The next year Sarkar Dada MBBS came out and I made a mental note. Not all doctors.
In Hyderabad, healthcare runs on two extremes. Either the hospital wants you to sell your left kidney to fix your right kidney, or you get a miracle like Dr Emmanuel, who has been charging ten rupees a consultation for over a decade.
Here’s my evidence, collected the hard way.
2009: First year of college, short on attendance. Seventy five percent required, I had sixty. The fix was a medical certificate, which no real hospital gives you because it’s illegal, so my friends found a man with an MBBS degree operating out of a room under a staircase, next to a pan shop. I never once saw a patient there. Never saw a stethoscope. Just a steady stream of students collecting certificates for a hundred rupees. I asked him if that covered his rent. He said no, his real income was the pan shop downstairs, which he also owned. He became a doctor because his father forced him. I respect this man for having the self-awareness to never once treat an actual patient.
2012: My first job out of college was at a hospital that happened to be owned by Chiranjeevi’s in-laws. My brain, which cannot tell fiction from reality, decided this hospital must run on Tagore values. On a smoke break, one of the doctors told me you don’t always need an X-ray, we just prescribe it for the money. I said nothing. I believed that one day Boss would find out and beat him up so badly that no X-ray could detect where and what is broken. Still waiting for that day.
2018: My mother has a family doctor. He diagnoses correctly, prescribes correctly, then tells you to get admitted, for absolutely everything. Fever, get admitted. Cold, get admitted. I went to collect my mother’s reports once and he said the reports would take time, until then, get admitted. I found out later he’d bought an OYO room and turned it into a nursing home. Which explains everything now.
2023: I’ve broken bones three or four times, so I know the drill. Cast, a few weeks off, friends signing it in bad handwriting. This time I landed at the in-laws’ hospital again, figuring the Boss connection would keep things honest. They X-rayed my hand and said it needed surgery. I was in pain, so I agreed. Later I showed the reports to a different doctor, who said plaster would have done the job. Now I have titanium in my hand because someone needed a new modular kitchen.
The real reason I don’t trust the big hospitals is the ads. That kind of advertising budget needs an ROI. Coca-Cola spends on ads and we buy a drink we never needed. A hospital spends on ads and we buy healthcare we never needed.
Sandesh
@msgfromsandesh
(This comedian is here to tell funny stories about Hyderabad)
(The writer’s views are his own)
