The Power of the Ordinary

When I embarked upon the thought of typing down my thoughts, it struck me that our stories will not have the macho activities of a highly skilled surgeon or the lifesaving techniques of a specialist physician and descriptions of a busy hospital. There would be no operation theatres or intensive care settings where the nearly dead would be brought to life. Our stories will hover around the ordinary life of a family doctor who is skilled enough to take care of everyday illnesses. Our stories will be different from the esoteric stories seen in many doctor-centric television serials and will not have doctors walking around in their hospital pajamas or white coats with nurses around them. Our doctors are general practitioners (some call them family physicians) who live in the society alongside patients and are the first point of contact for many seekers of medical care. Many of these doctors work in resource constraint situations are paid very less and have to depend only on their clinical skills to treat patients. Some of these doctors work in different shifts in hospitals and are paid measly amounts as salaries. In the hospitals, many of the doctors in my stories are kept at the lowest rung in the hierarchy of doctors and end up looking after patients of the “consultants”.

We have tried to bring stories of medical action from the homes of our patients, in the surroundings familiar to them. The stories may lack the mystical charm expected out of the super intelligent, super suave, consultants from the air-conditioned chambers in hospitals who can create magic in medical care. I believe in the “power of the ordinary” to transform medical care in India, therefore our stories revolve around the ordinary GP who lives an ordinary life and is “only” a GP or a family doctor!