An ode to doctors

Those who repair and remedy, soothe and settle.

“Not all heroes wear capes. In the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the real heroes wear scrubs.”

It was a modest clinic, housed on the ground floor of an unprepossessing one-storey structure, consisting of a tiny reception area which led to a larger room, divided into three austere examination rooms by plywood partitions and flanked by a dimly lit space, where the compounder sat, behind a small window.

The husband-and-wife doctor couple who ran this modest medical centre, right below their own home, did not even have a demarcated space for themselves to meet patients, but shuffled constantly in and out of the examination rooms, as and when required.

Those were the days of innocence; of leading robust and unencumbered lives, when we were encouraged to adopt pursuits and practices that would give today’s woke, politically correct Google-informed and germ-obsessed parents a million nightmares.

Blithely ignorant of any consequences, we wolfed down calorie-loaded white breads and sugary desserts, untouched by screens and blocks, we played all day under the hot sun; unmindful of hygiene and germs, we ate off the streets, drank water straight from taps, guzzled instant coffee twice a day (because it made the milk taste better) and ran around barefoot and free in the playing fields of our youth, with not a thought of contagions and accidents, or bugs and microbes.

And when all this caught up with us, we were duly dragged off to the friendly neighbourhood family doctor, who after a predictable routine of knocking on our tummies, having us stick out our tongues, examining our torsos with his stethoscope and feeling our foreheads for fever, would give us a little scrap of illegible paper, which we were to hand over to the compounder, ever ready in his dimly-lit cave, to pound and pulverise the vilest potions he could lay his hands on, to punish us back to good health.

Today, as doctors and other medical professionals are at the very forefront of the planet’s epic battle against the coronavirus pandemic, where their expertise and prowess have been called into action so urgently to save humanity, I can’t help but think of the sea of change in recognising the significance that doctors play in our lives.

Today, it is to our doctors and medical fraternity that the world turns, for hope and deliverance. And it is to their eternal credit — throwing caution and thoughts of their own personal safety to the winds, it is our doctors who have risen to this generational unprecedented challenge facing humanity.

“Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity,” said Hippocrates, and to be sure, Mumbai has had a rich history of humane, empathetic, and compassionate doctors — internationally renowned gynaecologists, celebrated surgeons, acclaimed oncologists, distinguished psychiatrists and eminent general practitioners who have graced this city and left lasting memories as their legacies.

Indeed, over the years, Mumbai’s doctors have earned for themselves an illustrious reputation and much renown. Doctors who have gone above and beyond the call of their duty to attend to the elderly and ailing; doctors who have set aside their own personal ambitions to work tirelessly in public hospitals and centres, where the rewards and recognition are way below their pay grade; and doctors who even as they practiced the highest rigors of professionalism and principles, have not forsaken their humour and kindness.

Which is why, today when we hear of the critical exhaustion that doctors and medical professionals are experiencing and when we see photographs of doctors curled up like sardines in makeshift cupboards or corridors and doorways catching a few moments of sleep in between emergencies, their faces scarred by the constant wearing of masks, it is paramount that we never forget that they too are human.

In March, Dr Rajesh Parikh, neuropsychiatrist and director of medical research at Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, one of the city’s most celebrated medical professionals with over 150 publications in journals such as Lancet, American Journal of Psychiatry, and internationally renowned as much for his erudition as his wit, posted a few heartfelt lines on a social media platform alluding to his experience of “signs of early depression”.

“A public admission of my early symptoms of depression. Hope to avoid it with yoga, mindfulness and exercise. Otherwise, will need counselling and/or meds. With so many bright colleagues to choose from, am not at all worried for myself,” the post had read.

As expected, the effect it had on his legion of friends, patients and admirers was seismic.

After all, Parikh had been one of the first crusaders against the scourge of the pandemic and a familiar, almost daily presence on prime TV as an authority on the virus. As early as December 2019, while on a trip to the Sunderbans, he had been keenly following news of the strange new disease taking lives in Wuhan. “I anticipated the havoc that the virus would bring to our country and the rest of the world, and began work on a protocol for Jaslok which, at the insistence of my lovely publisher Milee Aishwarya of Penguin Random House, mutated into a national bestseller.”

“The Coronavirus: What you Need to Know about the Global Pandemic” was the first book in the world on the pandemic and was launched to a global audience of 25,000, a record of sorts for a book launch. On the heels of this book, Parikh had burnt the midnight oil to bring out “The Vaccination Book” — a comprehensive tome on every aspect of the subject.

The fact that a man as knowledgeable in not only the vagaries of the disease but also the inner workings of the mind could succumb to the exhaustion and sense of defeat was not lost on anyone. “Physician, heal thyself” was the universal response.

We see doctors as being invincible and superhuman. “In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men,” said Marcus Tullius Cicero. And yes, they are gods who help and heal, repair and remedy, soothe and settle, but beneath all that brilliance and cognition it is easy to forget that they are all too human, eminently so.

Fortunately, thanks to the groundswell of support and harnessing his inner resources as well as yoga and mindfulness and talking to his wife, the eminent Dr Firuza Parikh, Parikh had bounced back in two days.

But he continues to acknowledge with humility the vulnerability of all, especially experts on the pandemic and mental health. “We are in for another major pandemic of a mental health crisis, but I am confident that as a species we shall harness our collective resources to overcome it. And to quote Abraham Lincoln — “This too shall pass”,” he says.

So even as the battle to defeat the pandemic continues, let us never forget that our doctors are some of our most precious resources and that they, even the most accomplished and impassioned and erudite among them, are human too and as vulnerable to fatigue and frustration and exhaustion as the rest of us, during these unprecedented and harrowing times.