I’ve found doctors divide themselves into two kinds, in Bombay city certainly. On the one hand, the curt and on the other, the kind….the impatient and the “you’re the patient, so let me be patient” —the Hippocratic Oath, doesn’t have an in-built “kindness” clause, “to serve humanity” doesn’t always guarantee that a doctor has humanity
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Dr Shailesh Hathi was my orthopedic doctor, my go-to-guy for physiotherapy of all kinds, a bone man, a joint specialist. If you had issues with spasms, spine, slip discs, shoulder issues, shins, scaphoid injuries, stress fractures, he was your “savior”. He was a scientist, he was a “shrink” for muscles, he was an artist, an excavator for ligaments. Your Northen Star for tendons.
I tore my rotator cuff in February, a minor misstep causing a major mishap, five seconds of casualness, leading to five months of being a casualty. In those seconds, as I clumsily black flipped in the air, that moment, when you’re desperately thinking, “save the head, shield the spine”, instinct decides that the one dispensible body part, takes the blow, the full burden of yout body — the shoulder. As I lay on the floor, my one thought, call Dr Hathi, I crawled to my phone — “Hmmm, how much can you raise your right hand?”, “Not much,” I mumbled, painfully.
Come see me, immediately.”
And then I saw him, as he gently lifted my arm, “Hmmm… this is your rotator cuff, the tendons torn... You’ll need an operation —immediately do an MRI to confirm, this is serious but we’ll settle you, don’t worry,” he said reassuringly,
A fortnight later, post op, I was back at his unassuming clinic, appropriately called “Pain Centre”, opposite Jai Hind College. The long, arduous process of rehab was about to begin.
Dr Hathi wasn’t a fancy guy, firm in a fun way, not a “celeb” doctor, not a busy body, the “keep you waiting two hours -see you five minutes-charge you five thousand bucks” kind of doctor, no posed photos of him with cricketers and cine stars adorning the walls — he was an old-school doctor running the welcoming neighbourhood rehab centre.
I’ve found doctors divide themselves into two kinds, in Bombay city certainly. On the one hand, the curt and on the other, the kind….the impatient and the “you’re the patient, so let me be patient” —the Hippocratic Oath, doesn’t have an in-built “kindness” clause, “to serve humanity” doesn’t always guarantee that a doctor has humanity.
Dr Hathi had all the time in the world, in Cheteshwara Pujara terms, he was a Test cricket doctor, he was all back foot play, he listened to you, he listened to your ligaments. He was a believer in the “only the patient can really make the doctor look good”, “we can only guide, you have to do the hard work” — he said often, injuries take time to heal, in restoration and repair, you going up against nature.
While he quietly went about repairing my shoulder. we talked of old South Bombay before it became Mumbai and more annoyingy SoBo — his clinic flanked both Bombay’s cricket stadia, Brabourne and Wankhede. We talked of Vinoo Mankad and Sunil Gavaskars early years.
He was ever curious, ever open to knowledge.
“There’s no such thing as a silly question,” when I’d repeatedly query him about stuff. And during the 130 hours we spent together, while he worked my shoulder, stretching it, swinging it, we talked of a Bombay, that lay unexplored, of his years of medical school, we both bemoaned a Bombay we used to know, South Mumbai, was a relic, but a reminder of the city in its best avatar.
There were days when the shoulder would ache from the repetitions, he’d joke, “Keep going, after all we want to see you bowling alongside Bumrah and Siraj soon, they’ll need you to share the workload, right?”
Last Wednesday, as he bade me goodbye he said, wisely.
“We are now in the final leg of healing, the movement is fine now Rahul, we need the musculature to return — see you tomorrow.”
But tomorrow never came.
That Thursday, the clinic called to tell me Dr Hathi had breathed his last, a shock to the system if there was ever one. The untimely death of a doctor, of any kind, seems ironical and sad, doctors are meant to give you life, not have it taken away from them.
Farewell, kind medicine man, sleep well with the angels. I’ll soon be ready to bowl alongside Bumrah and Siraj.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, filmmaker and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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