Clinical Approach

 The other day I traced my steps back to the surgeon’s chamber in the hospital because I remembered that I had forgotten to take my prescription. I waited patiently at the open doorway for the doctor was telling a young boy to bring his file along- many times over. The boy apparently had some difficulty in understanding and the instructions were repeated a little more elaborately in more or less the same tone.

I registered this scene vividly because, that was the first thing that I had observed about the doctor, when I first met him - his matter of fact, terse, clinical tone. Though I did feel that it was a little odd, I reckoned that someone wielding the scalpel ever so often simply cannot afford to be up close or friendly, given the nature of his job.

Even before I could consolidate my thoughts, the young man turned around and I had to muster all my will power from uttering anything at all. The person who turned around was a disfigured dwarfed man. One could not simply miss the fact that he must have been a victim of great violence. There was a slash of a fresh wound on his balding pate. I winced with shock and pain as I looked at him walk away from the room.

Almost immediately, I heard the doctor saying that working in a hospital had made a Buddha out of him for he was seeing the cycle of birth and death and all that goes in between all the time. I tried to mutter a reply unsuccessfully, and covered my inability to speak with a sheepish smile and went my way, but the scene haunted me.

I had never seen a victim of gross violence in flesh and blood forever before in my life and the reaction of the doctor refused to budge from my mind.

As I mulled over the scene time and again, I realised the meaning of “Stitha Prajna” the one with a consistent consciousness - someone who could behave the same way no matter what the circumstances. The surgeon had not shown an iota of difference in which he dealt with his mutilated patient. There was not the slightest sign of sympathy or disgust on his visage. His tone was a matter of fact and as precise and lucid as ever. Even as I wondered at the amount of self-discipline and sincerity of purpose that formed the backbone of his unique characteristic my regard for him reached a higher plane!