Among the Not So Great

Dr. Nripendra

[Born: 1.9.1904 — 2004 was his centenary year]

An apple a day
Keeps the doctor away

Old Proverb

An old adage, but I speak of this doctor who provided the “apple” also! He is Dr. Nripendra — to us, simply Doctorbabu or Nripen-da. There was no confusion — he was the one and only doctorbabu. A thought may arise: “You had no choice” — but we did not need a choice!

In the early 40’s the Dispensary was a very homely and popular place — not because of the “need” of the patients or the aged —but from the children’s point of view. Nripen-da loved children.

The building was unimposing, single storeyed, but clean and inviting. There were just 2 ½ rooms. A small open front-yard (the same as now) let you into a biggish room on the left, with white tiled walls up to 5 feet or so and a smooth black floor. I think a neatly laid brick floor pre-dated this. But it was not so cluttered up as it is to-day. One corner had a mobile tray of medicinal paraphernalia, a high bench in the far corner for patients, and in the centre, a little to the rear, a largish table behind which sat the smiling doctor, Dr. Nripendra. The next room, behind this one, was the domain of the “compounder”. (This word “compounder” was very much in vogue then. The word means an individual, in a dispensary or hospital, who mixes or combines different elements or liquid chemicals to make up the doctor’s prescription.) That was the time when the doctor’s prescriptions had to be concocted on the spot. The compounder then poured the medicine into a bottle and stuck on the outside a strip of paper with notches cut at equal intervals. Each notch indicated the “dose” the patient had to gulp down once, twice, or thrice a day. Nowadays the practice is to just hand out ready-made pills. What the “handing out” person is called, I wouldn’t know. The job is made easy and uninteresting. For every disease there is a pill packed in tinfoil (could we call the man a “piller” and the times a “pillage”? The beneficiary is of course a pill-popper). The pill, I admit, is very convenient for both, the doctor and the patient.

The compounder of those days was a young man named Salil (late). Salil later shifted to watch repairing. Another young man named Manilal also helped the doctor. (Manilal was the younger brother of Moolshankar. Moolshankar was a beautiful person. He attended on Sri Aurobindo. He was stabbed and died on the night of the 14th of August 1947, the eve of India’s Independence, during a dastardly attack on the Ashram.) Manilal left the Ashram soon after. Next, a young man named Akhil was the compounder. He too left after shifting to our Electric Department. Then came Vasant-bhai, sometime in April, 1957. The late Madhav Pandit introduced him. He came IN and never got OUT. He has become now a part of the Dispensary. I suspect he is stuck at the centre of a whole network — like a spider caught in its own web! These days anyone can get himself caught in any one of the millions of “Websites” festooning the globe.

The ½ room mentioned earlier was a country-tile-roofed verandah set to the East of the two above-mentioned rooms — where now the pills are stocked and dispensed. This is where Manilal worked. Here it was that Manilal distributed soup and sometimes a piece or two of papaya. We ran hither for these in the recess period (papaya was very rare, so a much sought after delicacy).