The era of the family doctor

Looking through the book stand at the airport, I found a rack that said ‘Famous Authors’ but my recent book was not on it. Clearly I have a long way to go. But I suddenly began thinking about an interaction I had with Dr. Raghavachari. I was sitting in his office in Thiruvallikeni flipping through the pages of a magazine called, I think, ‘Outlook’ or something like that. It was a business magazine of the 60s in India that usually had a page of photos of company events and executives in transition. He mischievously looked at me and said, ‘If your father’s picture is not there, he can’t be very famous, can he?’

Dr. Major K. Raghavachari MBBS was a peculiar bird. He had served as a medical doctor in the British army which is probably where he got to resemble the British. He was fair, about 5’ 10” and walked with a stoop, and spoke Tamil like a Britisher might. ‘Pad – ma – na – bhan’ he would call out to his compounder, stressing out each syllable, as if he might otherwise get it wrong. He always wore white; white pants and a white bush-shirt.

Dr. Raghavachari was our family doctor, since he was the Company Physician at Parry & Co. where Anna worked. That meant we would have to go to him (I think everyone did except Amma) when we fell ill, which was not too bad except that his system of seeing patients had a peculiar logic. He did not believe in the ‘first-come-first-served’ principle, so we would have to wait in his waiting room hoping that nobody else pulled rank. All those who were his friends got to see him first. And he would chat with them endlessly while we were fighting our demise in his waiting room. I was a regular visitor to his clinic since I would suffer every month from tonsillitis and would have to go to him for a bottle of tincture benzoine for which he would write a prescription and I would take it to the pharmacy. God help you if you went to him for his signature on some NCC form certifying physical fitness. You had to sit there and wait till you became disabled.

But if you went with Anna, then, of course, you got to pass all those in the waiting room (‘suckers!’) and got to see him right away. He would order a horribly looking cup of coffee for Anna. And you could sit there and chat. I remember chatting with him on all kinds of things. Once, he corrected me when I said ‘preponed’ (as an antonym of postponed. Logical, right?) saying there was no such word. I rushed back home to look it up in the dictionary and he was right! Of course, it is commonly used, in India, at least, and I’m sure the gatekeepers of the language have by now included it at least in the Indian versions of the dictionary.

Dr. Raghavachari was more than a family doctor. He was a family friend. He would visit Patti (Amma’s mother) daily to give her an insulin injection; his clinic was at the other end of the same street (Nallathambi Mudali St, Tiruvallikeni) where she lived. He was also of the genre of physicians who made house calls. The only problem was that he would not come when he was needed but when it suited him, usually after 9.30 pm when he finished his clinic and was on his way home! This irritated Amma no end, who would grumble and say, “Does one have to be on the deathbed for him to come right away?’

Raghavachari and Anna went way back, to the early days in Parrys when Anna was a rising executive and a hockey player and so was Raghavachari. They would both play for the company team.

During 1947-1952, Mohana was parked with Patti at the Nallathambi Mudali St. house, I’m told, and was going to school there. One day, she ran off to a carnival at the Bharath Scouts and Guides field (on the beach road) at the invitation of Dr. Raghavachari who was the official doctor there too. She took part in a running race and even won a prize! The family was in a panic, not knowing where she was. Finally, after she was tracked down, there was a family crisis with Patti declaring that she could not be responsible for Mohana’s truant habits anymore and she had to be sent to Hyderabad pronto (where the rest of the family was). It was Raghavachari who got hold of an air ticket (as ‘Menon’s daughter’ I’m told, perhaps a spare ticket lying around) and shipped her off before she completed her 7th. Standard exams.

But Raghavachari came home many Sundays, when he was at the clinic only half a day. This was a social visit to gossip about Parry & Co. politics and have his cup of coffee (no sugar, I think he was diabetic). He would wait at the gate and honk and one of us would have to go out and open the gate for him to drive in and close it after him. Same thing when he left!

Clearly he did not think much about going home to spend time with his family. His brother-in-law and his family lived with him (living off his largesse, I’m told).

He was also the officiating physician of the Madras Motor Sports Club (Was there only one doctor in Madras at that time?) and got me a pass to attend the annual Sholavaram races. That was cool, walking through the pits, and watching all those racers pollute the air!

Coming to think of it, his inability to speak anything other than English probably was genetic. His brother, Air Vice Marshall K. Narasimhan AVSM also spoke like him. And N. Gopi, (of Kadam – Sharanya fame) who is AVM Narasimhan’s son, is also similarly challenged!

I wonder how many of the doctors in the family remember Raghavachari. Chinni mentioned to Dasharath the other day that I am the only one of the siblings who does not have a doctor (certified or in process) in the family. His only response was, ‘Too late now.”

Catholics, like Hindus, know how their Gods look like (More on Italy)

Catholics are so much like Hindus. All the rituals, the religious imagery, and so on. Every Church and museum and palazzo (palace) had to have its pieta (Jesus after the crucifixion), the Adoration of the Magi (the three wise men at the manger in Bethlehem), Madonna and child, and so on in various interpretations. The churches were gorgeous. We managed to catch some highlights. We were at the Santa Miniato in Florence when the priests were conducting the evening vespers and sang the Gregorian chants. Hauntingly lovely. We were at the Santassima Annunziata (also in Florence) when the morning mass was being conducted by a particularly sonorous priest in front of a tabernacle where the fresco on the wall had the image of Mary whose face is believed to have been painted by an angel. There was a wedding on at the Basilica in Venice with the mammoth organ playing. We took a picture of the bridal couple with their family around them.

There was very little variation in the images of the Christ. I wonder who first conceived how he looked like and that became the dominant paradigm (much like the image of, say, Lakshmi, I guess). There was more variation in the image of Madonna. In some, she looked positively oriental. An early migrant? They all got the image of baby Jesus horribly wrong. Baby Krishna looks much better, in any variation.

I did look at the ‘Last supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan (allowed in groups of 15, reservations made about two months in advance) called the ‘Cenacola Vinciano.’ About five hundred years old. Da Vinci has painted three windows in the back of the room. Now, I have been to the room where the last supper took place in Jerusalem and that room has only two windows. Who are you going to believe, me or Leonardo?

I ran into a protest group of atheists and rationalists in front of the statue of Bruno at the Campo de’ Fiori piazza in Rome. There were about a dozen of them, with placards saying ‘NO God, http://www.nogod.it/) and flags announcing their group (UAAR, and some stuff in Italian.) The average age was about 60, having been brought down significantly by one 30 year old woman. They took turns to speak and tourists were all around clicking their cameras. Two vans of carabinieri (police) were nearby, more police that protestors. The only risk from the protestors that I could see was the possibility that some of them may have a heart attack wile protesting.)

We also did the Jewish quarter in Florence, including a visit to the Synagogue. The guide there was insistent that the community was well integrated locally, and spoke an Italian dialect with some Hebrew words, and followed the Italian rite. They were there from Roman times, and were neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic (the two major ethnic groups in Judaism), he said. They were also a mixture of Conservative and Reform in their practices.

Transport: We did all our travel between cities by rail. Very convenient, with lots of connecting trains and easy to get seats even in this rush season. We did get ripped off by buying an ItalySaver Pass; for the travel we did, individual tickets should have been the way to go. Even with the Pass, we had to stand in line to make reservations anyway and pay extra for that. Chinni was very good at figuring out the local bus and metro systems in all the places.

Italy requires you to buy your bus/train tickets from the Tabacchi (newsstand/tobacco shop) which can explain why so many people still smoke in Italy. But oh! Those cities are a paradise for two-wheelers. The narrow streets and high cost of petrol does that to you. But it was a pleasure to see the range of vehicles – of all makes, and cc’s,(50 to 1200), two and three wheelers, the latter with two or one wheel in front, with tops and without, etc. What was interesting to see was the determination with which most two-wheeler riders were trying to add to the noise pollution and in wearing out their brake linings. When the lights changed to green, they would zoom even while seeing that the next light, 200 meters away was changing to red. It gave them a chance to screech to a halt and then zoom again.

One taxi driver in Rome lived up to the reputation of that genre. Getting to the station from the hotel, he first tried to convince me to go with him to the airport rather than take the train and mumbled when I insisted he go to the station. Then I realized that his meter was running higher than it should – he probably started it before he got to the hotel. So I ended up paying twice the fare I did for the journey in the reverse direction!

A fair amount of bicycles on the streets too. In Florence, the guidebook says that the city offered free bicycles for those who wanted them, if you could find the stands. I found the stand in Rome and was tempted to take one, but could not figure out the instructions about their use. (Apparently you visit an office and get a pre-paid card and then use it to release the bikes from the automated stands they are tied to.)

Rome, with all its monuments, and ruins from centuries BC gave you that sense of continuity of history. There would be an internet café in a 600 year old building. (Signs all around these cities in Italy tell you the geneology of the building.) They have started holding concerts in the Colosseum, a sports arena of over 1500 years old. You can see people jogging in the grassy oval of the Circus Maximus, where Ben Hur and his contemporaries raced chariots.

Italy is not doing a favor to its immigrants. With a falling population growth rate, it needs immigrants, but the police regularly chase the ones we see around the tourist sites. The Africans have a tight grip on the trade in spurious handbags. You see them at all the tourist sites. The South Asians are working in restaurants as waiters or in tourist stalls selling souvenirs. Some sell dark glasses, cleverly arranged on a large board, that can be quickly unfurled to resemble a table, and quickly folded to run when the police decide it was time to chase. Haroon, from Bangla Desh, trying to eke out a living selling roses was thrilled when Chinni and I flung our random Bengali phrases at him. He claimed to have landed there 2 years ago after paying 13,000 euro to a dalal who claimed there was a future in Italy where he could make money. (IMF projection is 0.3% growth for Italy this year.) He complained that there were many Bangla Deshis in town but they would not help him. It was an Indian who told him about the rose trade. (He promptly dialed Borun da on his cell phone and I had to speak to Borun and fling more phrases.) The Chinese, (oh, those smart Chinese) were running the restaurants and shops. They also have a strong hold on the wholesale trade of souvenirs etc. Recent clashes between locals and Chinese traders shows some resentment is building.

I hope I have triggered your interest. It was a great trip! So pack your bags. We’ll be happy to send you the maps and guide books.