Bookish reflections

Bookshops is a habit with me or you could even say addiction. Every few weeks I have an urge to spend few hours browsing through books on display. Basically it’s an old longing to be amongst books. A sanctuary to momentarily be away from the world outside

It has happened more than once. I regularly visit a large bookshop under Mumbai’s oldest flyover near the hospital I work. And bump into either a patient or a family member of a patient. The typical conversation goes like this ‘Hello doctor, what are you doing here?’. ‘Browsing through books’ I reply. And then a curious question ‘ You have time to read books’?. I have wondered whether this is just a reflection of the image of doctors as being so deeply buried in their work that they are unlikely to be in bookshops . Or is it accurate?

Bookish reflections

Bookshops is a habit with me or you could even say addiction. Every few weeks I have an urge to spend few hours browsing through books on display. Basically it’s an old longing to be amongst books. A sanctuary to momentarily be away from the world outside. Maybe it’s also the thrill of discovering an interesting new book. And when sees self-reflective, candid, contrarian writing which doesn’t pander to popular taste it is somehow reassuring that not everyone is in the pursuit of a certain idea of success. Given the cacophonic high decibel noise of the modern audio-visual world, book shops are comforting places. What places of worship must be to believers. Bookshops never fail to uplift my mood.

Many a bookshop in Mumbai has passed on. Even this one had to morph over time. It was once only about books but soon had music CD’s and movie DVD’s. And then the gifts section became bigger and bigger. And an eatery inside is now a prominent attraction. It’s now half bookshop. But at least it survived. Those who resisted the demands of time had to take a bow. Visiting a bookshop now has an additional excuse. An act of solidarity with a dying establishment which is struggling to stay afloat.

My childhood was marked by close encounters with books. I was teased as a bookish student by playmates. Bombay had a now extinct institution called a circulating library at every corner. Where one borrowed books for fixed periods of time and paid a fine for a delay. The strange elation at discovering a rare coveted book on the King Circle pavement at a throwaway price may be baffling to young people now but some of you who may appreciate what it means. And long bus rides on route 66 (front seat upper deck) all the way to the British Council library to be back with one book. Maybe I am getting old & nostalgic.

When I graduated from Famous five, Five find outers, Secret Seven, Billy Bunter to Alistair Maclean, James Hadley Chase, Perry Mason & even Harold Robbins it was late school. College changed the list. Ayn Rand first and then as if in contrast Steinbeck, Hemingway, Sinclair and Gorky. My reading slowed down in medical college though I did manage to read some of Naipaul, Rushdie and Marquez. In later years as Indian authors came into their own I read Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Nagarkar and Jhumpa Lahiri.

The curriculum and intense competition in medical colleges is almost designed to kill other pursuits. Later, residency in surgery largely meant an end to books. And then came a long hiatus marked by Tsundoku. Buying books without reading most of them. Its only recently that I have been picking up books from my home bookshelf.

It’s obvious that a large part of my growing up was pre digital. Under the onslaught of the devices, books are retreating from lives. When chatting with my surgical trainees it’s obvious that they have grown up with little exposure to literature. The uninterrupted orgy of entrance exams in their formative years kills many pursuits. WhatsApp and the cell phone leave no space for leisurely exploration of books, music, art and culture. It may sound somewhat pretentious to make a link but its insidious impact on the human angle of healthcare is possible.

History is brimming with doctors as famous writers. Medicine throbs with stories. And just giving words to everyday events can make for interesting reading. One can go as far back as Chekov, Maugham & Conan Doyle. Or more recently Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, Abraham Varghese, Khalid Hosseini and Taslima Nasrin. Today, Kavery Nambisan and Kalpana Swaminathan both women surgeons have a long list of novels. Hansda Shekhar a Adivasi doctor novelist from Jharkand is a Sahitya Award winner.

Medical students are labelled ‘bookish’ as if they have a choice. William Osler regarded as the father of modern medicine famously said ‘ To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all’. Osler is talking of medical books. One could add that studying medicine without the world of literature is going to sea with a captain whose view from the deck is compromised.

There is a fledgling but growing global movement to introduce humanities into medical courses. Novels and literature are being incorporated into medical curricula. Mumbai’s GS Medical College has set up a Chair of Humanities named after the well-known writer and anatomy professor Manu Kothari. It organises talks, screenings and an annual conference on the Humanities. It is premature to talk of the impact of such steps on the making of a young doctor. There are far too many powerful forces which largely push most towards a default career pathway.

Will there be a day when medical students will read Oliver Sacks Awakenings as Neurology curriculum? Or Paul Kalanithi’s ‘When Breath becomes Air’ as a way to understand terminal illness? Can they be reading Kavery Nambisan’s “A luxury called health’ to understand medicine in India? Who says one can’t indulge in a bit of make-believe which borders on the possible. Isnt that what books do all the time?.