Disease called destiny

Millions of people in this country and thousands in Delhi do not see a doctor when they fall ill. After all, for them poverty is a more d...

Millions of people in this country and thousands in Delhi do not see a doctor when they fall ill. After all, for them poverty is a more demanding illness. And when they see a doctor, they see someone who is an imposter or a quack. Their medicines often give them more diseases than any relief.

I was doing a story on quacks recently when I came across a family whose every member was a victim of quacks. I had gone to a doctor8217;s clinic in Kalyanpuri, an economically backward area in east Delhi. The doctor8217;s clinic was a tiny shed, about which he seemed embarrassed. It was crowded with patients. One of them was Dheeru. The doctor introduced us as he had promised to show me at least one person on any given day who had been a victim of drugs given by quacks.

Dheeru had been bleeding from his bowels ever since he started taking medicines from a family doctor8217;, actually a pharmacist. He had gone to his doctor8217; after he had a slight fever. But now his stomach had turned hard as bricks, as his second wife told me.So I followed him to the slum colony in neighbouring Khichripur so that he would take me to the quack himself. But the quack was not available that day and the meeting did not take place.

I went to Dheeru8217;s house instead. Where I noticed Rathiram, who had accompanied his older brother Dheeru, his wife and two babies to the clinic. His eyes had red veins, though they were a murky sort of brown. He began by defending their family physician 8212; the quack. Actually he had been all right for us. But in my case he failed. And now again in my brother8217;s case, he said. Rathiram had a headache, which had been there for the past one year.

The quack gave him different combinations of medicines for several months, with no results. Finally he went to his village in Jaunpur and found a vaid who gave him a powder that was effective. But he left the medicines at home and now he can8217;t get it in Delhi.

But more that his headache he seemed to be ailing from another disease altogether. In fact, the entire lot in the househad the same disease 8212; their destiny. Rathiram8217;s wife died when she was barely 18 and a mother of two daughters. And he has since been supporting his daughters by selling vegetables, pulling rickshaws8230; and coping with his headache.

His brother also had a similar story. His wife Rajni looked so very young that I even asked her how she was related to Dheeru. He was twice her age, she told me. It is my destiny whether for good or bad, she added. She said she was a widow and was married off to Dheeru, whose wife and three children had died. Death seemed such a natural thing to happen that I forgot to ask her how they had all died.

Story continues below this ad

I did not repeat the mistake while talking to Rathiram. His wife Maheshwari died of tuberculosis, he told me. Maybe, he was thinking of her for the first time after a decade. He probably surprised himself by being able to accurately recall her name and the day she died. I assured him that I would myself take him to a good doctor. But he declined the offer. He would go to Jaunpurand get that medicine, he shrugged. When I asked him why he did not marry, he replied that he could not trust his children with another woman.

But that is to digress. The quack8217;s story is not over. Rathiram8217;s younger brother Mohan was afflicted with severe pain in his groin. The quack tried several medicines. The youth, who was prostrate with pain, was finally taken to a hospital where they detected a tumour. He was operated on and is now recovering. He is barely 25, married and with two kids. That was a family of sick persons.

Now if the sons8217; ailments were not enough, their mother was old and dying in Dheeru8217;s jhuggi with flies attending on her. Their father was dead and he had left about a lakh rupees, half of which had been spent on quacks so far.Who are Dheeru and Rathiram to deserve so many words? No-one, and rightly so their story was reduced to a sentence in an earlier feature I did on quacks. Maybe this time they will be luckier.