The Healer Who Could Not Heal Himself

Dr. Mahesh

If not for a few unlucky draws from Lady Luck and a few imprudent steps from the grizzly-bearded, almost blind doctor, his life could have been a storm of recognition, respect and money.

But alas, that wasn't to be the case.

If a man makes or breaks his own fate, then he was the gruesomest of sinners against himself. If destiny plays the tricks, then he was one of the unluckiest fellows around, digging a pit from both sides.

Let us assume that he was the child of both luck—or rather, bad luck—and his own doings, which can safely be put in the bracket of drunkenness.

If ever there can be a case of sheer talent being chained, pilloried by the cold, hard, merciless pangs of drunkenness, it can be none other than Dr. Mahesh Pandit.

Across the dark, gloomy oblivion of gloom and doom of his story, there are flashing, laughing, inspiring auras, giving a clue to his sheer acumen. But providing these clues only becomes a demanding way of finding out what could have been, rather than what emerged in reality.

Most of his story is of this type—what he could have been, rather than what in reality he became.

So, after exemplifying his genius for a flashing moment, if one deprives all the rest of the moments of their share of glory, then the agony of those lost opportunities stares society in the face sternly, accusingly, slamming all and sundry for some collective, common failure.

When such talents are either made to dismantle their future, or bring it upon themselves and go waste, the consequences are far greater and wider than we normally think them to be.

For if a flower is gone, it takes with it many finer things of fragrance and beauty which we might not even be aware of.

Dr. Mahesh from our village belonged to such a category.

He was a concoction of healing properties, cutting across various genres of medication. He was an expert in Ayurveda, reasonably good enough to be called almost an amateur doctor in both allopathy and homeopathy.

And the great thing about him was that he knew where the healing limits of one particular genre lay.

So, in order to handle very critical ailments and symptoms in the countryside, where people had very few options for availing themselves of the best medical facilities, he would prepare a unique concoction involving all three genres—Ayurveda, homeopathy and allopathy.

And Mother Existence had given him miraculous powers of healing.

There were cases where Ayurveda would come in handy, and there were cases where homeopathy would be helpful. And in cases involving trauma, like accidents and all that, where immediate help was required, he would start with allopathy and then come down to homeopathy or Ayurveda to deal with the later stages.

With his expertise, he had arrived at a kind of commingling zone between these three genres, which really helped the villagers.

But he turned out to be a destructive, self-destructive little genius.

He was a chronic drunkard.

You would find him lying like a drunken log beside the open drain by the street, street puppies enjoying his proximity in their full loyalty.

Once, when he had passed out by the village road, I saw a rascally person from the village tie two puppies with a rope and tie the other end to the doctor's hand. The puppies kept licking the passed-out doctor's face.

It was very sad.

But to the people in the village, it was funny as well.

When I look back and imagine Dr. Mahesh, however, what I see is a life of lost opportunities.

He could have done so much for his family.

His family suffered a lot on account of his drunken sprees. They lost financially. They lost socially, because once people find you lying passed out in the street mud, social dignity is the first thing you lose.

People simply do not take you seriously at all.

So he suffered himself, and his family suffered a lot.

But in between, whenever he was not drunk, whoever approached him with whatever kind of critical symptoms—ranging from snakebites to terrible skin diseases, even paralysis—his remedies would rarely fail.

And there came a stage in the last phase of his life when he would be giving medications just for liquor.

And then, one fine day, Dr. Mahesh was gone.

It's a sad story of a pure talent gone astray and into the darkness of oblivion.