Tirelessly walking the streets of Delhi, Omkar Nath Sharma goes from lane to lane 'begging' for unused medicines and distributing it to the poor. Gargi Gupta meets the capital's 'medicine baba'
Curious onlookers turn to look at the saffron-shirt clad old man as he walks down a lane in Manglapuri, a typical middle-class Delhi neighbourhood marked by cheek-by-jowl two and three-storied houses with parked cars eating up most of the road. There's a printed message on his kurta front: "09250243298: Mobile Medicine Bank, Thanks for your kind coordination Omkar Nath; Help for Medicine Bank; Raahat Hi Raahat", and he calls out shrilly, much like the itinerant hawkers who peddle vegetables, "Ghar mein padi bekaar dawaiyaan de de, garibon ke kaam aaiye (Give old medicines lying at home, help the poor people)".
No one is moved. The housewives who are finishing their mid-morning chores just look out from the windows, a little askance.
But Omkar Nath Sharma, or "medicine baba" as the media has dubbed him, is unfazed as he walks down the bylanes in this thickly populated residential colony, Sharma, 79, has been "begging" for medicines since 2008, when he saw a Delhi Metro construction worker, injured after a bridge fell on him, die due to lack of medicines. Over the years, as he gained popularity, collection boxes have been put up in places like colleges and temples for people to drop medicines they no longer need. Veteran journalist and media entrepreneur Pritish Nandy, for instance, is a regular donor, says Sharma, who used to work as a lab technician.
As much as two-thirds of India's population lacks access to essential medicines, several studies have shown. When they've no recourse but to buy, it takes up a large chunk of their earnings.
It is people like these who turn up every evening at Sharma's home-cum-dispensary in a Manglapuri basti, braving the stench from the nearby dustbin, to avail of free medicines. "They bring prescriptions with them and we give the medicine. If we don't have the same brand, we give another with the same active ingredient," he says.
Sharma, who limps slightly from a childhood accident that was left uncured, also has tie-ups with several hospitals around the capital where he supplies free medicines. When he doesn't have the medicines that these hapless need, he often buys them from chemists, who give him a hefty discount, with the donations he gets. Most people donate, even journalists — and he gets a steady stream of them — who visit aren't allowed to leave until they have dropped some notes into the cash box.
"I distribute medicines worth Rs4-6 lakh every month," says Sharma, who is helped by his son Jagmohan and another recently-employed helper named Shamim, who is a graduate and the most educated of the three. Sharma is a matriculate and his son, mentally challenged, has studied just till class three. And yet, all the medicines they collect are carefully sorted according to dates of expiry and active ingredients.
"I know what it is to be poor and ill. What do the rich know, who throw away medicines that have helped them recover as useless junk?"
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