The evasive man

Synopsis: Mr. Bhattacharya, in his seventies, is faced with the decision of undergoing an operation, the urgency of which is not pushing. His strong dislikes and impulsive decisions leave his family both embarrassed and disgruntled.

The moment the stretcher entered the Operation Theater, Mr. Bhattacharya sat up on the rolling cart. Perplexed, the ward-boy and the nurse stopped the cart and questioned him, "What happened?"

Mr. Bhattacharya could feel his heart pounding. Frantically, he got-off the table, headed out of the Operation Theater and ran out to the portico of the hospital, passing by his two daughters on the way.

The ladies, in their early thirties, looked at him in despair and followed him.

Debarati came running to him, "What's wrong, Dad?"

Gasping for breath, he mumbled, "I don't want to get it done."

"But why? What's the matter?"

Mr. Bhattacharya gestured his hands to further justify his enactment.

A bamboozled Suprita had joined in. She asked her father in a thick American accent to earn the same response -- gesture of hands conveying an emphatic 'NO'.

A number of heads had turned around and were watching the high-voltage Suprita. For the ladies this was unprecedented; they persisted and demanded an answer from him. Suprita insisted that they had made the complete payment for the surgery and that he doesn't have the option to back-out now.

Mr. Bhattacharya didn't appreciate this level of push. He offered her to cover the losses she incurred.

He remained reticent about the reason of this turn-around. He signaled to his daughters that he wants to head home.

While completing the discharge formalities, the lady at the hospital counter told an embarrassed Suprita, "Ma'am, please don't feel bad about it. It happens."

"What do you mean, 'it happens'?" retorted Suprita establishing eye-contact for the first time with the lady.

"Almost every week, we have such a case!"

"What case?"

"The patient refuses to enter the operation theater or abstains from the operation at the last minute!"

Suprita kept gazing at the lady, stunned.

--

A couple of months earlier, Mr. Bhattacharya, 70 years old and a widower for more than a decade, was diagnosed Grade-4 Osteoarthritis -- a stage where the bones from the thigh and the shin start rubbing each other around the knee joint because of the cartilage loss between them.

The proposed solution to it was a Joint Replacement Surgery -- "We will perform an incision on your knee and since your bones around the knee joint have degenerated, they need extra support. We fix the implant, you will walk around with support on the same day of the surgery and then you go back home in five days."

That is how the consultant surgeon had summarized the procedure.

Had the doctor told Mr. Bhattacharya that a Joint Replacement Surgery involved tearing apart the skin on the knee, chiseling the degenerated bones with a hack-saw and plastering an implant with cement, or a substance similar to what is widely known as 'plaster of Paris', he would have given up the idea forever.

In the two months that followed, Mr. Bhattacharya was repeatedly counseled by his elder daughter Suprita, on calls from US. Suprita was a housewife, living with her husband and son. She was leading a comfortable life in the US. The news of her father planning to undergo an operation invigorated her otherwise dull life. She instantly felt the urge to do something more meaningful in her life.

Suprita hunted for information on the internet and worked with her father to fix up the date of the operation. She advised him to be strong during this whole process and that the surgery would be followed by intense sessions of physiotherapy. Mr. Bhattacharya immediately retorted, "Does it pain a lot?"

"Well, even if it does, I know you are my strong Dad and it will just be there for some time."

The dates were decided, Suprita came in and a day before the planned surgery, Suprita, Debarati and Mr. Bhattacharya went to meet the Dr. Nagaraj, the specialist at performing Joint Replacement surgeries. Mr. Bhattacharya posed a number of questions: What technique will you use? Is the physiotherapy painful? How soon will I be able to walk? How soon can I travel? How long will the surgery last?

The doctor remained patient all along. When he told Mr. Bhattacharya that the surgery may last for 2-2.5 hours, Mr. Bhattacharya immediately retorted, "But I have seen an ad in the newspaper about a doctor in Kolkata who can finish the whole surgery in 45 minutes."

This was a direct question on the credibility of the doctor. There could be only a few doctors in the country who would permit such impertinence from their patients. However, Dr. Nagaraj pretended to do his best to contain his irritation.

"Mr. Bhattacharya, I will be very honest here. Each morning, it takes me close to 2 hours to get myself ready to start for my hospital. There are a number of things to be accomplished in this surgery. I never rush things in the operation theater. And so that you know, I don't comment on advertisements in the newspapers."

The next day, Mr. Bhattacharya jumped off the bed and left the hospital without the surgery.

Suprita had handpicked Dr. Nagaraj for the surgery. She was pained and annoyed by how the whole thing had fallen apart at the last minute. Her parting words for her father were, "A good doctor is the one who heals you by his soothing words. I have known Dr. Nagaraj for years now. If it happens, it has to happen with his hands and no one else's."

"He may be the king of the snakes but that doesn't entitle him to bite me," was the callous answer from her father.

--

Two things were dearest to Mr. Bhattacharya: Phone and news. All along as an officer in his Govt. job, he had his network of coteries. Any event, news wherever it occurred, Mr. Bhattacharya was the first one to know. Right from the peon in his office to the Jt.-Secretary, he knew whose wife or daughter were showing keen interest in whom. A strong believer of astrology -- it hardly made any accurate predictions in his life though -- Mr. Bhattacharya also enjoyed making predictions about people around him and how their behavior would change in an upcoming situation: which officer would get transferred, who was unreliable, who would run into rough weather soon with others, the list was endless. And whenever, his prophecy would turn out to be true, he would twist his head, emphasize with his finger and say, "See, I told you so..."

Barring the news that Suprita has selected a groom for herself (and that was revealed to him by his wife, much later in time), there wasn't any major news in life that Mr. Bhattacharya hadn't apprehended beforehand. But luck had it, his knee demanding a surgery had caught him on the wrong foot. While the problem featured first at the milder level before reaching its epitome, Mr. Bhattacharya remained aloof of it.

With time, the pain in the knee became more frequent and many a times, the knee would lock up and wouldn't bend at all. At first, Mr. Bhattacharya would perform some random arithmetic and predict his life and that he doesn't need a surgery because his days were limited and that the painkillers will sail him through. However, the recurrence of the pain wouldn't let him sleep in peace.

For more than a decade, Mr. Bhattacharya had been living with Debarati, her husband and their child, in a metropolitan city. Younger than Suprita by a couple of years, they said that she knew her father better than her sister, for she could tolerate her father's eccentric behavior and nasty humor. However, of late her father's yes-no to the surgery had her worried too.

When alone at home during the day, he would pick up the phone, and call around clinics, hospitals finding out minuscule details: the technology involved, will it be done under full or partial anesthesia, the cost, etc. In the next six months, he went on to meet a number of Orthopedic surgeons and asked them his queries emanating from his mental database.

If anyone answered anything different from what Mr. Bhattacharya already knew of, he would pull the doctor in an argument. He wouldn't appreciate the existence of such doctors in this country. He declared that they aren't capable enough. Most of the doctors he consulted earned pathetic ratings from him: one was a snob, other stubborn, another one too good to be believed and yet another was interested in convincing him to put in the most expensive implant.

No matter who advised him to go ahead with the surgery, the thought of what an old man told him about a decade back wouldn't go off his mind. Shaking his head, he old man had told him, "This (surgery) hasn't been of much use to me."

It was known to the family that Mr. Bhattacharya would hear everyone's advice but to whose he will adhere to, only the Almighty would know.

The surgery was scheduled five times. On each occasion, to his dismay, it was cancelled because of one reason or the other. At times the blame was borne by Debarati, other times the culprit was Suprita for her incessant meddling and on the remaining occasions, it was the son-in-laws who chipped in with their reservations about the chosen hospital or the surgeon and spoil the rolling game.

Debarati felt helpless. She had no clue how this whole topic could be brought to a logical conclusion. For Suprita, the task was cut out clear: Brainwash the father countering all his confusions and convince him to undergo surgery.

Alternate medicines were tried too but they offered only temporary relief. Considerable amount of money was spent on all this; some with prior knowledge of Debarati, on many others she wasn't kept aware either.

This went about for a year after the initial diagnoses.

One morning, in spite of repeated vehement discouragement from Suprita, Mr. Bhattarcharya decided to venture on a religious excursion spanning a number of places including his native place, a small town in northern West Bengal.

Within a few hours of his return, he said that he was ready to undergo the surgery. He told Debarati to choose the best surgeon in the best hospital of the city.

Debarati was used to all this. She didn't tell anyone and made the necessary arrangements on the suggested date. She met the Dr. Pradhan, a renowned surgeon in his early-forties. She detailed him about the mental condition of her father. Afraid of a repetition of the previous feat, she insisted that the doctor must conduct the surgery without even meeting her father.

But, to her dismay, the doctor emphasized that he wanted to meet the patient before he committed a date for the surgery. He told her with a smile, "He is scared. Allow me to talk to him."

The next day, before Mr. Bhattacharya could start-off with his questionnaire, the doctor explained the preliminaries and talked about a Knee Replacement Surgery he performed on a former professor at a reputed college in the city earlier in the morning.

Mr. Bhattacharya, an alumnus of the same college, couldn't resist, and chipped in, "Back in the 1960s, I studied Metallurgical Engineering at that college."

"Ah, Metallurgy! What luck! Then it is very simple for me to explain the whole process to you because the implant which we use has got a lot to do with Metallurgy..."

After the implant and the metallurgy talk got over, Mr. Bhattacharya shot off with his rapid-fire questionnaire.

"Doctor, how much time will it take for the surgery?"

"40 minutes," the doctor reverted instantly.

"How long do I have to be in the hospital?"

"You will go home on the fifth day excluding the day of the surgery."

"Does it pain a lot after the surgery?"

"Till the time you are here it won't pain. Once back home, you will have tablets from me, they will take care of you. This will be a bitter, sweet pain. It's like the one which one experiences when you fall in love for the first time. Do you recall that time?" the doctor said with an affectionate smile.

Mr. Bhattacharya blushed.

When asked on the number of surgeries he had performed, the doctor reluctantly looked at the calendar at his desk and told Mr. Bhattacharya that it is more than three thousand.

Once outside the Doctor's chambers, Debarati grumbled to herself, "What is bitter, sweet pain?"

What the doctor hadn't told Mr. Bhattacharya was that it will take 'him' 40 minutes in this operation theater but the complete process, which required work from a sizable team of professionals before and after 'his' own work, would last for more than 2 hours -- similar to what Dr. Nagaraj had told earlier.

Mr. Bhattacharya rated the doctor as one who is competent, qualified and skillful. He got admitted to the hospital the next day. Later in the day, another doctor visited Mr. Bhattacharya in the private room that he had to himself, and apprised him that post-surgery he will be kept under observation in the ICU.

Once the doctor left, Mr. Bhattacharya exclaimed, "What a sample he is? Was he on drugs?"

Debarati advised him to ignore his words.

"He is saying that I need to be taken to the ICU. What is that for? "

She suddenly felt anxious and desperate. The doctor had posed a threat which, if not thwarted convincingly, had the potential to take the shape of a show-spoiler.

"Forget about him, Dad! He seems oblivious to this surgery. He must have become a doctor using someone's influence," she lied to him.

--

Mr. Bhattacharya sat on the bed in a private air-conditioned room of the upscale hospital with a huge bandage around his knee. Drips fed him pain-killer injections from all directions. He had been enjoying the five-star treatment meted out at him by the nurses and other support staff at the hospital. He particularly liked the small printed pamphlets on the meal tray that had 'Good Morning', 'Bon Appétit' written on them.

Suprita, in bound from the US, would be at the hospital in a few hours. A relaxed Debarati looked out of the window that overlooked the busy Russell Street. She kept looking at the huge hoarding next to the hospital's main entrance that romanticized with Joint Replacement Surgeries.

The advertisement boasted as if this was one experience each one must go through: a six day, seven night holiday at the most exotic venue in the world, i.e. the hospital.

She thought of the previous nightmarish outing at the hospital and the months of uncertainty that followed. Each week, her father flip-flopped on the topic. She could feel an achievement within for having been able to steer her father through it.

"That physiotherapist who visited us earlier in the day is a merciless fellow. The girl who had come on the past two days was more considerate during the exercises," Mr. Bhattacharya interrupted Debarati's thoughts.

Debarati turned towards him, "Don't worry, Dad. The tough portion is over. You have been resolute in getting this operation done."

"Well, I knew that it will go well. It's the outcome of blessings of my well-wishers..."

It appeared to Debarati that Mr. Bhattacharya would declare the name of people who deserve a token of appreciation in making this happen. However, the definitive tone in his voice gave her an unexplained discomfort.

"....Each of them had told me that I should get it done, it will do good to me," he took a pause, "You took care of everything without which I wouldn't have seen this day."

Debarati felt touched and smiled as Mr. Bhattacharya continued.

"But when that astrologer back in our home-town told me that now is the right time to get it done, I made up my mind.." his soliloquy went on as Debarati looked at him with parted lips.

When she recovered a bit, she mumbled to herself, "I should have known this before."

Following a brief pause, with narrowed eye-brows, she asked, "And what did he have to say about what went wrong on the previous occasion?"

"Oh, he was very critical of the state of the planets at that time. He patted my back for being courageous enough to evade it at that time," Mr. Bhattacharya replied, feeling proud of himself.