Sunday, January 10, 2010

An Aside to the Srinath Saga

Long before Srinath was born, Thangi woke up one night around 4 AM to use the bathroom. Returning to her bed in the dark, half asleep, she sat on the floor rather heavily thinking it was the edge of her bed. She found she couldn’t get up. The ensuing chaos resulted in our finding that she had damaged her hip and had to be seriously attended to orthopedically. Wadi had doctors for cold and cough and even Gulbarga was primitive back then, though it had reputed orthopaedicians like the Shah brothers by 1987, when I required the services of one. It was not that Gulbarga couldn’t handle the case but at 37 kilometers from Wadi it was farther than Yadgir and the Yadgir Hospital was more reputed than MRMC, Gulbarga. so it was to Yadgir that we eventually went.

The ACC doctor was called in by 6 AM, and it became clear that she was to be shifted to the Yadgir Mission Hospital for treatment. It was formally called the Holston Hospital and was run by Christian missionaries. By 8 AM Thangi was laid on a bed in the back of a truck and we drove along the rickety road to Yadgir, to the south of Wadi. By noon we had covered the 15 odd kilometers to Yadgir, and reached the hospital. It was new and spanking in my eyes and like ACC in Wadi, it was an Institution which ran the town of Yadgir like a monolith. The doctors were rather well trained and were original Christians of the higher echelons, while the nurses and others were converted first generation Christians. They had a school and other such facilities and the senior doctors were treated like royalty.

It was to the care of one Dr. Levy (whom Thangi stubbornly refered to as Dr. Ravi) that Thangi was entrusted. Dr.Levy was a kind and dignified gentleman about 45 years of age. He gravely pronounced that there has to be surgery and that the hip and the Femur were both cracked. Babu had to travel to MRMC, Gulbarga to get prosthetic and other medical supplies for the operation. The operation was a success though it crippled Thangi forever. For recuperation, we all had to stay at Yadgir for over a month and I more or less missed my Class Six exams. While at Yadgir, being Dr, Levy’s patients we were treated very well indeed. We had carried our kerosene primus stove and vessels for cooking there, and during the Annual day celebrations in the Mission school there, I accompanied Dr. Levy as his guest, and it was all a jolly good affair.

Back in Wadi, the plaster on Thangi’s leg were removed by the ACC hospital doctor and it took almost eight months before Thangi was on her feet though she was not the same anymore.

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