Life's Taunts

By Meenu B

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well, then I contradict myself.

I am large, I contain multitudes.”

- Walt Whitman

Contradicting emotions were what started my career in Medicine. At times brimming

with moral rectitude, but at others appalled by the depravity of the human mind. But

through it all, I have made some indelible memories that have forged my life. I will

never forget the first time I entered the dissection hall and the pungent smell of

formaldehyde. Nor the first time I witnessed trauma, declared death or delivered a baby.

Doctors are often asked about their greatest memory. Over the years, my answer has

remained the same, burnt into my heart, just as poignant, just as fresh.

In emergent nations, working in a government medical college hospital is slogging

through year after year of sleeplessness and servitude and not so much about stenting

hearts or excising tumors. The shifts start at 8 am. This is also the time when the food

trolley comes. Nothing fancy, half a loaf of bread and a packet of milk for each patient.

But the clamoring would suggest a political protest by a rather motley bunch.

In my male ward was a 32 year old patient slowly succumbing to alcoholic liver disease

– all skin and bones except for his protruding fluid filled belly. Such sights are mundane

in a hospital but what made this patient different was his wife. Now, this is not an ode

to the feeling that comes in “numberless forms numberless times, in life after life, in

age after age”. This is not an ode to love. On the contrary, this girl’s face was a

perpetual expressionless mask, least bothered by the stench and squalor that surrounded

her or by the three perplexed little girls hanging on to her. Never did I hear her speak

a word.

One morning at 7:50 am, the inevitable checkmate arrived for her husband. In a hurry

to leave my shift, I was hustling through the routine post death declaration procedures

when the new widow came to me. I did not profess condolences, she was beyond that.

Quietly, with the same vacant stare that I had seen so many times before, she asked,

“Doctor, could you please alter my husband’s time of death to 8 am so that my

children can have bread and milk for one more day?”

Since then, I have encountered the Grim Reaper on many occasions. But never after

have I felt the depredations of such stark poverty. Now, when I look back I still see

her gaunt face, but I understand that her eyes are not vacant, instead they are haunted

by the lingering agonies of hunger.

“Let this be my parting word.

In this playhouse of infinite forms, I have had my play,

And here have I caught sight of him that is formless”

By Meenu B