Column

Let me start with a story today. To renovate his house, a man in Japan broke open a wall. Normally, Japanese houses have hollow spaces between wooden walls. While tearing down the wall, he found a lizard wedged in there. A nail was hammered into one of its feet. While he took pity on the creature, he was curious to find out how it had survived as the nail had been struck when the house was built five years ago.

He realised it was mind-boggling for the reptile to have survived for such a long time without any assistance, and he wondered what kind of diet it had subsisted on. A few minutes later, he saw another lizard appear with food in its mouth. Ah! He was stunned, and deeply touched, by the symbiotic kinship.

Why don’t humans develop such relationships during times of stress, I wondered? Recently I learnt about the Doctor Clown group while reading one of our news pages. A group of young professionals from various fields are trained in the art of making people laugh. Few times a week these volunteers land up at hospitals and help patients loosen up. The volunteers, led by Dr Mili Jelan, a physician, have taken up a challenge to amuse young patients with the aim of diverting their attention from their illnesses.

A patient in the hospital is like that lizard fastened to a bed. Nobody likes to be in a sick bay unless they work there. Illness isn’t fun. It’s painful for the patient and agonises the family. Almost as a rule, the air in waiting rooms of doctors is sepulchral, heavy with disease and anxiety. Hospitals are depressing for patients and their kin. The graceful disdain that doctors and staff at the hospitals feign for all matters only makes the wards and corridors more gloomy and miserable.

This monotonous anxiety ought to be broken with laughs, shouts, and hurrahs by the people in distress. This way the battle against disease can be won more easily. Laughter is music for our soul. We lose ourselves when laughter touches our core and brings us closer to people. Munnabhai MBBS is a rather exaggerated image of what I have in mind. Robin Williams in Patch Adams (the film where he played a doctor who laughs with his patients and eases the pain) is closer to my perception.

One lesson I’ve learnt from the lizard story is to never say you’re busy when someone needs you. You may have the world at your feet, but chances are you’re the only world to them.

N Raghuraman is an editor with DNA