Date with a different doctor!

Dr Raghavan was a good doctor and a character. Whatever the ailment, we knew we were in safe hands. He had loads of experience judging by the way he wore his silvery hair long on his head and the generous folds of skin under his eyes!

His "dispensary" was different from "clinics" as we know them today. When we enter a clinic today, we are unsure whether the doctor is in or not. The waiting area is completely barricaded from the room where the doctor takes his prime spot. Hence, we need to accost the attendant and enquire whether the doctor has turned up at all. Invariably, he is absent. Our clinic  doctor always has duties elsewhere. Either he teaches in a medical college and is late to his clinic or he is "doing the rounds" at the hospital wards and hence can't make it on time.

Not so with Dr Raghavan. He stayed close to his dispensary and walked to work every day and walked back at the end of an honest day. At times, we met him on the way and as we kept pace with him, let him know that we also had a stomach upset!

The dispensary was all of one room. As we entered, there was a table at the other end. Dr Raghavan sat behind the table and behind his stethoscope and peered through his glasses that he occasionally wore. If we saw him, he was "in"-never a doubt. He greeted each patient with a flourish, made a couple of polite enquiries and asked him to take a seat. The patient immediately felt at ease and would find it difficult to recollect why he was there in the first place!

There were four wooden chairs on one side and another four on the other all leading to the Dr's table. There was no room for anything more. After all, it was Mumbai and space at a premium.
To the right, there was a wooden barricade with just enough space to squeeze a bed. If Dr Raghavan felt that he must have the patient lie down and have his tummy pressed or have his tongue out, he called him in. Otherwise, he just went from chair to chair and addressed each patient's problem within everyone's earshot! So much for privacy. 
As we sat in the wooden chair, we faced other candidates, scrutinized their features and familiarized ourselves with their problems as well. The problems were the same-"fever" or "sinus" or "cough" and occasionally "bronchitis"- nothing more sinister. Some of them had oiled hair or copiously oiled bald pates so that when they left, they left behind their oily signature on the wall as well! These patterns created a dark halo behind each candidate which made their already pained faces seem even darker! Dr Raghavan never considered repainting the walls or providing a head-rest. Those cosmetics would have to wait a couple of decades.

He prescribed  "mixture" (pronounced "mix-chur") for most people- a panacea (sarva-roga-nivaarini) for every disease. He scrawled something illegible on a piece of paper and we just had to hand it over to the "compounder".
Mr compounder- Velu was a thin, clean, soft-spoken gentleman who sat in a pigeon hole surrounded by bottles and beakers. We never knew how he looked in full. Our access to him was through a tiny hole, just enough to pass the paper and retrieve the medicine! With an artist's precision, he picked up pink, white, light-green tablets, separated them with a scalpel to have the correct number, pounded them, mixed them with some secret potion and poured the concoction into a bottle that every patient had to carry. We felt Mr Compounder was arithmetically challenged and thought "twelve" was the biggest number. He always said "twelve" which meant that we had to pay twelve rupees as Doctor's fees and medicine cost!
A couple of doses of "mix-chur" and we were on our feet regardless of whether we had a stomach ache or a headache!

Dr Raghavan could switch languages with the finesse of a radio anchor in the talk shows of today. To some, he spoke in Tamil, to others in Gujarati. At times, he would exclaim mockingly- "shatti-batti paaije? Bar bar! Aankin kaai?" (you want a certificate? Good! Good! What else?) in Marathi when someone said that he needed a medical "certificate" (shatti-batti!) for playing truant from office or school!
A man of taste- he had a ear for classical music. He played carnatic music over his music system at home, like rock music- so loudly  that we could hear it  from the adjoining building. Maybe, he danced to it as well- we don't know.
He had a sense of humour-it tickled him when he played Semmangudi's music blaring over the speaker when Semmangudi himself camped in our building (whenever he visited Mumbai). As per hearsay, Semmangudi wanted the "brahma-raakshasan" [1]
 toned down so that he could relax and not have to listen to himself! Dr Raghavan had made his point and am sure would have let loose one of his uproarious, inimitable, convulsive guffaws!


[1]  "brahma-raakshas" is a technical term. It refers to a special brand of "rakshasas" or ghosts who make a lot of noise and eat up the hapless victim! One becomes a brahma rakshasa in the next birth if we study a subject and acquire the knowledge but refuse to share it with others! So better share your half-baked knowledge!
The doyen of carnatic music, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer had a colourful vocabulary which matched his music!

P.S: "Dispensaries" in those days were sometimes called "aaspatri" by Tamil folk. Doctors always worked at aaspatris. Obviously a corruption of "hospital". However can you convert "Hospital" to "aaspatri" unless of course the person comes from Tadipatri! (place in Andhra Pradesh on the Mumbai-Chennai route)?
In the North, a doctor worked at an "aspataal"... a shade closer to the original, but still twisted. 
The French pronounce it as "Au-pi-taal". Any more possibilities please!?

We learnt L'Hospital's rule in Calculus. Any takers for Aaspatri's rule!?