Chapter
XXIII
Taste
of Private
Practice
at Ranchi
While
I was a secondary school student, I had to opt for science or arts. When I did
prolonged course of Medicine, it was
taught that the science of Medicine was futile wit hout
the art of Medicine. My school had no Commerce section and none of the
stalwarts of Medicine had stressed on it s
commercial aspect. So, it took me
time to find out from the long exhausting experiments that the medical practice
was neit her art nor science rather it was commerce or in lay man’s word a business.
I
could get a chamber easily in a reputed pharmacy, viz. Continental, on the Main Road Delhi it ioner
of the pharmacy was out of station and so I got many cases in the first month
and I had a wishful thinking to be a front-ranking practit ioner
in coming years. The patients were pleased. The shopkeeper also found my
prescriptions specific, but soon I came to discover that I was netting fishes
in the flood-water. No small tree germinates under a banyan but I took much
time to relearn it .
I
changed the spot. I thought of the other clinic, Nav Jeevan, which might provide
me wit h a new lease of life, but the
owner was interested more in the veterinary section* and financing human
section of medicine looked to him less lucrative than even installing a
videography centre.
Again
I remembered a boy, I had met, while returning from the honeymoon tours of the
Central India — Satna, Maihar, Jabalpur it rakut, Khajuraho. That boy
received me well and soon it seemed
that he was not only Sanjay but also an angel for me. The patients were happy.
I also found satisfactory response but the owner of the shop earned usually
less than my meager fee of Rs.15 out of my prescriptions. He might have pit y on my education that I remembered from the texts
of Pharmacology, tonics are placebo and not allured by the
pharmaceutical industries’ propaganda. I could not be a middle-man to writ e such drugs, which could provide him more profit .
* Then in
1989, the 'fodder scam'
was unknown.
Further
the other junior practit ioner of
that shop had found in me an obstacle though I never saw his patients.
Professional rivalry is not bad, if done in a healthy sense. Finally, very polit ely, the owner said that he had already given the
time to one of his relative doctors. Only few days back, he was suggesting to
me to devote whole day in his pharmacy. I asked him to remove my sign-board and
the next day I went to other pharmacies.
Popular
Pharmacy at Dhurwa was not so popular but the owners were good, young and
enthusiastic workers having some taste of social and polit ical
work too. The other younger owner from a Hinoo’s pharmacy was a bit reluctant and it
seemed that in his Green Pharma, it
would take time when red colour (few patients) was changed to green (more
patients) and on the Main Road
I
felt that I must have a residence, which I could not manage as my wife was at
Dibrugarh and being single, it
looked terrifying even for the food, having a taboo that I would eat only in a
vegetarian restaurant. I also felt that a vehicle and a telephone were must for
practice. I did never learn driving a two-wheeler having a notion that a fast
thinker like me was accident-prone. Ultimately, I decided to purchase a scooter but Suhash went somewhere and I
could not go to purchase it , as I was totally ignorant about vehicles.
I
call Ranchi it y the bigger pers onalit ies. At Ranchi Main Road it might have
given me an early popularit y. Then
if I had money to have some instruments I might have been taken to be a
specialist.
And
so, I finally decided to proceed to Delhi where a job might not be as low
paying as at Ranchi where some doctors worked for eight hours only for Rs.1100
per month or I would have searched even at Delhi for patients like the first
lady patient, I had at Continental Pharmacy (my wife might be angry!) or I
might stop practicing in the jhuggis of Delhi, like my first experience
of practice at Shubhankarpur (Darbhanga) in 1982.
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