In many Tamil films, a small but significant (usually comedy) role belongs to the roadside ‘doctors’ who shout into their megaphones the benefits of the various leghiyams and mooligai marundhus before they are busted by the police or a fellow citizen for the false claims they have been advertising.
Avinash Kumar and Gaurav Malaker of Delhi-based band BLOT throw light on them in a different way. They have documented, researched, and studied closely the work done by these street ‘doctors’ “in a light hearted, non-judgemental way in the form of an audio-visual piece.” The duo was commissioned by Wellcome Collection, a London-based medical charity, to produce the video to launch its year-long project Medicine Corner that explores India’s abundance of medicine cultures and healing here. The AV piece premiered in Chennai on Wednesday night at Amethyst.
“We were first commissioned about six months ago by Ratan Vaswani (the curator of the programme), who saw some of our work online, to do an AV piece on street ‘doctors’ in India and document their work,” says Gaurav. In the beginning, when Gaurav and Avinash set out to shoot, they realised that they were faced by an “ecosystem of ‘street’ doctors who were quite as passionate about their jobs as we are.” Then Gaurav says that they sent back notes and put it all together.
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“In Old Delhi, you can see distinct signage and words (that advertise these self-styled ‘doctors’) if you’re observant. They’re colourful, eye-catching, and painted by hand usually by those who paint signs on lorries,” he says. Also for people who have been in Delhi for quite a while, they have walked past these people (like all of us have at some point) and noticed engaging signboards that have stayed in their heads.
Following that, BLOT submitted a proposal to the Wellcome Trust (“to study the finer details,” as Gaurav puts it) and won a grant to do the same. But why choose a subject such as this? Gaurav says that the stories they came across were interesting and that the people they documented were as intriguing: “For example, when we headed out to Old Delhi, we observed a line of dentists outside the Red Fort — there are healthcare avenues for people willing to pay a minimal amount to get the job done.”
Ratan, on his part, says that the subject is broader than just street ‘doctors’: “We’re looking at a glorious variety that India has in terms of healthcare, be it medicinal plants, healing shrines, affordable medical technology, the history of surgery — just how local medicine works in a modern context.”
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One challenge that they accept is the instance of too many stories, especially when they’re all equally interesting. An example, Gaurav provides, is that of a man who supposedly excels in height augmenting techniques — he promises people even well above the age of 35 that he can get them to grow taller thanks to certain mixtures and medicines. Then there’s the sex doctor whom many people approach as soon as their wedding is over to find out how to have a working sex life (most of them don’t know how it’s done).
Gaurav is clear when he says they aren’t promoting anything through their presentation, “this is not to sensationalise, but to just showcase the diversity of content that is available. Different people can interpret it in different ways; it’s most definitely not a sting operation as many of them were happy to engage with the camera.”