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To shower, maybe snatch a
bite..then run again in an hour, back into another jerry can of a
bus to work.like helots. All night long, case sheet writing, lab
investigations, urine tests and blood counts. Twenty three ward admissions.
Hell on earth, medicine ward was. Internship sucks.
In two hours, I have to be running back after my whole-night shift to pay
homage to the unit boss who will be on his rounds, checking entries, cross
checking diagnosis, like a presiding deity trampling over us minions like
lord almighty. Dapper and smart. Reeking of after-shave, these professors
just warmed their air-conditioned plush leather chairs for a living.and
hunted us bonded-labor interns for entertainment.
Another elbow ploughed into my ribs, another foot stamped my toes and
another shrill toot pierced my eardrum.a bus stop, a few in, a few out. The
standees in the aisle surged fore and aft. I spotted a vacant spot on the
third row, and furrowed my way forward. "Excuse me." Whatever be the station
of the intern, the visible symbol of status dangling from my shoulders, my
stethoscope, did have some plus points. And in poverty stricken town like
mine here, white coats still commanded reverence. The 'excuse me'
password had an 'open sesame' effect when uttered by a steth-sporting
medico. I almost sat down on the empty aisle-side seat, when I looked
askance at my fellow passenger. Seated on the window side was a gargoyle. A grotesque
caricature. Sunken nasal bridge, leonine features, stubby worn digits,
pustule skin, a leper. Leprosy. Hansen's disease. The biblical curse.
The lepra bacillus ate one up, inside out, outside in. No wonder this seat was
still un-occupied, even in this sardine-packed bus. Leprosy is a universal
taboo. Lepers are shunned.
This one was holding a cheap tabloid in its hands, head was buried in rapt
concentration within the pages. For a second the page moved downwards,
and the leper glanced at me, standing on the aisle, dangling from the
overhead strap. His eyes looked askance at the empty seat beside him. I saw him shake
his head ever so slightly. Then, back he went to reading his tabloid.
Boy, not me! I wasn't going to sit here, not beside this cartoon. Toot toot,
a few in, a few out, the bus stops come and go. My eyes scanned the
headline on the tabloid the leper was holding up. A sex scandal, in lurid detail, in
lusty colour too. Some 'Profumo' like big wig, exposed through a sting
scoop... caught pants down. Hmmmm! I craned my sights to focus on the item, the
intimate details and style of reporting were worth this bumpy ride. Boy, I
was beginning to enjoy this tabloid story. Toot toot, that blighted banshee
whistle again. A few in, a few out. Suddenly I saw the leper move. He stood
up unsteadily. Lepra doesn't spare the toes or foot you know. It erodes them
too, to pitiable stumps. God, what punishment is this, just when I was at
the part where the sting was stung.this cussed creature decides to get off
the bus. I hated the bacillus, and I loathed its victims even more now. Damn
you, I muttered under my breath.
Quickly I side stepped to allow the pachyderm to shuffle out. Just as he was
passing me, I saw the leper look up to my face. Straight. The sunken moist
eyes hovered for a wee moment over my shining stethoscope and starched
white apron. They moved up again to look into eyes, and oscillated ever so
slightly in a nystagmus like side to side tremor. The leper shifted his gaze
at the twin empty seats now, and gestured to me to sit down.
As a punch right into my ribs, the leper removed the neatly folded tabloid
he had tucked under his arm and dusted the vacated seat, then in a coup de
grace, he left the tabloid, its front page bold red font crowing about the
scandal.
Then he was gone. Now read on doctor, his eyes had said. Read on,
uninterrupted, about the sex escapades. Read on, divorced from pathos and
pain, read on, cocooned from suffering and sickness. In sterile comfort.
With a mollified conscience. In a sanitized environ. Hiding yourself from
life and truth, behind a white apron, shielding your soul from truth,
hunger, poverty and illness. In one single moment, through a singular
gesture, this man had taught me what five years at the medical school had
not. Kinship with the ailing, empathy for the afflicted, solace for the
suffering were as powerful therapeutic regimens as drugs and doctors for
those in throes of disease.
That bus ride taught me that though it had taken two and half million years
of life on earth for man to evolve, few of us really had. Into human beings,
may be. As humane ones? No. Only a chosen few had reached that plane of
evolution to become Homo sapiens sapiens. True Man. I hadn't - but a certain
faceless lepra infested passenger on a crowded bus surely had....
(The article originally appeared on www.sulekha.com).
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