Sunday, July 22, 2001		Speaking generally

Why do doctors need to advertise?
Chanchal Sarkar

SHOULD doctors advertise? Do they advertise? In India, they do so quite blatantly, especially those who promise a "vigorous married life", a stop to falling hair and nature-cure doctors who offer relief Cancer. They are all some sort of quacks who, today in Africa, are making a tremendous killing out of "cures" for AIDS.

But to see a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh) advertising is a different matter. I saw two advertisements in the biggest Bengali daily of Calcutta, one of the very biggest in all India. In it an ophthalmologist who is an M.S., FRCS (Edin) and an FRC Optical of London was announcing from a hospital in the South that he was coming for a day to Kolkata to see patients and an address was given where patients could register ahead.

On the same day in the same paper, a rheumotologist, (also from the South) was notifying that he would be in Kolkata for two days. He had requested those willing to consult him to contact an Information Centre with their medical papers.

Suppose one wrote to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh to ask if this were permitted, would the Fellow not be disciplined? And should not the Press Council take notice if newspapers publish such advertisements? The Council could start a case suo motu without even having to wait for a complaint.

Places for abortion are advertised, maybe they ought to be if they are reputable, the famous bonesetters of Chittor could advertise though they don’t seem to need it. If we have MDs, FRCSs and MRCOGs advertising then what do we do?

I have been reading a most marvellous book. Edward said, in the Times Literary Supplement, has called it "near-miraculous original" and The Sunday Telegraph called it "A masterpiece". Written by Ahdaf Sorief, In the Eye of the Sun and is set mainly in Cairo. Alexandria, Damascus and Beirut, along with Paris, Perugia and Vienna and quite a bit of England features in the book which is spread over a time span of 1967 to 1980. This time period includes the rise and death of the Egyptian Revolution, of Nasser and his being succeded by Anwar Sadat.

Though the Revolution is of some importance in the story what is remarkable for us Indians is how little we know of the educated Egyptians whose schooling and colleges were obviously much superior to ours. Their system included learning French, German and Italian besides, of course, English and their mother tongue, Arabic. How much more steeped were the young Egyptians in Western civilisation, literature and music and how, like us, they strived for high academic honours and teaching in the universities.

Despite this absorption of western culture, the Gezira Club, life in the Heliopolis and so on, how essentially Muslim they were and wrapped round with their own conventions. Marriage, deaths, engagements, having to wait before turning an engagement into marriage, the dresses and rituals of mourning, the attachment to haute couture, the devotion of old family retainers, the accepted superiority of the male even in a society with highly-educated females, the inability of wives to cross their husbands, the tendency of men to philander and women to stay at home and suffer —All these are beautifully brought out.

One gets the feeling that this was the stuff out of which Booker Prize winning books are made and how it is amazing how closely the writer followed the evolution of modern upper class Egyptian society. This is not a story about the fellahins, nor about the Pharaohs though the Pyramids are often shown brooding in the background.

When it turns to England, it paints beautifully, the dreariness of a north of England red-brick university and the rawness of its students as compared to the sophisticates from Cairo and Alexandria. Of course, there are romances woven in but In the Eye of the Sun is something I wholeheartedly recommend to understand from within what modern Egypt and, in some ways the Middle East, including Israel, is like.

Long ago, while I was living in London as a student, I used to read that, there used to be organisations that arranged Sunday walks through different parts of London so that people could learn the history of that great city.

At least one person in the American Embassy in Delhi (he has long ago retired and returned to settle in Israel) used to organise similar walks through Old Delhi.

Kolkata, particularly North Kolkata, is well-suited for such walks. But probably as in Delhi, they will be sad wanderings because so much of the city has been allowed to decay. The princely houses of the good and great are now all ruins. The Ramakrishna Mission, at great expense and even greater patience, has acquired empty possession of the birthplace and home of Swami Vivekananda. The homes of Raja Rammohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar are among many that are being allowed to crumble. The traditional home of the large and spreading family of the Tagores, and has now been slowly reacquired for the nation. Who will look after our history, if we don’t ourselves?