MEDICAL ‘GUIDE’

A professor, who is an academician, was coming from a neighbouring state to attend a meeting. Crowds of people were eagerly waiting for his arrival. There, he has come at last! The diligent looking, respectable professor was crossing the road, smiling and waving magnificently. But suddenly a motor cycle rode past him at jet speed, pumping a number of bullets into the dignified academician, and he fell down instantly. This is a horrendous and critical scene from the movie “Zee”. It was supposed to be a meeting on human rights. As there were already death threats to him, the members of the human rights association had sought police protection. But the assault occurred right in front of the police themselves, who were supposed to enforce the law. While a number of people were waiting for the professor to preside over the meeting, the intellectual and the human rights crusader fell down dead in a pool of blood in broad daylight. The police stood there motionless, not batting an eyelid and not moving a finger, as if they were fixed to the ground. The culprits, the assassins escaped scot free. Later a case was filed. The activists won the case. But all the witnesses died one after another in ‘accidents’ created by the state machinery. This is a true story. That was Latin America!

There are people who raise their voices against injustice here there and everywhere. In one such doctor’s clinic………..

The clinic was full of children and their anxious parents. The children were crying in pain, anguish, apprehension and were also noisy in playfulness and mirth. The doctor was examining each child and advising a saline drip for one, giving an injection to the other, ordering tepid sponging for a heat hyperpyrexia child and dressing an ugly wound. The doctor was trying to console the children and their parents and working with more than two hands. What is the price of his composure, his smile and his pleasant countenance? It is worth the subdued anxiety and calmness of the mother. What is the price of his treatment? It is worth the gratitude borne out of the sweat of the hard working rickshaw wala. The doctor was famous for breathing life into the most complex cases and filling the children’s lives with light and hope. He was an embodiment of compassion and patience. The doctor wanted to give easy access to health and medical guidance to the slums, the hamlets, the interior forest areas, and wherever medical treatment was needed, but was not accessible. That is why he wrote the ‘medical guide’ in simple terms. He earnestly strove to attain that goal and stood aloft in that endeavour.

Not only that. What else did he do? He raised his voice in saying that if a person should lead quality life, he should have good food, freedom, right to live and right to health. He wanted the children that he saved, to have these fundamental rights. Consequently, he spoke eloquently of these rights, and heroically jumped into the arena of civil rights.

That is why he became an eye sore to the ruling class. The result was shackles and confinement in the middle of the forest. There, the endurance of the youth and very young people in tolerating brutal torture, and their patience and perseverance swirled through his thoughts. Steeled and hardened by these experiences and standing strong and unshattered, he came out of the darkness into the light. But he could still perceive the darkness shadowing the light. It warned him not to slacken and not to take rest. While propagating the fundamental rights and the threat to those rights, he would push back his ripe age of fifty and work like a young man of twenty. He set a bright and selfless example to all doctors and intellectuals. He played a pivotal role in the civil liberties movement. This is Warangal!

The village was abuzzand shaken apart. People were running helter skelter. What is happening there? Houses were being demolished. The utensils were being thrown away. Other objects were being destroyed. The food grains were spoilt or set on fire. The gruesome picture was not a result of a cyclone or a hurricane or a fire accident or some other natural calamity. It was not a brutal act by the Chambal valley dacoits. It was only a sample scene of one of the daily raids by the police in the heart of Warangal district. Amidst the destruction and demolition, police jeeps were leaving, raising a cloud of dust all around. Inside the jeeps were the loin clothed poor people, encircled by a frightening lot of khaki clad police. These innocent poor victims were trying to keep up their courage and audacity in the midst of the torture that already started in the jeeps. Then what happened? A mother had a bad dream. She dreamt of someone stabbing a newborn infant. She felt that the dream should not come true. But instead, her son’s limp and lifeless body was dropped in front of her house by the police jeep. The people gathering around the body, saw the lamentation of the deprived mother. They saw that her son’s body could not build a dam to her flood of tears. They  saw the crooked smile hidden behind the bushy whiskers of the sub inspector,and the smoke still emanating from the police gun. They even heard the trumped up story woven behind the gory incident!

The doctor was grieved when he heard of the incident. Even though the truth behind the encounter was revealed, and the enquiries also confirmed the truth, the government did not care. It turned a blind eye to the facts. Moreover, the Collector, who asked the government to take action based on the enquiry, was transferred. The names of all the activists who participated in the enquiry committees were enrolled in the hit list of the police. The town was flooded with police posters. But just as the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, parroted by NTRamarao, proclaimed that the evil should be eradicated to maintain glory to the land, Warangal people also imbibed the same values and one fine day, they assassinated Narakasura, the demon! Tit for tat, blow for blow, an eye for eye! The mad dog got its punishment, the vile and poisonous snake got its deserving end with a stick and the unruly man eating tiger got its well earned bullet!

We don’t know whether the mythological Narakasura’s corpse was taken out in a procession. We also don’t know whether anybody lamented over Ravanasura’s slain body. But today’s so called Narakasura’s dead body had a wonderful funeral procession. While the wolves and the blood thirsty demons followed the procession spitting out poison, the corpse was rocking to the movement of the vehicle, like an ogre hungry and thirsty for its prey or sacrificial animal. The chaotic rocking of the cadaver emptied the usually crowded and busy roads. There was no trace of the common man on the streets. All the shops were closed with their shutters down. There was an eerie silence all around. It was the silence of the graveyard!

Unaware of the impending calamity and catastrophe, oblivious to the cataclysm, the doctor was giving some advice to a friend, standing behind his clinic, smiling pleasantly as usual, as befits him. Suddenly there was chaos and pandemonium. People started running helter skelter in all directions to avoid the mad rush of the wild buffaloes stampeding the clinic. In the wink of an eye, in a flash of a second, something disastrous happened. The mad animals left, grunting victoriously. The innocent and humane doctor with a large heart of gold, succumbed to the madness and ferocity of the wild buffaloes. The good doctor, the friendly human being, the compassionate friend, the crusader of the poor, the people’s doctor was lying in a pool of blood, riddled by a number of bullets. Even while he was taking his last breath, the civil rights activist, the hero of the masses was propagating the value of life.

The newspapers declared the crime as horrendous. The state councils questioned the ruling party. People’s associations and organisations condemned the brutal act. Eye witnesses revealed the facts secretively and stealthily under cover. But still the assassins escaped without a trace. The government which always covers the facts under a veil of deception, now refused to take up an enquiry on this horrendous murder.

This is not a different version of ‘Zee’ cinema. It is an attempt to permanently bury the brutal act committed by the police before the eyes of the public, that too in the heart of Warangal!

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In spite of tight police cordons and vigilance, the people came in hundreds to pay homage to their dear doctor. This hearty gesture of the people was a reflection of the flawless character of the doctor, his resilience and also the aspirations of the people. On the other side, requests from the police personnel for transfers from the militant centres started piling up in the police stations. There was also the timidity of the police in conducting raids on the villages only after masking their faces. The people arrested were also being questioned only after they were blindfolded. All these timid acts of the police, reflected their demoralisation and apprehension. It once again reminded the people that the exploiters and oppressors were only paper tigers. It was obvious that the resentment against the assassination of the doctor would not go waste or futile.

The incident that happened in ‘Zee’ movie took place in a country where the people were ruled by the threat of guns pointed at them. But here, this heinous crime occurred in our country, where the so called helping hands ( Abhayahastham ) and saffron robes are trumpeted as being representatives of democracy, and where the state chief minister NT Ramarao got reinstated with the help of the civil rights movement.

The first incident is a direct attack in a dictatorial regime.

But the second is a muffling of people’s voices in the garb of democracy!

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(Translation of Medical ‘Guide’. [Initially published in Radical March –October 1985 under the pen name Nirmala] From the collection of “Viyyukka”) – Translated bythe author)