Interning an intern
An intern from Terna Medical College Mumbai, who was posted in Gavhan near Panvel, recalls an encounter with a patient who had rushed in with a bite on his neck at two in the morning, screaming something in Marathi. The intern, originally from UP, did not understand the language very well but still tried to get details of the bite by asking questions like, “Did it have hair? Big teeth? Scary looking?” The man answered in affirmative to such questions but he was beginning to look confused. Finally, the intern woke up a Maharashtrian ward boy outside for help. After interrogating the patient, the boy told the intern, “his wife bit him”.
(emphasis mine)
Read more such vignettes in today's Times of India's page 13 by clicking on the link.
posted by i at 6:39 PM
10 Comments:
Poor wife, how troubled she was by her husband , to undertake such a drastic measure to get rid of him.
Poor husband, who landed up with a “human bite” which is potentially more dangerous than a non-rabid dog or cat or rat bite.
Poor intern , who is posted in a place with no knowledge of the local lingo. Although its a pity ,within 5 yrs of undergrad in the state, he cldn`t get the grip of the language.
And finally ,not so poor ward boy, who I am sure must have reverted back to his blissful slumber, after the incident ,with utter indifference.
Thank you for your comments, but why hide behind anonymity? Also, Mumbai, like most metropolises, is languageless. They all speak a strange mixture of anglicised Hindi, garbage-dump English, and gangsta-style marathi, so I would be very astonished if anyone learnt Marathi just from having stayed there.
To begin , reputed medical colleges in Mumbai, which are mostly State govt and Mumbai Municipal Corporation(MMC) ones, cater to lower n lower middle class strata ,who mostly speak Marathi , to some extent Hindi in certain pockets of the city, certainly not garbage dump English. Secondly these colleges, being under the state govt & MMC, the entire administration runs in Marathi. The staff , from ward boys ,to nurses, to technicians, to clerical staff speak Marathi. All the official documents are issued in Marathi, which is of course not gangsta style,(whatever that means).Even the MBBS certificate issued by the Mumbai university is typed in both English and Marathi.
Besides ,good history taking from ur patient, which is the foundation clinical diagnosis, certainly calls for some extra efforts to learn the language. I mean five yrs is a long tim
Ok, point taken. I had forgotten that Marathi is the primary medium of expression in Mumbai below a cetain income level; the income level that frequents Govt. hospitals. But, and correct me if I am wrong, from what I gather undergraduate medical training does not include a lot of interaction with patients. Obtaining diagnosis, yes, but one could get away with a marathi friend sitting next to you, and now matter which strata of society a person in Mumbai comes from, I am reasonably positive that he/she would a little hindi, far more than a similiarly situated person in the Maratha hinterland. Basically, I believe that one could get away as an undergrad, however, when doing your PG, it is nearly impossible. My elder cousin did her's in Bangalore and now speaks fluent Kannada. Now as a practicing doctor in Mumbai, her Marathi is nothing to sneeze at either.
Now, English in most of India, to my mind, is garbage-dump. Overflowing with tired cliches, highlighted by overzealous invocations of "awesome" and hobbled by a complete inability to finish a sentence without having to resort to a local language. This is probably because of people never straying beyond thrillers in their reading ambit. Ok, I am a snob :-).
Finally, gangsta-style Marathi? Well, that is more of a literary liecense than anything else, inspired Bhiku Mahthrey no doubt. But, if people who speak Marathi in Delhi, do so in anyway close to the Hindi spoken in the Hindi heartland, then I would say it is poor representation of Marathi.
I forgot to add, but the spoken english that I encountered in US of A was also pretty dissapointing. The British seem a little more educated, but then I am at Cambridge.
One more thing, when I mock the English speaking Indian, I do so the Mall-frequenting variety; the ones who have had the opportunity to know better, but they were too busy watching Toon Disney.
During undergrad , atleast in K.E.M.H.(which ranks topmost in the state), students are posted in clinical specialities ,2nd yr onwards. These are set Maharashtra Medical Council guidelines, which I m sure, other colleges abide by as well.
This means direct interaction with the patients, for a total of 3 and half yrs before internship. Infact in my opinion, patient contact is more through, systematic , in-depth n analytical in these yrs. After all, its during this period ,that core clinical skills are imbibed in students, the very foundation of medicine is built.
It wld only be nonsensical to expect non localite students to lash out Dynaneshwari Marathi by the end of undergrad training. But the point I am driving at is, students get well versed with basic language skills, necessary to gather at least the head and tail of patient’s complaints.
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Having said this, its up to the individual to make the most during their undergrad, develop their skills as they progress towards internship, or rely on their Marathi speaking friend sitting next to them.
Finally, to form an opinion abt a language on the basis of ones encounter with a miniscule population residing outside Maharashtra is rather illogical. After all, the purity of language depends on multiple factors-origin ,class ,exposure ,society to name a few. The so called gansta Marathi ,or better nuanced descriptor wld be “impoverished lingo” is adopted mostly by nonmaharashtian population, residing in the metropolis.
I agree with all except the final paragraph. I wasn't basing my opinion of Mumbai based Marathi speakers on Maratha specimens found outside Maharashtra. I was extrapolating from the Hindi skills of native hindi speakers in Delhi. In spite of Hindi being the most commonly spoken language there, its command by the locals is rather damning. The reason for this, I believe, is that people in big cities, and especially metros, are from a young age exposed to a strange mix of English and Hindi (or whatever is the local language). Moreover, because reading English literature is "good" and the vernacular one "not groovy", they grow up, as you say, impoverished in both. This is not the same for people from smaller towns. From my college days I remember that the best Hindi was spoken by chaps from small cities, compared to the ones from Delhi.
But here is another question. How different is the dialect spoken in the Marathi hinterland from the one spoken in the city? Could it not be that a local reeling under severe mental and physical onslaught (after all his wife bit him) could ramble on in some strange variation of Marathi that would make no sense to someone whose knowledge of Marathi is the small smattering he/she picked up in the corridors of some municipal hospital?
Small smattering picked up in the corridors of some muncipal hospital?? 3 n half yrs of slogging in wards sld certainly account for more than that!
OK I agree,spoken marathi in rural outskirts of Maharashtra is not exactly poverished one,n for a nonregular can be difficult to grasp, if not impossible.
And to answer ur question,yes marathi in metros is vastly currupt by industrialized, westernised upbringing .But having said that,there are maharashtrian families were emphasis on good dialect is made on kids at an early age,I mean my parents wld kill me if I spoke Bhiku Mhatre style,or for that matter, anglicised version,unless ofcourse I can`t find a mararthi substitute of a given word :)
Of course there would be families, a whole lot of them, that would lay stress on the way their language is spoken. I hope so anyway for both their regional culture in particular, and for India's diversity in general. Also I would quite understand your parent's anguish if you suddenly started acting like Bhiku Jr. The further one stays from that character, the better.
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