Of Bangali Babus and Bangali Daktarbabus (A request to all my Bangali ‘Friends’: Please read it in good humour, scroll down to the next item on your Newsfeed, if you do not Like this. Kindly ‘Unfriend’ me not!) My nineteen year old daughter has been suffering from acute leg ache since past few months. Her both legs ache very badly, particularly at the end of the day, after her all day running around is done and she tries to sleep for a couple of hours or so, before she has to catch up with the next day morning, again. Hearing of the same complaint every night, I forcibly took her to a local doctor. He examined her legs well, could not detect any abnormality and prescribed some pain killers and an ointment. None of us, the mother or the daughter, were much convinced, we felt we have been cheated and we decided to throw away the prescription. The pain on my daughter’s legs persisted. I took her to a reputed orthopaedic, this time. He examined her legs for a longer duration than the previous doctor but failed to detect any thing. He diagnosed it as the ‘growth pain’, showed her a few exercises and prescribed a few calcium pills. Coming out of the doctor’s chamber, my daughter showered her anger on me. She said, ‘Ma, am not ‘growing’ any more, I am twenty almost! Why do you have to believe always, what the doctors say?’ We bought those calcium tablets and the ointment too. The pain on my daughter’s legs somehow did not go away. This time, I took her to another specialist doctor, who has a lengthier degree against his name and charges a higher consultancy fees too. This doctor too started examining the girls’ legs with much care. While carrying on with the examination process the doctor kept asking me about my daughter’s daily activities, her food habits, etc. And the moment he heard that his patient is a ‘vegetarian’, he gave a big all knowing grin and uttered the most absurd statement, I have ever heard from a medical practitioner. He said, ‘Your daughter’s being a vegetarian is the only cause of her leg pain. No amount of milk or soy and vegetables or fruits can ever substitute the animal protein. Force her to eat fish and chicken every day, she will be all right soon.’ Coming out of the doctor’s chamber my daughter started to feel puky. I felt cheated one more time. A meal without a piece of fish or a chunk of meat is considered as an incomplete one by people of my father’s clan. I have the experience of hearing the same thing for umpteenth number of time from friends, relatives, neighbours and acquaintances, as how could I even have survived in a vegetarian ‘sasural’ for so long. I knew that all Bangali Babus, who are true to their soil, tradition, culture and cuisine, are obsessed with their ‘macher jhol ar bhaath’ and ‘mangsho ruti’. What I did not know is that the Bangali Daktarbabus are after all Bangali Babus too!
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 04:13:42 +0000
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