Thiruvananthapuram: It is with a shudder that Dr S Radhakrishnan, the winner of this year's state award for the best doctor, recalls the days when he nearly died of fever.
He was living in Chenkalchoolah, the state's largest slum, right in the backyard of the Secretariat. “I was in my sixth standard, and the fever was so high that the homeo doctor who normally treated us said I had to be immediately taken to the government hospital at Fort, which was some five kilometres from Chenkalchoolah”, Dr Radhakrishnan said.
There, he was admitted for over a month. “I was diagnosed with jaundice, and the doctor told my father that my situation was very grave. Hearing this, my father did what he had never done before. He went out and bought me something that I had always craved for, an Amar Chithra Katha comic. It was a luxury for which my father never had the money,” he said.
But young Radhakrishnan survived, and in a matter of years, made his father, a sanitation worker of Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, immensely proud.
In hindsight, Dr Radhakrishnan feels he might have been struck by Hepatitis A, and not Jaundice. “The water we used even for drinking was highly contaminated,” he said. (Hepatitis A can be contracted by consuming water contaminated by infected fecal matter.)
The doctor had since moved out of Chenkalchoolah but the place is still the world for him. Just the other day he was at the colony, obliging press photographers who came to take a snap of the 'state's best doctor'.
Some of his school friends – Corporation cleaning staff, painters, autorickshaw drivers, clerks -- were heard making fun of him. “Are you going to stand for elections next time,” one was heard yelling. The doctor, who still has his school-boyish looks intact, enjoyed the fun his friends were having at his expense.
“Whenever their kids have a problem, they come to me. I am their family doctor,” he said.
Most of them were classmates at the Government Model High School, which is just behind Chenkalchoolah. “I moved out of the colony after my seventh standard examinations, and I became a doctor. My younger brother is a mechanical engineer. Many of my friends remained in the colony and their studies suffered. Some even dropped out,” Dr Radhakrishnan said.
It was his father R Sukumaran's decision to move out of Chenkalchoolah. They lived in a cramped hut, with dried palm leaves for roof and torn cardboard sheets for windows and doors. The shack had just one room, a kitchen, and a verandah, and had no electricity.
This apology of a hut was shared by six; Radhakrishnan's grandparents also lived with them. The hut stood along the banks of a dirty drain. “The smell was so disgusting that we never took our friends home even when some had insisted on coming. The mosquitoes were also a terrible menace. We did not have a toilet either. We children used to defecate into a paper which my mother would dump at a distant dumping place,” the doctor said.
His father was at first working as a helper of a street-side fruit-seller. When Radhakrishnan was in his second standard, Sukumaran secured a job as Corporation cleansing staff.
“His cleaning job was from early morning to 10 am. Then he would come home, change his clothes, and leave for his other job as the orange seller's helper. Then, he will be back only by night. All the money was used for our education and food. My parents didn't even have a nice place to sit or sleep, they didn't even seem to bother,” Dr Radhakrishnan said.
After he finished his seventh standard, and his brother fourth, his parents had saved enough to rent a small house at Killippalam, some two kilometres to the west of Chenkalchoolah.
“There we had electricity, and a toilet,” Dr Radhakrishnan said. A neighbour, Suresh, who was some two or three years senior to Radhakrishnan, gave him informal lessons. “This gave me solid foundation in most of the subjects,” Radhakrishnan said. Suresh is now a section clerk in Thiruvananthapuram Corporation.
Radhakrishnan's first try at entrance secured him an engineering seat, and a BSc in agriculture.
“Again it was my father's confidence in me that saved the day. It was with great trepidation that I asked him whether I could study for one more year. But he readily agreed,” Radhakrishnan said.
In 1995, he secured admission to the Medical College in Thiruvananthapuram. Now, he is insurance medical officer at the Karamana ESI Dispensary. He is also a diabetes specialist.
The award is also a recognition of the diabetes camps that he does regularly in some of the backward areas of Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam during his off days. The camp is conducted under the banner Society for Diabetes Prevention and Control, which he has formed. His plan is to conduct regular diabetes camps in all the poor colonies in the capital, like his own Chenkalchoolah, and distribute free medicines and insulin cartridges to poor patients.
When he won the award, the first thing he wanted was to have his ageing parents watch him receive the award. “Usually, the award presentation will be held at the VJT hall here. So I was relieved,” Dr Radhakrishnan said. But on the eve of the presentation, he was told that the prize distribution will be held at Kozhikode. At that late hour, travel by flight or train was ruled out. He decided to drive but was apprehensive whether his parents could make it. His mother had an eye operation lined up. But they insisted on going.
“Those two days, the trip to Kozhikode and back with my parents, will count as one of the happiest and proudest days of my life,” the doctor said.
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