The doctor and his ‘gang’

Ranbir Parmar

THE doctor who runs a nursing home in the neighbourhood is my close friend. Full of eccentricities, he seems to be a character straight out of a PG Wodehouse novel.

He is careless about his appearance. A mocking smile almost always adorns his face, which is unshaven most of the time. ‘I hate the routine of shaving,’ he once confided to me. ‘Once a month, I call a barber to give me a close haircut and shave my face as well.’ He wears oversized shirts and baggy trousers, which are quite loose at the waist. I have heard that a nurse is entrusted with the task of keeping his trousers in place when he is bending over patients during a surgery.

An ardent nature lover, he is more excited by the sunrise in the distant hills or the chirping of birds in his backyard than partying in five-star hotels or attending medical conferences.

He is reputed to be an excellent surgeon, but he has undergone a few heart surgeries himself. ‘His heart is only 33 per cent active,’ a cardiologist and a common friend told me. ‘Usually, people don’t survive with less than 50 per cent activity of the heart. Perhaps the prayers and good wishes of the patients he has saved are keeping him alive.’

Having a keen sense of humour, he keeps sharing amusing anecdotes. Once, an Army officer, middle-aged and slightly overbearing, came to his clinic with his young son, who was suffering from acute abdominal pain. Wearing a lungi and an oversized striped shirt, the doctor was repairing a generator. With his dishevelled hair and unshaven face, he looked more like a mechanic than a doctor. He asked the boy to lie down on the bed and was about to examine him when the father intervened: ‘Mister! Won’t you call the doctor first?’ My friend hurriedly went inside and returned after changing into a shirt and trousers. He examined the patient and declared that it was a case of acute appendicitis needing immediate surgery. The officer, who was seeing it all with disbelieving and disapproving eyes, refused to get his son operated at that clinic and took him away.

After an hour or so, the doctor was called to another clinic and was surprised to find the same boy waiting for him. The father glared at the doctor and left that clinic too with his son. Then, my friend got a call from an ENT surgeon running a clinic nearby about a young patient suffering from abdominal pain. He found out that it was that boy all over again. He issued instructions for preparing the patient for surgery, calling an anaesthetist, and keeping the back door of the clinic open. A few hours later, the doctor emerged from the operating room, wiping his hands on a towel. The Army officer, who was waiting in the lobby, was stumped. He blurted out: ‘It’s you again! You are running a gang, aren’t you?’

‘Your son is in perfect shape, officer!’ the doctor said, suppressing a smile. The next day, he received a gift-wrapped bottle of Chardonnay wine with a handwritten note: ‘Thanks, doctor and your gang! May your tribe increase!’

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