Ravi Speaks:
Some unique doctors I have seen in my professional journey. Part-I.
Today I am going to talk about some very unique characters amongst doctors whom I came across in my long journey of 38 years at various places. Most of them are predominantly from the North Indian belt only-since I used to meet them long back when I was myself a Medical Representative.
CITY CHOWK AREA WITH GP MARKET-JAMMU.
AGAIN CITY CHOWK AREA-CENTRAL PLACE-JAMMU.
To start with, when I was very young hardly around 22 years of age a renowned doctor was doing his General Practice in the heart of the city of my native place-Jammu-the “City-Chowk” area. I shall not be, mentioning his real name that would be unethical on my part to come into open through this media. This man was locally known as the “Phooq Wala Doctor”. When I went there in his clinic I was very curious to note as to why this man wearing a white Kurta Pyjama looking to be around 50 years of age was so renowned as the “Phooq Wala Doctor”. There was a very heavy rush at his clinic and most of the patients were the lady folk only. I saw a very unique thing which this doctor used to do after giving the medicines in the white small rolled-up paper-what we call in local language as the “Dawa-wali-Poori”.He used to blow air on it through his mouth and then give the same to the concerned patients. It happened so, that a lady after getting the medicine from him and even doing the payments etc.-did not leave the clinic and the doctor told her that since her work was over let the other patient in the line come for the check-up. This lady told the doctor that she would leave only after he completed his final procedure while despatching his patients back to their places. The doctor asked her as to what she meant by saying so. She told him that he had forgotten to blow the air on the medicine and till the time he did not complete that procedure she would not leave. The doctor immediately blew air from his mouth on the medicine pack and the lady became very happy and left the clinic. This doctor was known to have some extra power in his blowing air from his mouth on the medicine and patients had blind faith in him. Thousands of patients used to come in the early eighties from far-flung areas and get his treatment like that. If you checked his degrees he was not even a graduate in medicine but had somehow registered himself for doing the practice. Such a doctor was the leading one in the area as far as the practice was concerned. A very unique character. After many years say after around two decades I again went to that shop and to my surprise, saw things altogether changed. The same shop was divided into two shops and in both the shops – medicines were displayed. On enquiring about the doctor I came to know that he had expired long back and it was his sons who were carrying on further. One of them was still doing a very poor practice and the other one had changed it to medicine distribution.
RAJEWAL VILLAGE-KHANNA-PUNJAB-DR. GAUTAM’S CLINIC.
The second very unique doctor whom I used to meet continuously for eight years in one of the interiors of Ludhiana was doctor Gautam. Those days Himalaya used to make a thousand-tablet-packs of their medicines in the form of tin boxes and the operations were from Mumbai instead of Bangalore. This doctor used to get direct supplies from Mumbai for these thousand packs. I was advised to exclusively avail one day for meeting him whereas normally I was supposed to meet at least ten doctors in a day. I used to change two buses to reach the place where he was situated. One bus till Khanna and from there one bus towards his place of Rajewal.The problem while coming back was that the same bus used to come back to Khanna from Rajewal at 5.00 PM the same day. So I used to reach his place somewhere between 11 and 11.30 AM and after meeting him I used to wait for the bus till evening. He was so popular in the village that food was prepared for at least a hundred people which mainly included the patients coming from far-flung areas and even the pharma reps meeting him. They all would also take their lunch at his home cum clinic. The unique thing about him was that he used to give me always a very big order of around 20 thousand at that time and he used to convert all the stuff ordered into powder form and make his medicines out of the same lot. He had big grinders in his clinic where he used to do this process and get the medicines in the smaller paper carriers. I was surprised to see people even ready to give him very high charges at that time -so intense was their faith in his treatment. Later again after around fifteen years or so, I met his son Dr. S K Gautam in Khanna when I was working with my colleague at Khanna and the beauty was, that he immediately recognized me and pressed me to come to his Rajewal Village. On enquiring, I came to know that he was carrying on the same way in his father’s clinic and had done his BAMS degree also.
The third unique doctor, I had in the Doraha area. He was an MBBS doctor and a very known doctor in that area. He was running a big hospital by all standards and when I used to meet him in his clinic-he had two rows in front of him. On one side there were patients and on the other side, he used to meet either the specially recommended patients or the people from the pharmaceutical line. What I found was his bigger orders coming directly to Mumbai those days of the Thousand packs and one medicine always used to be “30 packs of PILEX tabs” as the standard in his all the orders. That means, he used to consume thirty thousand tabs of the same during his monthly practice. Very unique doctor. Once I sat for quite some time there on the side and wanted to see as to what he did in his daily practice. What I found if some patients were complaining of belly ache-he used to add up our PILEX there as well. On enquiring from the pharmacist of his pharmacy, I came to know that the doctor had blind faith in this drug and he used to give the same medicine for so many ailments whereas we in the company we”re told to promote it only for the PILES and related fissure-problems. Again after around two decades, I got a chance to visit that hospital and was surprised to see a sea change there. The Hospital’s name was on his name as Dr. Harbans Singh Sidhu Hospital and it was a multi-specialty Hospital. Both the sons, one who did his MCH from CMC and the other MS from DMC in Ortho were running their Ortho and Surgery sections whereas their respective wives were running Medicine and Gynae section Both being the MDs.Now in Doraha, only that is the one bigger hospital, and patients from the nearby places come to this referral hospital whereas surprisingly we don’t have any bigger Government hospitals there.
Although the list of such unique doctors is very big and so many names come to mind but I shall be discussing just one more unique set of doctors in this despatch and in the future, I shall touch the others whom I have left today.
SEX CLINIC IN DARYA GANJ DELHI.
One set of doctors are those whom I have seen minting money in the disguise as the Sex Specialists and purchasing our Sex Range products of Himalaya-which are safe herbal ones and again putting them with some aphrodisiacs in the grinders and making the powdered form of medicine and selling the same at the exorbitant rates. While negotiating with one such very big and rich doctor I asked him as to why the certain product of ours was not being purchased by him -his answer was simply that the product was bearing the name on it as the engrossed one and he never wanted to give something where the patient would come to know about the name of the ingredient which he puts in his formulation. I am talking of a certain busy belt of Delhi in “Darya-Ganj” and “Chandani-Chowk” where such bigger players are situated. These guys purchase our Sex Range products from the safety and herbal point of view and importantly because of the anonymity clause being served by these medicines in thousands and make a fast buck out of it.
There are quite a few more surprising and astonishing unique doctors whom I have come across in my long journey of 38 years but I shall be keeping that for some other despatch shortly.
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