nobody had lived in it for years because it was thought to be haunted. The owners told Ravikumar that he could use the house, rent-free. Dr Ravikumar had no qualms about accepting the offer. Ghosts were the least of his problems. But a toilet would have to be built. He entrusted this work to a mason, who promised to have it ready by the time he arrived with his things two weeks later.
As he spent the next day cleaning up the place and having it whitewashed, he often thought to himself, I wonder how Malathi will like it. He had yet to hear Malathi complain about anything. But what would prepare her for this? From the beginning, Malathi had known she would not have the comfortable life of a typical ‘doctor’s wife’. It had been an arranged marriage. Ravikumar had seen two other prospective brides before Malathi came along. One was a doctor and the other a physiotherapist. Ravikumar had told them in no uncertain terms at the very first meeting, “I am planning to work among poor people in remote villages. Are you willing for this?” The doctor and would-be bride looked for a moment as though someone had struck her, but she regained her composure almost immediately. “I want to do paediatrics and work in a teaching hospital,” she replied resolutely. “That is a good idea and paediatrics is a good subject,” Ravikumar said. They continued with idle talk but it was clear that the meeting was over. The physio, on the other hand, broke into a frivolous grin, fiddled with the end of her sari and seemed to lose interest in any further conversation.
As for Malathi, her pleasant face wore a mixture of apprehension and excitement as she thought through this over a long interval of silence. “Yes,” she then said, slowly and deliberately. The first six months of their married life were spent in a big secondary-level hospital in Chinalapatti, a town about 70 kilometres away, where Ravikumar had come to learn all-round skills that would help him serve in a smaller place. This hospital was started and run by a charitable trust along Gandhian ideals. Indeed, he was still working there when he made this exploratory trip up the Palani hills and to Pachalur. Malathi was a high school teacher in Chennai before their marriage. She had to resign from her job to join her husband. She was content to keep house, cook and wait for Ravikumar to return from work. Her sincere love, her simple and winsome ways softened Ravikumar’s business-like outlook on life. This subtle change happened ever so naturally that even he did not know it. He smiled more often and laughed more frequently. Difficult as it would be, Malathi would not grumble or pout, this Ravikumar was sure about. Two weeks later, Ravikumar came up the hill in a jeep with their things—a couple of suitcases, some foldable furniture, a cardboard box of medicines, another with books, yet another with aluminium pots and pans. This last box also held a pressure cooker, a humble utensil that would, in the days to come, play a stellar role in their work among the hill people. Their small bureau, which now doubled as a steel trunk, was stuffed with clothes and other articles. To his disappointment, he found that the toilet was not yet ready. The mason had some silly excuse. Now that he was on the scene, Ravikumar was constantly on his back and it was finished within a few days. They put the small foldable steel bed in the inner room, the other became the kitchen, dining and sitting room all rolled into one; its door opened to the outside where a few steps took you down to an open space between the house and road. This open area would be their ‘hospital’, thought Ravikumar wryly, smiling to himself. On the third day, workers came to put it up. Bamboo poles were erected on its four corners. The roof— woven palm leaves quilted onto a framework of casuarina poles—was first put together at waist level so that they could stand on the ground and work on it.
Once it was finished, the whole structure was raised and fastened securely in its final location, eight feet from the ground. The thatched walls reaching up to a man’s height were worked in and before sunset, their hospital was in place. True, it would not keep out the rain but it would shield them from the sun, provide some privacy and regulate the flow of patients. A corner next to the house was walled off from the rest of the space with a double layer of thatch; this would serve as the examination room. The patient would lie on a plastic mat spread out on the sand and the physician would kneel beside him. The space next to it towards the road would be the consultation room, with a foldable steel chair and a stool. With time, the doctor hoped a table would join them. The rest of the space would be the waiting area. The pharmacy was a wooden wall-mounted shelf just inside the front door of the house. It would do, thought Ravikumar as he looked around at it all. There would have to be a grand opening, decided the doctor. So one evening, a few days later, the hospital wore a festive look with its façade festooned with tube lights wrapped around with red and blue cellophane paper. Excited children ran around in circles and two blaring loudspeakers presided over everything. These last symbols of civilisation were a nuisance if you were a neighbour, but they had come to stay and had taken the place of the tom-tom drums that announced major events in bygone days. Everyone within a radius of two kilometres would know that some event was going on. Each would ask next door and soon everyone would know what was happening.
The number of loudspeakers in action was a measure of the grandeur of the affair. A bright pink tape ran across the gap in the thatched wall, which was the entrance to the ‘hospital’. Just outside this was set up the foldable table with a microphone and its stand. If you had asked Dr Ravikumar when the function would start, he would have shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sometime around six. It could be six-thirty, seven? Whenever the panchayat president turns up.” And turn up he did, with a crowd of his sycophants and cronies. ‘Vanakams’ with folded hands were exchanged all around and then the speeches.
Mr Sundaram Chettiar said that he hoped that soon the hospital would grow to such an extent that they would not have to go down to the plains for anything, and of course, the panchayat would offer all possible help. Everybody clapped when the ribbon was cut. The president entered with his entourage in tow, he peeped in at the door of the house, went around the ‘hospital’ and asked a few questions before the vadas and soft drinks were served to all who came. The soft drinks were called ‘colour’ by the village folk, because they were sweet and brightly coloured as opposed to colourless soda. They came in bullet-shaped thick glass bottles; when full, the gas under pressure kept a glass marble compressed against the inside of its narrow mouth. A sharp knock on a wooden plunger with the palm of your hand would pop the marble down into the liquid, which would bubble and froth before tantalising wisps of vapour floated out. Now, the ‘colour’ was ready to be poured out. The marble was cleverly held back by a wedge at the neck of the bottle, so you had to dip it with the bottle turned the correct way if you did not want the glass ball to fall back and impact at the mouth. Then you would have to use the plunger all over again. Indeed, learning to handle a soda bottle was part of every village boy’s growingup. The first few weeks dragged by with a handful of patients each day—old people with aches and pains, children with running noses. It was as if the population was gauging his competence with a few simple throws. He spent some of his time making friends and trekking to nearby villages. By the time he brought Malathi up a month later, the daily number had grown to a respectable 20. But all this changed one day about three months into their stay.
Gowri arrived one evening. Boar Hill that towered over the village on the west was already dark against the twilight sky but fingers of sunshine reached out on either side, bathing the surrounding peaks in brilliant light. She came carried in a litter between four men. As they set her down on the floor, she threw her head from side to side and writhed in pain. Sweat had matted her hair and beaded her forehead; her tired face looked up imploringly as Dr Ravikumar bent down to examine her. She must have been, at the most, eighteen; obviously in her last trimester of pregnancy. Dr Ravikumar put his stethoscope on her swollen abdomen, moving it around till he heard the foetal heart, faint and distant like the ticking of a watch. The baby was alive and the rate was not too bad. But the rest of it was alarming. The head was still floating. He questioned the mother and another woman, who probably was the self-styled midwife, about the details. She had been in labour since yesterday with no progress; her amniotic fluid had already made its appearance late last night. The doctor drew himself away with an anxious look on his face. “She needs an operation; you have to take her down to the plains,” he told the parents.
“We don’t have anybody, we don’t know anybody and we don’t have the means,” said the distraught mother with folded hands and shaking voice. The father, a miserably thin man wearing a lungi and banian, proceeded to fall at the doctor’s feet. “You do something, master,” he cried and as Ravikumar bent down to raise him up, he continued with tears in his eyes, “If you can’t do anything, tell us, and we will take her home.” The doctor tried to reason with them for a good 15 minutes but to no avail. Malathi had heard the commotion and was already at the door as her husband came towards her. They both went in and for a time, stood staring at each other. “They won’t take her down and we can’t do anything here,” said the doctor. “Can’t you try?” said his wife, looking at him hopefully. The doctor thought for a while and replied, “It’s too risky and they might blame us.” “She will die anyway, otherwise. Why don’t you call Mr Sundaram Chettiar and bring him into the picture?” Dr Ravikumar smiled at his wife admiringly as his mind revved and raced to take in all the implications. “Would you help?” he asked her as he went searching for the stuff they had. “Sure,” she said readily. “Don’t forget,” she added, “my major was zoology; I have dissected quite a few frogs and rats.” Yes, they could try. He had a few instruments, gloves, suturing needles and catgut. They could tear up a sheet for linen. But how would they sterilise them? An article he had read in a journal, ‘Tropical Doctor’, some time ago came to mind. They could use the pressure cooker as an autoclave. So that was what they did. Mr Sundaram Chettiar came readily when sent for and promised to support them in case anything should go wrong.
A crude consent form was written, thumb impressions were obtained from Gowri’s parents. Gowri’s husband, who looked as impoverished as his father-in-law, had by now wandered into the scene. He added his own thumb impression to the rest. The dining table in the front room would have to stand in for an operating table; the only problem was that the patient’s leg and foot would stick out. So a tall stool was roped in from somewhere and it served to hold up the patient’s feet. There was just one more thing they would need—a better torch than the small one they had. Night had fallen and even during the day, the room hardly had any light. Mr Chettiar remembered seeing a large and powerful torch in the possession of the manager in one of the estates nearby. The manager used it for hunting and would probably lend it to them, if Mr Chettiar himself went for it. While Mr Chettiar went for the torch, all the other things were gotten ready. Ravikumar was pleased with the torch when it came. Should get one like this, he thought, making a mental note. A good dose of Ketamine, which was a new drug at that time, sent the patient into deep sedation. Ketamine was a safe anaesthetic and the precious little vial was very expensive and now it was half over. Dr Ravikumar thought back on how he had come to have it. The surgeon in Chinalapatti had pressed it into his hands before he left, saying, “At some time, you will find this useful.”
Comments (0)
See all