I got my annual health check-up done, unable to resist the temptation of the “special discount for women” deal from one of those innumerable diagnostic centres in the city. Though I did not suffer from a white coat syndrome, I did get a little edgy seeing the BP monitor and the doctor’s serious face, holding my reports of sugar and stress tests. He began routinely parroting his “observations” based on the readings, with comments interspersed with jocular niceties on my stress test like, “What, you thought you will complete your day’s workout using the centre’s treadmill”? along with a dollop of nastiness because I had abruptly stopped my thyroid pill. When I got my reports for keeps, my eyes dropped anchor on the routine questionnaire casually pinned onto the reports. This had been filled up by the doctor before the tests after he had orally asked me those questions. I saw a slot which asked: Alcohol? and the space next to it marked: Nil!
The doctor had never asked me whether I consumed alcohol. How could he be so presumptuous as to simply fill up the column of my personal details without my knowledge? How could he assume that I drank only Kumbakonam degree coffee, and not scotch? I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt: he might have not asked me that “delicate” question as he is the family physician. He could have muttered to himself: “Aiyoo..Shiva, Shiva… how could I shock her with such a blasphemous question?” But isn’t he still a doctor? The thyroid medicine he might be prescribing to me might react violently with the “Old Monk” that has blessed my blood stream, and my soul!
Well, this was just the tip of the bias. I have walked into many a restaurant in Chennai, where the liquor menu has been handed over to the male accompanying me, while the mocktail and starter menu graciously shown to me.
This was Chennai, circa 2013.
Cut to Chennai, 2019, or the last few days left of this year. The pubs in town have indeed become the greatest leveller. My order of a Jameson large on the rocks is no longer looked at with bewilderment. Today, various police check-posts stop female drivers to take the breathalyser test. Earlier, the female driver might have been more drunk than the man sitting next to her, but would have escaped that test.
That still leaves me with doubt. I need to check whether the same “family doctor” would ask me a straight and simple question: “Do you drink?”
Subhashini dinesh
The writer is Deputy Resident Editor with this newspaper