Clinic in Jaipur

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it
    -- Andy Warhol

Jaipur.  Capital of the state of Rajasthan.  Not the finest city in Rajasthan, but definitely a hub.  The best way to describe Jaipur (and India in general) is as the most beautiful and most filthy place I've ever seen.  We spent Wednesday exploring then started at the clinic the following day.

The clinic was on the outskirts of town, where all the trucks stopped to load or to rest. Every morning I watched the cook sweep piles of rat droppings of the floor.  There was no lab, but there was a kitchen so chai was served as often as possible to keep us warm.  Awareness workers on the street conducted educational seminars and games then informed truck drivers of the clinic.  Daily, there were also "extension clinics", which ended up being the doctor, the counselor, and us sitting in one of the winding alley ways or in an empty shop with a make-shift room concealed by curtains where the doctor could examine the patient.


Although patients were understandably not receptive to having a 23 year old white girl accompany the doctor to examine them, the doctor discussed with us the patient case in English after the patient had left.  Most times it was ghonorrhea.  I'm actually struggling to think of a patient that came that did not have ghonorrhea.  I can think of one.   I got to see a hernia.  Unfortunately, we could not treat so we referred out for surgery.

The American boy and I were under the care of Doctor Rahul.  Doctor Rahul wore glasses and sweaters knit by his wife (everyone at the clinic proudly wore sweaters that their wives had made for them) and frequently would softly start to sing love songs.  A father or grandfather character, so warm and welcoming.  My favorite memory of him is the first Friday at the clinic, we discussed our plans for the weekend.  He insisted that we must see the zoo and offered to drive us back to the guesthouse after work, but needed to make a stop along the way near to the zoo.


ok fine, sounds good.

We pull over to a spot near the Albert Hall and get out of the car.  Like many other parts of Jaipur, there is trash everywhere.  Most of it is foodstuff.  And so many crows sitting on a fence crowing and pecking through the trash.  Our good Doctor Rahul takes out little bowls and proceeds to fill the bowls with rice and curd.


So... we are having lunch here? or a snack?


No.  The doctor places the bowls on the ground and chuckles to himself as the crows peck through the rice.  So we went out of our way to make a stop on the way home for him to feed the crows.  I asked about it.  He said in Hindu belief, crows are the ancestors so everyone takes time every week to come feed the crows.


That makes more sense.


I spent about 2 weeks at the clinic.  We were really limited in what we were able to do (my Hindi is not so good, in fact not good at all) but I asked a lot of questions and learned a lot from the doctor and other clinic members.  I also made a medication guide of the antibiotics used, which Hitesh (the other founder of Vatsalya) has promised to translate to Hindi so that this can be handed out with the medications (I still have to look it over and send back the final edition).  I also had the opportunity to see a lot of Jaipur.

Rajasthan is a typical Indian destination for tourists because the maharajas squandered the money of their state to live in luxury and build beautiful monuments, while allowing their state and citizens to collapse into poverty.  It was the last state to agree to separate from British rule for Indian independence, I presume because the maharajas didn't want to lose their power to a national Indian government.  The Singh's were the last ruling power in Rajasthan.  Jaipur is known as the pink city, because old town is all painted this really terrible salmon color.

The first week, I saw the City Palace (beautiful, but not as good as the one in Udaipur) also Jantar Mantar.  On display at the city palace are 2 massive jugs made of silver, the largest items ever made of silver.  The maharaja had them made for a visit to England.  He didn't trust the water quality of the United Kingdom so brought along polluted holy water from the Ganges in these jugs for drinking.  I can't resist a good self portrait in a reflective surface.

Jantar Mantar was built by Jai Singh in the 1700s designed for astronomy observation.  As this is not my area of expertise, I appreciated all the interesting shapes and structures without real understanding of their meaning.  The massive sundial, samrat yantra, tells the time in Jaipur to an accuracy of 2 seconds.  There were also special structures, resembling sun dials, for each of the astrological signs.  It was surreal just being there.