P.M.G. Mayurapriya Creations’ play, ‘Dharmaspathri’ (story, dialogue and direction — P. Muthukumaran), deals with the sordid happenings in a corporate hospital, where money matters more than human lives.
The Hippocratic oath is forgotten by doctors who have spent a fortune to acquire medical degrees. They are prepared to wheel and deal in the corporate hospital set-up, where targets are set for doctors. They prescribe surgery even if it is not warranted, and they insist on a battery of tests, so that the hospital can make money.
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‘Dharmaspathri’ captured the appalling way in which corporate hospitals prey upon the fears of patients.
There is nothing dharmic about Dharma Hospitals, where most of the action takes place. It has a dedicated marketing department, where a doctor, a smooth talker, is assigned the job of targeting potential patients. Plans are neatly laid down.
If a patient has insurance, the marketing department ensures that every rupee that he is eligible for comes to the hospital, even if it means an extended and unnecessary stay in the hospital.
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The middle class are easy prey, because those who run the hospital know that they take things lying down. At best, an aggrieved middle-class person will dash off a letter to the editor of a daily and be happy if his letter is published.
Appealing dialogue
Presiding over Dharma Hospitals is Angusamy, a rather jolly politician, who wants to keep the cash coming in. But when it comes to a medical check up for himself, he goes to Dr. Sami’s run-down clinic, because he trusts Sami.
While all the actors played their respective roles well, the one who deserves special mention is Ganapathy Sankar as Angusamy, the bumbling, self-deprecatory politician, whose conscience puts in an occasional appearance, only to be stifled quickly. Dialogue that packed a punch added to the appeal of the play, the levity not detracting from the gravitas of the theme. The stage setting was a credit to Saidai Kumar and Shanmugam.
However, there were some slips. Sami has a compounder, and this was anachronistic. Did compounders not go out of vogue ages ago? Dr. Sami prescribes six multivitamin tablets a day to a patient, because that is the only way to get him to drink water that many times! A vitamin overdose prescribed by a supposedly honest doctor made his homilies on ethical medical practice seem shallow. Why did Sami’s clinic have to be so tacky? Doesn’t lack of cleanliness in a doctor’s clinic also indicate a lack of concern for patients?