Doctors, hakeems and homeopaths, all seem to have failed us. Where are we to go?
ON THE lawn of Mr. Prism’s house. A calm summer evening. Prism and Pawn are sitting in their chairs. Raja, the servant, brings tea
Raja: (to Pawn) How many sugars do you take, sir?
Pawn: No Sugar. Not at all.
Prism: Why? I mean till last week you liked sugar as a fish likes water. Today you are refusing it altogether. What’s up?
Pawn: A Unani Hakeem has told me that sugar is a recipe for diabetes.
Prism: Come on! Most of Hakeems these days are Neem-Hakeems and hence dangerous for life. Don’t lend an ear to Hakeems, lend them money instead; they are in dire financial straits. Doctors have taken the wind out of their sails and Homeopaths are committed to sweeping them under the rug. They are faced with endless recession. So why sacrifice taste at the altar of an embattled species which itself needs sympathy and advice.
Pawn: The Hakeem I am talking about is not an ordinary one. He is very competent. People say ‘Us kay Hath May Shifa Hay’. He fetches a huge number of patients daily.
Prism: The number of patients is not a reliable criterion to judge the competence of a Hakeem. Patients are like drowning men who try to catch every straw they can. Their judgment, therefore, is questionable. Gone are the days when Hakeems diagnosed diseases in a jiffy by simply putting their fingers on the patients’ pulses. Nowadays they try to diagnose by prescribing tests the reports of which they can not read. I tell you they will make your life tasteless. For they genuinely believe that the more unpalatable a herb is, the more curative its effects are.
Pawn: You have got the habit of ridiculing things you don’t believe in.
Prism: It is not I but Hakeems themselves who have lost belief in the efficacy of their profession. Don’t you see Hakeems undergoing surgery which is carried out by doctors? Had they any confidence in their abilities they would have operated on themselves. It is immoral to seek the help of one’s professional rivals merely for the sake of life. One’s commitment to one’s profession must come first.
Pawn: For that matter, doctors too relish Jaam-e-Shirin and Rooh Afza which are products of Hakeems.
Prism: I wonder if a Jaam can ever be Shirin. Poets have always complained about the bitterness of Jaam.
Pawn: Poets are impractical people.
Prism: Hakeems are not?
Pawn: If the wise counsel of my Hakeem has annoyed you so much, I, for your sake, can put sugar in my cup which by now is quite empty.
Prism: Don’t do that. Empty cups ‘come handy’ in the absence of ashtrays. I only want to know how did you manage to resist sugar?
Pawn: (Glibly) It is not a big deal. If you start taking tea without sugar, with the passage of time it becomes your habit to like sugarless tea. You never feel anything was missing. It is all a state of the mind.
Prism: If it is all a state of the mind why not feel one has taken tea when one hasn’t actually. I mean can we apply your state of the mind ‘theory’ to tea as well?
Pawn: What makes tea extremely indispensable is that it refreshes and reactivates you. One feels like working enthusiastically after taking tea.
Prism: You can not dogmatize the effects of tea. I know several people who take tea as a ‘staple’ drink but avoid work like a plague. Then, there are smokers who like only one thing after tea - smoking.
Pawn: Smokers should heed the warning of the health ministry, “smoking is injurious to health” printed on every packet of cigarettes.
Prism: The health ministry had better stop doctors from private practice rather than spoiling the ‘sport’ of smokers. You know doctors are minting money yet they resent sales tax on services.
Pawn: Yes, you are right but sales tax on services alone will not do. The government should tax them for every antibiotic they prescribe. They have grown adept at prescribing antibiotics for every disease they can not diagnose. They seem to be in love with antibiotics at the expense of public health. Secondly, their medicines are never without side effects. People say, homeopathy alone is free of side effects.
Prism: One should prefer to die untreated rather than consulting homeopathic homo sapiens. Their philosophy of medicine is extremely horrific. Their drugs produce signs of illness in healthy people.
Pawn: Then, who should one consult when one falls ill?
Prism: If you intend to fall ill you should inform your relatives in advance. They have an inexhaustible stock of ‘prescriptions’ which they are unpardonably generous to give away. The practice will be highly beneficial from an economic point of view also. You will have to pay nothing except to put up with their company.
