Confessions of a Jholawalla

by Prabir Kumar Chatterjee on Saturday, 25 June 2011 Jhola Doctor! I rather like the nickname. There are at least 3 meanings. One is literal- doctor with a cloth bag. There was a famous article on Jholawallas. That was years after I took up the habit. In fact I was carrying a bag when I reached the hall for the entrance test. You needed it to carry ones swimming trunks. Must have gone to the Calcutta Club pool over 500 times wearing a kurta and jeans. Pity Chuni Jhetu forgot to tell Suvaprasanna how to get in through the back gate. Must have started using the bag when my pockets started looking like a novice's desktop- overflowing with old notes and bits and pieces. It served as a male handbag. The pencil I chewed kept me from lighting up when others in the school were smoking bidis or cigarette butts. Later I chewed ink pens- careful to use piston filling models Then the cheap and light refill. The refill saw me through college. It was only when I started practicing at a weekly haat in Litipara that my Paharia patients shamed me into investing in a 2 rupee pen. The pens nowadays leak if you keep them in your pocket - so the other trade mark of the jhola doctor has vanished. I still use the public bus when not on official work. I used the cycle to office in Godda but here in Raiganj I walk to office on days when there is no out station travel. The second meaning is barefoot doctor. Unlike the Chinese, the government did not think up this scheme. It is a typical South Asian innovation. Somebody buys a few medicines and maybe a syringe and sets off to a village full of goodwill, and quite willing to give baki. A contract is drawn up over a cuppa cha and the jhola daktar starts treating. The agreement is that when, and if, the patient is cured- the family undertakes to give a sack of the local produce (beans, corn, paddy) or the equivalent in cash at harvest time. Just like buying a sari from the roaming Chetty in Madras. If needed you can avail of an acceptable interest rate and delay the payments. If you have read Kabuliwallah, you know the rest of the script. I do not fall in this category of disguised mahajan- though my bag often does have paracetamol, fluconazole or chloroquine as the case may be. Even a few sputum slides occasionally. The 3rd meaning is more complicated. My beard makes me resemble a weaver or a darji. They are called tanti or jholaha (depending on the religion). So some of those who named me Jhola Daktar in Hiranpur may have imagined... in their own words... "Dukkho korben na, kintu apni ki mussalman?" Given that my father is a Chatterjee and my mother Philips, this never failed to tickle me. so I gravely explained this to them and replied..."Hoy to! Ekhono thik kori ni!" Which usually led to another round of chai. Chai is not tea exactly- there is plenty of milk and lots of sugar. In Hiranpur it is served in miniscule earthern cups (bhaar) and takes the place of ale in the Irish pub. On the way to Bochadanga, where I clicked a picture I met Sudipto on the bus. He wanted some help with the GIS package I had given him. I loudly explained the importance of shp shape files and how to handle dbf files in Excel and offered him my own kmz files to go with Google Earth. That's when I realized that there are 3 types of GIS enthusiasts. We have all seen the work of Macro GIS- Rosling and world maps, as well as national maps and even state maps. At the other end are the street level views in which I can see Temple Fortune Hill and Fitzjohns Avenue of my childhood or Goethals where I went to hostel or even my wife's mama bari in Haripal, which I have never visited. Can even read the number of the car in front of my brother's home in Amsterdam. This is micro GIS. This is an extension of the land of the Buddha- Mahipal was the great ruler in this land and later the kings sat at Adina, even before William Carey came as an indigo planter and lost a son Peter in the old Dinajpur. Very far from Pandatheruppu where old man Scudder lost a son called John. My mother's mother's family was from Pandatheruppu- so now you may have guessed why I needed to go to Vellore and why I went to Nemur to learn Siddha medicine in 1984. Never mind that I landed up in Bhopal via Padhar- all that is recorded faithfully in postcards that I still preserve. But now notes in Facebook are a simpler way to record the peregrination of the jhola. The third type of map- is the Middle Way GIS of those with no motion (ni+ vana= nirvana). we use it in the district. It consists of block (sub district) maps from UNICEF's DevInfo matched with panchayat and village outline maps from WBSACS Swift programme. all this compiled in Map Window and converted to a kmz. Then stick it on Google Earth or just add your data with Map Window or even Access and you have it- Middle GIS. I like to call it Nirvana, but that is a bit dodgy- sacrilegious or whatever! Nirvana to the Jhola Doctor is small stuff to the wizards of Macro and micro GIS I suppose.