the headman

Murder of the headman

We came to a small south Indian town almost 50 years ago as medical students. Years later, my husband retired, and we built a house close to an outlying  village. We had lived there too long to think of relocating elsewhere.

We found that our neighbours in the village were very clannish and kept to themselves. They probably did not appreciate our encroachment so close to their village boundaries and paddy fields.

They had strange celebrations with vigorous dancing by inebriated males and loud music. Fortunately there was no crime and they left us alone.

The village had a “headman”, a democratically  elected counselor who was in charge of the village affairs. Although he was elected by democratic vote, he had won the last four elections. This meant that he had effectively been in power for 20 years. He was grooming his son to take over after him. The young man rode a powerful motor bike with no crash helmet. He did have a thick rope like gold chain and bracelet.

People were afraid of him. I don’t think they really dared to vote for anyone else. Even though the ballot was secret, and electronic voting machines were used, the villagers thought that he would somehow find out if the political party (in short himself) he represented did not win by a landslide.

He had his choice of the women in the place, you couldn’t exactly call it rape. The women were supposed to be “in love” with him and he had several mistresses. He was very wealthy. He was in charge of all the government projects and funds to the village. He made sure he got his percentage , he even took a commission from the government “widow’s pension.”  Between the postman’s cut and his cut I don’t think the widows got much from the government. No official payment occurred without his knowledge and payment.

 The local primary school had a mid day meal program. The provisions were stored in his house. He actually  never bought rice, pulses, sugar, oil or eggs for his family.

He had a noisy black motorbike (just like his son) which he rode into town past my house every morning.

He disappeared for a couple of days and I wondered why. Then I saw the entire village turn out to hoist a political flag. My gardener was from the village and  I asked him

“Where is the headman? Why are you hoisting a flag now?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “the headman called two sisters to his house when his wife and son were away. They didn’t like what he did to them so they hit him over the head with the granite grinding stone from his own house.”

I was speechless.

He leaned closer, “They have buried him under the flag.”

“Who has?”

“The whole village. Didn't you hear the drums?"

I heard drums at least once a month. I had stopped even wondering what the racket was about. 

"People were tired of him and his ways. Besides, those poor girls. What did they do wrong?”

The headman’s wife came home  couple of days later. She searched for her husband. Someone started a rumour that he had run away with a woman from the next village. Since he was notorious for his womanizing, that piece of news silenced her for some time. After a few months, when he failed to turn up and there was  no sign of him anywhere, she went to the police.

They refused to take her seriously or register her complaint. The officer in charge of the police outpost said, “we never come to that village. We did many years ago, but they beat up our constables and tied them to a tree. The constables were there all night You have to solve this yourselves.”

The son briefly tried to assert himself. But, he was young and inexperienced. They villagers went to his house and forcibly removed the provisions for the school meals. The widows refused to give him money. Some young men ganged up, thrashed him and asked him to leave the village. After a few months, unable to bear the ostracization his wife moved away back to her parent’s village. 

The headman was never found. The flag fluttered for a few months  and then disintegrated with the elements.

obstetrics and gynacology

Obstetrics and Gynecology

He had become a renowned surgeon, and one day, over a glass of beer, he said,

“did you know I failed twice during my undergraduate—in biochemistry and then in OG (obstetrics and Gynaecology)?”

40 years ago boys were not interested in OG. The entire department, labour room and outpatient were avoided as far as possible. Most of them had (or claimed to)  only a minimum working knowledge of the female anatomy and its function. They knew just enough to shout “PMS” during loud class arguments. Not that this deterred them  from very varied and interesting love lives.

A few men who were interested and wanted to take up OG as a specialty in later life kept their interests very secretive. There was a tendency to consider them voyeurs . “Who” was the general logic, “would want to spend their lives working in a block which had a strange odour about it, was very noisy, with scary loud screams  resounding all the time, and functioned as though there was no difference between night and day?”

“What happened?” I asked.

I remembered that he had not even bothered to attend the greater part of his posting. After signing in attendance he would disappear to flirt with the nurses. He had not even delivered the required twenty babies, let alone washed them afterwards. He managed to cajole the nurses into doing both.

“Bloody woman examiner! Looked down her nose at me, handed me the most peculiar forceps I had seen  and asked me to lock them together. No matter how hard I tried I could not. One blade kept facing the wrong way”.

This was rather hard to visualize. Obstetric  forceps look like two spoons. They have to face each other  (so that the child’s head is in between) and then there is a sliding lock mechanism. How could they not fit? Unless he held them sideways, facing outward so that the lock would not slide. The head would not fit either as there was no gap. This would have infuriated the examiner.

“Do you know I saw her in Chennai recently. I went up to her and asked if she remembered me. Wanted to show her! I passed and am now a heart surgeon. ”

Perhaps it was a good thing he was a heart surgeon. All 6 foot 2 inches of him did not have to bend down and peer into people’s private parts. He could stand up and operate without bothering to lock anything other than the chest retractor!

“Did she remember you? ”

“Yes. Was quite insulting about it to. Actually said I didn’t deserve my degree and wondered who had passed me! Almost called me an idiot!  Then asked if I was married. When I said I was and that I had two children, she actually said that she thought my knowledge of female anatomy must have improved!”

I stayed silent. When he was newly married, his wife had started to vomit. He decided that she had early jaundice. He bought the most enormous syringe (20 ml) his wife had seen to draw blood. She started to protest and wail. He was impervious to all her pleading. All the results were normal. This puzzled him no end and he asked his classmates what they thought the diagnosis could be. Since most of the class mates were male, they made several interesting suggestions.

“She may have an ulcer. She may have an urinary tract infection.” Finally he demeaned himself enough to ask a female classmate. “Have you done a pregnancy test?” It was positive and viola! the diagnosis was made!

Dr. Gita Mathai

The writer is a paediatrician with a family practice at Vellore.

If you have any questions on health issues please write to

yourhealthgm@yahoo.co.in

hiring a cook

Employing a cook

My parents and in laws houses ran smoothly. They all had the same cooks for many years,  people who grew old with them and were like part of the family. When I got married, and went to live on a college campus, I did not imagine any problem in finding a domestic. I discovered, to my consternation  that present day employees  are a far cry from the devoted old time servants. Good help was practically impossible to find. The women who applied for the job were a breed by themselves. Usually fat, or dirty or with unkempt hair or obviously using snuff or with betel stained lips and teeth. I did not want them cooking my food.

Since I also had a baby, everyone decided that  I needed a lady who would stay the night. That was fine, I would not be  alone with the children when my husband had night duty. We finally imported one from Kerala.

The woman was a lunatic. She decided that everyone was in love with her. When guests came to the house, even if they so much as glanced in her direction she claimed that they were in love with her. She avoided the milkman, the bread-man the electrician, plumber and anyone else who came to the house. Before she leapt out of their way though she did smile coyly at them and had accidents wherein the  pallu of her saree kept falling down.

“The milkman smiles at me all the time “ she said one day, “do you think he is handsome?”

I had not really noticed him but I had a good look   the next morning. He was fat, sweaty with a pungent body odour and not very clean clothes. He did however have light brown eyes, which were very unusual. He had a habit of staring unblinkingly with those eyes. This was creepy for me but obviously sexy for her. He was also married with three children.

In the evening she took to standing near the gate and having long conversations with him. After a couple of weeks of this, and despite many warnings, I decided the situation was getting out of control but did not know what to do. Then her abdomen started to protrude. On enquiry she admitted that she had “missed” 6 months. I took her to the hospital. The ultrasound showed a 32 week fetus. I confronted the milk man who admitted that she let him in every night after we were asleep.

She had the baby and gave it to the missionaries of charity for adoption. I decided enough was enough. I had been doing most of the cooking for the last three months anyway. Also, the “handsome” milkman had started hanging around the gate once again. I told her I was booking a ticket for her to go home. “I will kill myself,” she said “if you send me home.”. I had to arrange for my office manager to escort her to Kerala. Unnerved by this I lived without a cook for 3 months.

The strain then began to show.  Cooking three meals and getting two children ready for school with completed projects and homework then going in to work became a herculean task. I started to become irritable.

A few women came for an interview. One seemed ideal. Her husband had deserted her, she lived with her parents and brothers. Her cooking was adequate. After a few months I noticed that my provision bills had started to go up. I arrived home unexpectedly one day to find her brother and father being fed.

“This  will not do,” I said. There was a great deal of trepidation in my heart as I thought she would quit.

Fortunately,  she continued to come. Her elder brother came to drop her off and pick her up. If I was late he politely hung around the garden. Apparently he was studying to become a preacher. After a few months she too developed a paunch. Eating too much perhaps? No that was not it. She was well along (eight months to be exact) before reality struck me. “Who is the father ?” I asked. “My brother” she said. “Is he your real brother?” “Yes” she said leaving me speechless.

Days progressed and I did not know what to do. Then one day when I came home from work, there was a squalling male bundle of joy left on the verandah. I made another trip to the missionaries of charity. They were beginning to look at me askance. I almost imagined disbelief in their faces.

Bitten twice, I hired a married woman with two children. We all got scabies because she mixed her personal laundry with ours in the washing machine. Then one day she yelled at the children and refused to give them lunch because they were disobedient. They pushed her into a room and bolted the door. She had been banging on the door a good two hours before I reached home. She flounced out calling my children “devils.” My daughter said,” she is not going to get into her house.” “How do you know?” I asked. “We flushed her house keys down the toilet!”

She never came back, not even to collect the two weeks salary I owed her.

The last one was really good. She told me we needed 50 kilos of rice and 15 kilos of wheat flour a month. Every day we needed two kilos of vegetables and one of fruits. It was only when she took a two week vacation and I bought the same quantity that I realized what was happening. Fifty kilos of rice is a sack! I think I must have been feeding her whole family. We parted with mutual acrimony.

I now have male domestic help. They are more expensive but not likely to get pregnant. I also keep a wary eye on food quantities. Lets see how long it lasts!

Dr. Gita Mathai

The writer is a paediatrician with a family practice at Vellore.

If you have any questions on health issues please write to

yourhealthgm@yahoo.co.in

magic

Vodoo

There has always been something creepy about voodoo. Does it or doesn’t it exist? All the mumbo jumbo. Even reading about it gives me goose bumps. Does a person get psyched into doing the things the black magic wants him to do, does he fall ill out of fear  or is it a coincidence?

We had shifted into a new house in Madras ( what is now Chennai) as my father had a new job. He had been brought in from another company as managing director. He was appointed over several others who were already (apparently inefficiently and dishonestly ) working in the company. There was no love lost and they tried their best to oust him. They were not very successful, and he consolidated his position.

Then one day he developed fever. Due to his position a gamut of senior doctors came to attend on him. He was admitted into one of the most prestigious hospitals at that time.

No one could make a diagnosis. Antibiotics were frequently changed

. “It is typhoid, it is not typhoid.”

Opinions varied but the temperature continued to spike at 102-103`F.

I got fed up. I was a medical student  at the time and though  I could not make a diagnosis, I felt that my professors at the college could. For one, their approach was very professional and systematic. They were not swayed by the VIP status of the patient or by his poverty. They did not believe in flashes of brilliance but in a  proper history and a thorough head to toe examination.  If you proceed systematically and logically you will eventually slowly and pedantically make the correct diagnosis.

My father called it torture. First there was the lowly intern. He wrote reams of notes and insisted on examining everything from head to foot (every orifice as well). This included a rectal examination, which my father objected to with every ounce of strength he had.  It was to no avail. The intern was more scared of the senior registrar than of the ranting of a vulnerable patient.

As soon as I reached the room, my father vociferously protested.

“Consider yourself lucky,” I told my parents, “it could have been a female intern!”

My mother left for Chennai as there were some problems with the renovations to the house. I was in charge.

The intern felt that he had  pain over a particular spot in his abdomen the size of a fifty paisa coin.  The registrar concurred and so did the professor. A differential diagnosis of “liver abscess” was made and confirmatory tests were started.

My mother called.” Some one did voodoo on your father.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, “Why would they want to do that?”

“They want him to get sick and die. Maybe because he found out about the large scale fraud and theft that was going on!”

It transpired that she found a rag doll, a copper plate with some hieroglyphics and a lemon.

I was not too convinced, perhaps it had been left there by the previous owner.

“What are you doing with it?”

“ I pored kerosene on it, set it on fire and now I have collected the ashes put them in a plastic bag  and left it in the Catholic church.”

I pondered over this for a minute.

“Why the Catholic church?”

“They are experts in exorcism.” I had no answer for that one.

Meanwhile my father had been started on appropriate treatment. The temperature crashed and he went home two days later.

I still don’t know if the voodoo made diagnosis for the earlier medical professionals difficult so that they were, as my mother put it, “blinded to the truth.”

Years later, my parents aged, my husband retired and we shifted to a village in Tamil Nadu.

One day, while going for a run in the morning, I saw a black sack cloth on the road with some puffed rice and 3 vegetable dolls with grinning faces. There was also a headless chicken my dog wanted to eat. (I restrained him with difficulty.)

There was another old man  who walked in the morning. “Don’t walk this way, “ he told me “this is voodoo.”

“Why have they done this?”

“There is obviously a three member family. Some one wants them to either die or vacate their house.”

I felt sorry for whoever was involved. A hoaxer had obviously extracted a great of money from some one promising success with voodoo!

A couple of months later (obviously the original black magic did not work) a similar  set of figures was found at the entrance of the village.

The village headman was a DK . That group  staunchly believed in “no God.” He found out where the chicken had come from. He soundly thrashed the family involved and filed a police complaint against the voodoo priest! The man packed up his belongings and left in the dead of the night before the police reached.

Dr. Gita Mathai

The writer is a paediatrician with a family practice at Vellore.

If you have any questions on health issues please write to

yourhealthgm@yahoo.co.in

black magic

Vodoo

There has always been something creepy about voodoo. Does it or doesn’t it exist? All the mumbo jumbo. Even reading about it gives me goose bumps. Does a person get psyched into doing the things the black magic wants him to do, does he fall ill out of fear  or is it a coincidence?

We had shifted into a new house in Madras ( what is now Chennai) as my father had a new job. He had been brought in from another company as managing director. He was appointed over several others who were already (apparently inefficiently and dishonestly ) working in the company. There was no love lost and they tried their best to oust him. They were not very successful, and he consolidated his position.

Then one day he developed fever. Due to his position a gamut of senior doctors came to attend on him. He was admitted into one of the most prestigious hospitals at that time.

No one could make a diagnosis. Antibiotics were frequently changed

. “It is typhoid, it is not typhoid.”

Opinions varied but the temperature continued to spike at 102-103`F.

I got fed up. I was a medical student  at the time and though  I could not make a diagnosis, I felt that my professors at the college could. For one, their approach was very professional and systematic. They were not swayed by the VIP status of the patient or by his poverty. They did not believe in flashes of brilliance but in a  proper history and a thorough head to toe examination.  If you proceed systematically and logically you will eventually slowly and pedantically make the correct diagnosis.

My father called it torture. First there was the lowly intern. He wrote reams of notes and insisted on examining everything from head to foot (every orifice as well). This included a rectal examination, which my father objected to with every ounce of strength he had.  It was to no avail. The intern was more scared of the senior registrar than of the ranting of a vulnerable patient.

As soon as I reached the room, my father vociferously protested.

“Consider yourself lucky,” I told my parents, “it could have been a female intern!”

My mother left for Chennai as there were some problems with the renovations to the house. I was in charge.

The intern felt that he had  pain over a particular spot in his abdomen the size of a fifty paisa coin.  The registrar concurred and so did the professor. A differential diagnosis of “liver abscess” was made and confirmatory tests were started.

My mother called.” Some one did voodoo on your father.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, “Why would they want to do that?”

“They want him to get sick and die. Maybe because he found out about the large scale fraud and theft that was going on!”

It transpired that she found a rag doll, a copper plate with some hieroglyphics and a lemon.

I was not too convinced, perhaps it had been left there by the previous owner.

“What are you doing with it?”

“ I pored kerosene on it, set it on fire and now I have collected the ashes put them in a plastic bag  and left it in the Catholic church.”

I pondered over this for a minute.

“Why the Catholic church?”

“They are experts in exorcism.” I had no answer for that one.

Meanwhile my father had been started on appropriate treatment. The temperature crashed and he went home two days later.

I still don’t know if the voodoo made diagnosis for the earlier medical professionals difficult so that they were, as my mother put it, “blinded to the truth.”

Years later, my parents aged, my husband retired and we shifted to a village in Tamil Nadu.

One day, while going for a run in the morning, I saw a black sack cloth on the road with some puffed rice and 3 vegetable dolls with grinning faces. There was also a headless chicken my dog wanted to eat. (I restrained him with difficulty.)

There was another old man  who walked in the morning. “Don’t walk this way, “ he told me “this is voodoo.”

“Why have they done this?”

“There is obviously a three member family. Some one wants them to either die or vacate their house.”

I felt sorry for whoever was involved. A hoaxer had obviously extracted a great of money from some one promising success with voodoo!

A couple of months later (obviously the original black magic did not work) a similar  set of figures was found at the entrance of the village.

The village headman was a DK . That group  staunchly believed in “no God.” He found out where the chicken had come from. He soundly thrashed the family involved and filed a police complaint against the voodoo priest! The man packed up his belongings and left in the dead of the night before the police reached.

Dr. Gita Mathai

The writer is a paediatrician with a family practice at Vellore.

If you have any questions on health issues please write to

yourhealthgm@yahoo.co.in