After
attending the Poetry Competition organized by students of the Institute of
Medicine (IOM) on Friday December 22, 2006, I developed a strong urge to propose
to the concerned authorities of Tribhuvan
University
Earlier, I
had explored the use of mathematics in literature in “The Numerical Rhizome”
and noted the balance and symmetry of equations in both these fields that
yielded aesthetic delights to the human mind. Now, I had begun to sense some sort
of moral and humane relationship between medicine and poetry. Here was an area
to explore.
My mind
went back to the year 1959 when my father, a terminally ill cancer patient, lay
on a wooden bed in a small shed inside the precinct of Hare Ram Kunja. It was
around this time that Dom Moraes wanted to meet him. We have a recollection of
this meeting in Gone Away: An Indian
Journal written by this poet of Indian origin. Devkota wanted to listen to the
young man’s poetry even as he suffered the conflagration within his bowels. To
some extent, poetry, which was his passion, helped him take his mind away from
pain.
I am sure
that there are many other instances where a ward patient has found at least
momentary relief from pain or depression through poetry. Poetry is not a mere luxury
for those who can afford it; it is a sharing of joys and sorrows, of visions
and fears, of life-truths that imagination fishes out of existence. Poetry makes
a very powerful use of language. The impact of its brevity, its suggestion and
its felt truth upon the heart leaves a lasting impression that is capable of
changing attitudes and behaviour. Its rhythm can change a mood, its chanted
repetitions can alleviate if not actually heal ailments of psychosomatic
origin, its coded truth, acting as precedent, can ease the burden of a terminally
ill patient or a chronic sufferer of some malaise who shares a similar condition.
Often, it is not only the
terminally ill patient but also the disabled, the sick or the depressed that benefits
from other people’s experience. It is easy to imagine the relief experienced by
people who have just learned of their metabolic disorder when other diabetic
patients, for example, tell them how they have learned to live with it for the
last five or ten years. Such sharing can quite naturally strike a friendly
relationship between such people on the basis of their similar physical
condition. The blind and the deaf share their respective forums. The AIDS
patient is consoled by the fact that s/he is not the sole person to suffer this
condition. We alleviate our own suffering by sharing it with others and we
alleviate the suffering of others by lovingly listening to what they have to
say to us. This is why there is a whole category of literature of the disabled
which has found a place in university curricula all over the world.
I need not repeat here that poetry,
art and music have their own therapeutic values. Poetry is that chemical of the
soul that can be blended with noble and enlightened feelings in the beaker of
the heart where life constantly flows in and out. It is then linguistically
encapsulated in its generic literary form. Diagnosis of an ailment relies more
on the head than on the heart. Physics observes and decides even as chemistry
cures. Diagnosis is a processing of empirical data in the head. The cure
functions so subtly that physicians have to rely on its apparent symptoms to
understand its inferred intracellular processes, which may even then be obscure
to them. Poetry, too, works in subtle and invisible ways to nourish human
sensibilities. Our fickle sensibilities are often benumbed and dehydrated, so
to say, by force of habit, by repeated invasions of the ugly and the bad, and by
uncritical ingestion of too much of general lies that float as rumuors in the
public atmosphere.
What we all need is a regular
re-invigoration of our sensibility. This is even more so especially in violent
times like ours when uneducated responses to frustrations defy the sanctity of
human life itself. On a more practical level, medical practitioners and, on a
more spiritual level, poets are sworn into the promotion of life, not its
destruction. Whenever the spirit and the act synchronize in the same individual,
humankind wins yet another battle against the ugly and the bad. We have many
battles to win.
And, what is the harm anyway if a
course in the literature of the disabled, for instance, were offered in a
curriculum for medicine? Do students of medicine have anything to lose by
studying some literature that explains the physical, social, and psychological
conditions of their patients? It will expose physicians to the perspectives of
their patients and promote a better understanding that will lead to improved service
of humanity.
Or, for that matter, a course in
creative writing for students of medicine is not unimaginable. It can be
offered as an optional paper for those that find it meaningful. After all, many
medical practitioners all over the world have written poetry and other forms of
literature. Some have even sacrificed their medical career and established
themselves as excellent poets and writers. Humanity can be served in a hundred
different ways, but poetry can be relished and produced by only those who keep
alive the soothing flames of human sensibilities.
Thursday,
December 28, 2006
