Surgeon in Calcutta

Trouble happens when you try to apply your newly acquired knowledge in a real world setting, like when you learn all about table manners of high class social dining from a book and then sitting in a swank upscale restaurant you are suddenly confused about which fork to use for a salad!
On the flipside sometimes you take things too seriously, believing every word you learned, you find yourself with a foot in the mouth situation, or barely escape a catastrophe. The other day in Calcutta I fell in the latter category.

I was still getting used to the rhythms of life in Calcutta though I liked Calcutta from day one. Things were always nice and easy, life moved at a controlled pace.
Buses were full but not as crowded as Delhi. The bus would actually stop for you to get down as compared to Delhi where a blue line could drag you to the next stop if there was another bus tail-gating it, while you had one foot down at a bus stop. The bus conductors here did not lean half out of the window and were not shouting their lungs out calling passengers.

I found the people to be very cultured, mild mannered and decent. It was a cool respite from the ruthless hustle bustle of South Delhi.
However, sometimes I felt like being a bull in the china shop, sometimes patronized my new Calcutta friends about racy stories of Delhi, like how time moves fast in Delhi and how their Calcutta is charming but I could not imagine spending my lifetime in these languid settings.
The other thing I sincerely tried to do was to pickup the local language, indeed I learnt a few sentences and could speak my way through daily chores without switching to Hindi, but that was after a while I had stayed there.

Once I hailed a taxi, the driver was a Sikh.

“Sardarji tussi Rabindra Sarobar jachchi?” – I asked, biting my tongue as I finished my sentence.

He frowned at my strange mixture of Punjabi and Bengali.

“Baithiye” he said “Lagta hai aap Dilli se hain” (Please get in. You must be from Delhi)


One day I was in a taxi going somewhere when right outside the Calcutta medical college someone waved the taxi. I had learnt by now that people can share the taxi and divide the fare. The man jumped into the front seat and taxi moved on. After about half an hour the man signaled the driver to stop and started to walk away.

In an instant I craned my neck out of the window.

“Excuse me sir, you forgot to pay your part of the fare”

The man turned back looked at me curiously and said – “Ask your driver”

I did not understand, I stepped out and asked my driver to demand money from him.

The driver appeared uncomfortable, he said – “Let it go Sahib, he is a Saarjan”.

I recalled he got on in front of the hospital, so he must be a surgeon.

I was now genuinely enraged. – “Well he may be, how does it matter to me?” then I turned towards that man and said – “You must pay up your share, it’s the law”.

He approached me in measured steps and in a cold voice said – “You are telling me about the law? Do you want to settle this at the police station?”

I blew my lid. “Ah! So you find out that there is someone from outside who does not speak Bengali and you think you can push them around? You do not know who I am mister. Let us go to the office of superintendent of police and settle it there. Surgeon you may be, but you do not know me” – I waved him to get in the car.

I saw the expression of that man change, he was thinking fast, and then he looked at his watch. I knew it was an evasive gesture. Then he narrowed his eyes as if considering the situation.
Slowly he withdrew and pulled out his wallet, handed a 20 Rs note to the driver and walked away very fast.
The driver looked at me in disbelief.
And though relieved that the impasse was over I was still very confused about the pre-eminent position surgeons hold in Bengali culture.

Later that night I related the incident to Doctor Tripathi, my friend, who was also my host in Calcutta at that time.
At first he shook his head for a long time not believing what I was telling him, then later when I mimicked the whole incident again, even vocalizing the “Saarjan” with emphasis on “aa” sound did something click with him.

“You lucky son of a gun, he was a sergeant! That explains everything” - He was now laughing.

“Sergeant? What is that?”

“Oh! Sergeant is a police officer, like an inspector, you do not have that rank in Delhi. If you had gone to the police station with him they could have roughed you up, finding out you were a mere student acting smart”.

I circled my lips as if to whistle but just let out a deep breath without any sound.