The motto of my alma mater, Christian Medical College, Vellore is ‘Not to be ministered unto but to minister’. This was epitomized in the conduct of our teachers, who were simple, humble and dedicated to their work. They were excellent role models.
After finishing my MS, I was motivated in doing my little bit of ministering for the poorest of the poor. I offered my services for charitable surgical camps. I have operated for 19 years in the Lok Biradari Prakalp, Hospital in Hemalkasa. Also in the MAHAN Hospital in Melghat, the Leprosy Mission Hospital in Kothara, Paratwada and in the Vivekananda Mission in Khapri, Nagpur.
The Lok Biradari Prakalp was started by Dr. Prakash Amte in a Naxalite insurgent area, inhabited by poor tribals living in stone age conditions. He has been honoured by the Padma Shri, Ramon Magasaysay and Mother Theresa awards for his selfless work.
Mahan Hospital was started by Dr. Ashish Satav. Mahan is an acronym for Meditation, Aids, Health, Addiction and Nutrition. This is also a tribal area and infamous for 6000 starvation deaths among the tribals in 2016. Incidentally another Alumnus of Vellore, Eric Simoes, a Paediatrician in Denver Colorado, also visits this centre regularly as part of the Bill Gates Foundation.
I don’t claim to be a saint, social service is a symbiotic relationship and both parties benefit. I got an exposure to a wide variety of cases which I don’t normally see in the cities. These were neglected cases either due to ignorance or absence of medical facilities or both. I have operated in primitive conditions, using a surgical drape the size of a napkin, a bare bulb, a torch and even a kerosene lantern for illumination. I learnt to manage with minimum resources. There are critics who would say we are compromising but the reality was, if we don’t operate, they would never get operated. This honed my skills and made me realize we could do a lot with very little. I also got away from the city and far from the maddening crowds. I visited extremely remote areas, untouched by civilization or tourists. These were very pristine places with a lot of natural beauty. I also learnt about the people, diverse culture and language.
In 2018 I was invited by the Vivekananda Kendra to organize and operate in a free surgical camp in Dibrugarh, Assam. The patients are tribals, mainly from the adjacent state of Arunachal Pradesh and they have very little access to modern facilities. Some came from such remote mountainous areas, which were inaccessible by road. They had to trek for 5 days in order to reach a motorable road.
Dibrugarh or ‘Ti-Phao’ meaning ‘Place of Heaven’, as it’s known in the Ahom language. The Ahoms were the dominant dynasty and ruled Assam for almost 600 years. They came originally from China and conquered most of Assam.
Dibrugarh lies on the banks of the Brahmaputra, the only masculine river in India. The two main source of economy in Dibrugarh is tea and oil. It is surrounded by lush green tea estates. The first tea garden was established in Chabua around 20 kms from Dibrugarh.
Oil which was first discovered in India in nearby Digboi. During the construction of the Assam Railways in 1867, the engineers noticed the feet of the elephants employed were soaked with oil. The story goes that the British Engineer W. L. Lakes exhorted the local natives to dig in the ground for oil by shouting “Dig Boy!” Boy was a term by which the British referred to the local Indians, this practice still persists in the old colonial clubs established by the British, where the waiters are referred to as ‘boy’, despite being long in the tooth. Thus the name of the site became Digboi. The first oil well and refinery was established in Digboi barely 7 years after the first oil well in the world was dug in Pennsylvania, USA.
We stayed in a hotel, smack in the business district of Dibrugarh. Behind the hotel was an embankment on the Brahmaputra river. Every morning my friends and I would take a walk on the embankment enjoying the cool river breeze and have tea and samosa in a small shop. The area had offices of trucking companies and plenty of trucks were loading and unloading. On the side of a truck was painted, ‘Owner: Rajesh Chutiya’. This was quite amusing to us as ‘chutiya’ (चुतिया) is a slang used in Hindi and Urdu and means a dimwit or dumb person, when used as an adjective. However it could also be used as a verb ‘chutiya banana’ (चुतिया बनाना), which would mean trying to fool or con someone. You can get away with calling a friend ‘chutiya’ but if you called a stranger ‘chutiya’, he would be extremely offended.
There various theories to the origin of the word. One theory is misogynistic, it refers to the female genitalia and the person is behaving unpredictable like a female during ‘that time of the month’. It a term used by males to describe other males and is considered rude to use in feminine company. I remember a surgeon who used earthy language, used the word in front of a female gynaecologist. She was scandalized and would afterwards tell me “he actually used the ‘ch’ (च) word!”
Another theory could be chyuta (च्युत) in sanskrit means fallen, failed, declined, degenerated, deviated, uprooted (from a higher state), or unseated (from one’s seat of power). In contrast ‘Achyuta’ (अच्युत) means infallible and it’s another name for Vishnu. In the Bhagvat Gita, Krishna is called Achyuta or ‘the infallible one’.
But why would someone put the suffix of chutiya willingly against his name? Well I remembered reading in the papers some time in 2012, a complaint by Jyotiprasad Chutiya, General Secretary of the All Assam Chutiya Students Union, “Facebook had blocked all accounts of community members with the surname ‘Chutiya’, thinking the names are false and fabricated. They’re ignorant of the fact that Chutiyas are an ethnic tribe of Assam, with has a rich historical background in the state history.” The report goes on to say,” the slang ‘chutiya’ in most of North India, would loosely translate into ‘As_hole’. The move was done by the Indian team monitoring Facebook but it’s obvious that even Indians don’t know enough about India! What with 438 spoken languages and more dialects it’s not child’s play or Zuckenberg’s play to monitor content.” Facebook rectified it’s error and now if you search you will find the accounts of individuals with that surname restored.
I got interested and did some research on the subject. Dibrugarh was part of the Chutiya kingdom until 1523 A.D. when the Ahoms annexed it during the weak rule of the Chutiya King Nitipal. The Chutiyas were the earliest settlers in the plains of Assam. They were supposed to have come from Southern China with their own religion. However with contact with Vaishnavites they adopted Hinduism but still retained some of their original unique practices. Their language is now only retained by the priestly sect and the rest speak Assamese. During the Ahom rule they were inducted into part of the government and their language which at that time was the only written language was used for governance. The Ahom rule ended after the East India Company annexed Assam. Today Chutiyas inhabit upper and central Assam and number 2.5 million.
The origin of their names again has various theories. One theory states that it’s from ‘chu’, which means pure in their language, ‘ti’ which means water and ‘ya’ which means dwellers of the land or Natives dwelling near pure water.
The other theory states that they’re also known as ‘Chutika’, ‘tika’ means origin or people of pure origin.
The final theory is that because they’re original habitation was on the mountain tops or ‘chut’, thus the name Chutiya. However this cannot be true because chut does not belong to their language or any other dialect spoken in the region.
So this was education for me on the diversity of our country, where a slang used as a derogatory adjective or verb in one part of the country is a respected proper noun in another part.
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