Compounder-Doctor
By JIRARA
© JIRARA, January 2021
Published by JIRARA on
matrubharti.com
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Disclaimer: This is the work of fiction as far as all the characters, their names and the names of all the events are concerned and all these are imaginary and hence any resemblance to the persons (and their lives) dead or alive, and any places are coincidental. Even if a few events might look realistic/’real’, these are fictionalised and the associated names are changed in order to maintain their privacy, honour, and security. No intention whatsoever is meant to hurt any feelings of whosoever, irrespective of their personal/cultural beliefs, social or political inclinations, religion-orientations/practicing/philosophy, life styles, and work/business. The ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’ (if any used) do not necessarily mean the author of this book, and these and other such pronouns: her, hers, his, he, she, him, you, your, yours, ours, theirs…; are used for effective personification and dramatization, and the readers should not take these on their ‘own persons’.
The readers should take these stories/verses/thoughts with/in good spirit. The presented ideas and material are based, where feasible, on readings and (thought-) analyses of scientific/other open literature (which seemed most profound and trustworthy), with as much care as possibly taken. The readers are requested to verify these notions on their own, and use their own discretion. However, these stories/verses/thoughts/ideas (mostly original) are expressed here with an intention of increasing awareness of the readers with a hope that in an overall sense, their (and ours) consciousness would be heightened (in all and multiple directions), so that we all can live our lives on this planet with true happiness, ever-lasting peace and real joy (irrespective of our orientations). The author and the publisher will not be responsible for any negative effects/situations arising as a result of reading these stories/verses and/or following the suggestions if any; and no discussions/dispute of any kind will be entertained at any time and in any way, manner, and/or forum; because the dictum is that if you like(-d) you read, otherwise ignore, what is the point in making a fuss about it?; anyway you are independent to judge the messages in the stories and utilize for your benefits if found useful, since here the idea is in the direction of ‘consciousness raising’. JIRARA.
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Compounder-Doctor
He had left his native place some years back then, and after the degree from a reputed medical college in a highly industrialized city, he had decided to settle in a town that was of course not far from his native town; his idea was to start a clinic here with a motive to help people improve their health. So, now he has a good small clinic with small entrance room, and one back side area that was partitioned with glass walls and some translucent curtains, and he had two male-helps: one to help in dispensing the medicines, the compounder, Natilal, and the other Chuni (short for Chunilal) who would carry the doctor’s emergency kit/bag when he went to see patients at their homes; and Chuni also used to wash patients wounds and do bandages, etc.; of course the injections were administered by the doctor himself, but for the ‘lesser’ patients, Natilal was considered fine.
**
So, the doctor Aadarpuria established a good clinic and it was running very well, since the small town with the population of nearly 8,000 people had only two allopathy doctors, one homeopathy practitioner, and two Ayurveda-physicians. Many clusters-areas in the town were only within walkable distances, however the doctor had a jeep and he himself used to drive most of the times, only occasionally his compounder Natilal drove. The doctor was married and had one son.
**
It was almost a decade for their stay in this new and of course first work-place for the doctor and his family, and unfortunately the doctor became widower, much sooner than expected by anybody, during which time his new house, very near to his present clinic, was coming up, that would have a new clinic in the house itself; and this house was strategically located so that his clientele would not be affected at all.
*
The doctor had a dilemma, since his son was a teenager, and there was no possibility for him to summon his own parents here from his native town, since both were aging and would need care-takers for themselves. So, he called Atansi, the lawyer, his close friend to his new home (that was just ready to be occupied) to have his advice in the matter of taking care of his teenage son, to which Atansi advised the doctor to get married again so that his new wife would take care of the boy, to this the doctor readily agreed.
*
The doctor had a lady friend, who was by now a head care taker (HCT) in the main city hospital, where the doctor used to go for his apprenticeship while studying for his medical degree in the city’s medical college; this HCT had seen that her only daughter became a doctor herself, since she herself wanted to become a doctor but couldn’t. So, the doctor Aadarpuria visited his previously acquainted HCT-friend (who had some time back become a widow) and expressed his wish to marry again so that his new wife would take care of his only son (from the previous wife); to which the HCT friend offered her own daughter who had then just completed her medical degree and had started her practice in a private clinic of her own in the suburban area of the city. The doctor was delighted with the offer, since the new lady doctor was quite pretty and relatively much younger than himself. Eventually, he got married and they started staying in the doctor’s new house with his son. This new house was three story building, and in the front-half of the ground floor’s living room was his new clinic which now looked much cleaner and better than the old one.
**
The doctor’s new married life was going on very smoothly, but Natilal, who had no family members staying with him (or it was other way round), was sort of a loner and single, and was not very happy even though he was now working in a new and better clinic, and was treated by the doctor as his own trusted friend because of the decade long flawless association. Doctor was aging, and the responsibility of taking care of the growing boy of the doctor was now on the duo: Natilal and the new doctor-wife/young lady doctor (YLD) who was as such charming, very young and smart, to which the bachelor compounder Natilal was very much attracted and even one day he very boldly disclosed his desire to live very near to her (knowing that her husband had now become relatively old), to which the YLD reluctantly agreed; and then onwards they both together started visiting the patients at their home, if it was so needed; since now the old doctor even stopped coming to the ground floor clinic, most of the times he would be in his room of the first floor of the house, ailing and under regular medications.
**
The duo gradually became very close to each other, and even Natilal started staying often in her house (in the second floor) without the knowledge of the old and aging doctor Aadarpuria whose only son was studying in the city college and was also staying in the hostel/s therein, this was very well arranged by the duo, in partial agreement with his father; the duo had some impish plans to implement: keep somehow the son away from this home, eventually have their own child, and take over the entire house with the inner clinic, and entire clientele on their sides, and ignore the old doctor (gradually), so that the entire property can be transferred to their names, and they can enjoy the life with a good settled future: the newly built house and the medical-service-legacy, these two things being very important to support their own lives, and could be easily ‘acquired’, if their plan were carefully executed.
*
The duo considered as their main hurdle the old doctor’s son and for that they had planned well in advance; he was very much brainwashed against his father, and since his mother was no more, he believed whatever the duo said; and at very early stage he had been sent to residential schools, and from there for pursuing the degree in a city college, and as a result the son rarely used to visit his father; who wouldn’t bother his son with his own agony if he had any (the duo as supervisors or mentors always would be present when the doctor and the son met and exchanged their talks), the old doctor was just aging and was not much interested in supervising the practice of his young wife, and he had lot of trust on his life time and friendly compounder, so the duo were managing their clinic-business very well, including the accounts, and the old doctor was also taken care reasonably well; and in the back yard of the life of the old doctor the duo couple was enjoying all the worldly pleasures, emotionally as well as physically, with not even a slightest hint to the husband of the young lady doctor, and the son; their plan being to get every inch of the property on their names and the full legacy in their favour.
**
The intimate communion and their consummate unions for scores of times resulted the YLD being pregnant; and since the YLD was not sure that she had conceived the baby due to her old and ailing doctor-husband; because she was rarely sleeping with him, by citing one or other excuses: like she being too busy or the doctor’s health would be unduly affected, etc.; it became a dilemma for the duo to continue to keep the YLD here, and hence she was sent to her mother’s place on the pretext that the mother was not keeping well in the city; so during YLD’s maternity absence from the new clinic and old doctor’s home, Natilal used to run the clinic, and since he was very well versed with all the procedures, and diagnoses and all the medicines’ names (in fact these were very few and standard those days: for fever, lose motions, headaches, body aches, and nausia, etc.), he was able to manage the show absolutely well, even visiting the patients at their homes and in several such cases he used to call the YLD in her mother’s home and consult on the issues which looked somewhat more difficult, and with this he managed a good rapport with the rich patients and all the dispensing activities; and in some peculiar emergent cases the old doctor was always there in his first floor room, so Natilal used to take his advice to which the doctor always obliged.
**
In the process of time, once the health of the old doctor became precarious, and there was nobody to look after him, since his wife was away in her mother’s house (waiting for the delivery), the son was in the other city studying, and Natilal-Chuni pair was too busy in the clinic most of the time attending the patients; so Natilal requested the mother (TM) of the YLD to come here to look after the old doctor for some time, maybe for a week, until he recovers to some state of normalcy, to which she readily agreed (and her daughter YLD also suggested her to go and take care of her own old and aging doctor-husband), mainly because she/TM herself was the old doctor’s good friend during his medical-study days, she was care taker-sister under training in the same medical institution, and by now she was highly experienced herself in all the aspects of nursing especially aging and old patients, and now she was the head care taker (HCT). When TM came the old doctor was very happy meeting his old lady-friend, and the both spent lot of time in their nostalgic states, and used to even sleep together which gave him psychological relief and peace, and he somewhat recovered relatively fast, and the mother went back to her city of work. By this time as per the devious plans of the duo, the mother had already got signatures of the old doctor on the will that was drafted by the duo and was securely handed over to Natilal.
**
The time rolled forward very fast, and YLD came back from her mother’s place with a new baby of her own; which very much looked like Natilal and YLD, and not at all like Aadarpuria who having come to know about it, in the excitement and anxiety thought the new baby of his own and showered lot of love on to it, and did not think anything otherwise.
**
Down the lanes of the making of the new history of the then last decade, Gatuso who used to often visit the old and new clinics of Aadarpuria for collecting the medicines for his own mother, his grandmother, and occasionally for his father Atansi, decided to visit the new clinic; but all incognito, since Natilal and Gatuso knew each other earlier, but of course recently they were not in touch with each other. So, Gatuso went in the garb of an old and ailing man for getting the medicines from the practicing doctor/s in the new clinic. He got the consultation completed, and while he was coming out he felt like using the rest room, for which he took a left turn in the front portion of the inner room-clinic, and there in the passage he saw the three photos hanging on the side wall: Doctor Aadarpuria, and Mrs. Aadarpuria, with their last breath dates under their names; and the photo of their only son with his name and the date of his graduation and disappearance. Gatuso was taken aback at the last photo, but he did not have courage to enter the clinic area again and enquire, and also by this time more patients had started pouring in; the duo in turn were busy diagnosing them alternately and prescribing the medicines, and it was clear to Gatuso that Natilal had become very expert in his art (not science, because he did not have any allopathy medical degree) that he had been practicing for decades, but every prescription written by him was signed by the YLD, who looked by all the educated guesses as if she had got married to Natilal, in all the probability they would have done it to legalize their own child.
**
In the process of time Gatuso figured out from his close and common friends who used to live in the same town and used to frequent the same clinic during their own schooling days, that Aadarpuria had bequeathed his entire property and clinic in the name of Natilal and his (future) wife, despite the fact that he was not even married then, and their new son who was just then born (from YLD, the old doctor did not know this); there was nothing in the name of his own son, a great WILL made by the duo and well-orchestrated, and the doctor’s signatures on it were got done by the HCT while she had stayed with him for one week to take care of him, and the doctor had signed the WILL without reading it at all, since the HCT had already ‘read’ it aloud to the doctor, by ‘avoiding’ certain paragraphs (with which, if read, the doctor might have got upset), and by ‘reading’ some paragraphs (with which he might have got pleased even when these latter descriptions were not in the list at all); the doctor had fully trusted his long-time lady friend/HCT, who though did a good service to her own long-time doctor friend (and the husband of his only doctor-daughter), but took a heavy price from him without him getting a slightest hint that he was then being ‘cheated’ and ‘duped’; the honest, sincere, and committed doctor who had done immense selfless service to the thousands of the denizens of the town had died a peaceful death: he had not got a slightest hint of the plot and the play enacted by the duo behind his back.
*
Gatuso got in touch with the doctor’s son to inform him about the then current situation in his father’s clinic; where upon the son told that he had come to know about it some time back, and he now himself being the practicing doctor in the city of his college education had decided not to bother about it anymore, lest the situation might get worsened; and said he was in some sense obliged to Natilal for his life-long ‘loyalty’ and service to his doctor-father and he still respected his stepmother, and hence he did not take any legal action against them; he said he loved peace and stability rather than ‘revenge’. Gatuso felt relief that the son is as good as his able and humble doctor, and wished him very well for his good health, progress, and prosperity.
*****
