It was 10 am already and I was half an hour late in starting my OPD, that remained open 6 days a week except the usual festivals – that I rarely used to celebrate after my med school. Anyhow, this is not what this assembly of alphabets is about.
It was not a usual day, there were less people in the waiting area – and even less patients – as 30% of the crowd were just attendants accompanying their corresponding patients – whom the learned doctors term of much importance, as they possess a huge information about the patients’ history. Diwali was approaching and, no, it was actually a usual day – you get less patients around Diwali – Idk what stops them from falling ill. Is it just that they pretend to be less ill when they are in the mood of the festival?
Well, I am Dr. Mrityunjay Verma (atleast the board outside my room states so), who runs a small clinic in the Cantonment of Ambala.
“Dev! Bring me the appointment cards of the patients waiting outside,” I called out to my receptionist-cum-friend (he had quite the same story as mine – pieces sticking together with a glue of gloom).
“Sure Sir.”
My receptionist-cum-friend brought in a pile of 20 cards and assigned the patients’ their sequential number. Every ring of my bell brought a new patient in – with an old disease. Within 10 minutes, my usual day started. I’ve been dealing with the routine cold, cough, fever, disturbed motions, headaches and stomach aches since the past three years – and prescribing three-four medicines from the list of 20 preferred routine medicines.
11:30 am
The name of the next patient was somehow familiar, “Shevya.” Not that I haven’t attended any patients with names common with my friends or family – infact every 12th-13th patient I attend has a common first name with the first one and it is quite natural – but this name was related to me, or atleast I felt so.
‘Shevya, 28y/F, Husband’s name: Mridul Malik’
It has been 10 years since I last talked with ‘my girl’, but every time I come across this name, my heart skips a beat. Merely the presence of her name pulls me in itself, and drowns me to the depths of time – only to make me encounter all the sugar-sweet memories that we made when we were yet in our school time. She was my tuition-mate (I still wonder, “why only ‘my’ tuition classes, when there were hundreds of teachers in the twin city?”) – and she used to drive her activa – with a paint of white, still a shade darker than the shade of her skin.
Four years! For four years, everyday, I used to gander through the crowd to catch a glimpse of her – the moment that used to ornamentalise my day. Asocial, I was, when it came to girls, and the only path that was my highway for conversations – was books. Books and letters and concepts were what we would talk about, everytime an incidence of a conversation occurred.
Words were not my thing back then, still, I gathered some adjectives describing beauty and some abstracts relating to love, and put them together – in a letter of appreciation – stating my love for her. Four years of patience, wait and despair – four years of longing and fear – four years of unconditional love! And she, the demonic angel, the harbinger of agony, tore it into pieces, as if she owned it herself (though she actually did). She tore it, and I felt as if, she’s tearing pieces off my soul – ‘withering’ and ‘demolishing’. Such was the pain, that the sound of shredding of paper still gives me the kinda goosebumps it gave me at that instant. Such was the agony – that vexation – that I still shiver on hearing that name – ‘Shevya’.
But I didn’t stop there. I lifted my head, already weighing a tonne heavier, to look out through the window. Not only the name, but her face too, was the same – every detail – same pattern of applying mascara, same shade of pink on her lips, similar pattern of controlling locks – ah, she exhibited the same beauty that had made me forget my existence, 10 years back. But what kind of an omen was this? The ‘not my ex’ girl who had occupied most of the moments of my life’s last decade, was standing on my door, along with a registered appointment, to probably ask about the medication for heal-able crevices. But what made her arrive at ‘this’ doorstep? Didn’t she find any better doctors in the twin city? Or did she not read the plate outside that read out aloud that this particular person named ‘Doctor Mrityunjaya’ was to be found inside? The doctor who was known widely for being amongst the very rare ‘Gold-medalists’ from PGIMER – the same person whose soul had succumbed from injuries years back – the same person who has been visiting a psychiatrist once a week, every month, since 7.5 years.
Or had she appeared here just to laugh on the pause that my life had acquired, over these years in her absence, and in the absence of any likeness of her in some hundred marriage proposals that I passed by. Or had she just appeared to check out on my love – just to check whether my memory had any traces of her? Or maybe she just simply thought that this decade (that had lasted longer than a century) would have had covered the past with a layer of dust, centimetres thick! Why on the face of earth had she arrived again?
Was it still in my abilities, to talk to her, about things more than levers and pulleys, about things more than botany and chemistry? Was I capable of prescribing suitable doses for her disease? Was my practice of Medicine efficient enough to prescribe her, ‘the drug of my life’, apt medication for her ailments. 10 years of my confrontations with medical issues were all dwindling and falling down in front of me – collapsing as if there was an earthquake that stood strong enough to dodge any past competitors. Rules and regulations were breaking off away in pieces. Oh god, how I wished to go and thrash her with interrogations that enquired if she had only arrived to ask me about how I had made it this far, alone!
But to exhibit my helplessness in diverting myself from my ‘Shevya’, or maybe just to showcase her the destiny, where my love and her hatred had pushed me to, or maybe just to portray falsely how ecstatic I still was, I gathered all my courage and rang the bell –
“Next patient please!”
– Aayush Rana and Gulesh Suthar
Poetic soul 