Poetry and medicine. For centuries they have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Ancient mythology tells us that Apollo was the Greek God of medicine, music and poetry. John Keats abandoned a career in medicine to concentrate on writing. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote poems throughout his medical career and continued to do so long after he retired. William Carlos Williams, who served as a paediatrician and a physician for four decades, was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Doctors are known to switch from the left brain to the right brain to produce words that bring music to the ear.
What makes a poem ‘good’? Like beauty that lies in the eyes of the beholder, the beauty of a poem lies in the ears of the audience. Coleridge says that “prose is ‘words in their best order,’ while poetry is ‘the best words in their best order.’ The job of the poet is to create a picture in the mind and an emotion in the heart.”
As one who had the privilege of working as a senior resident under Dr OP Gupta in the early eighties, his physician-poet metamorphosis didn’t surprise me. He trained as a physician, taught in a medical school, led the medicine department, soaked his feet in medical research, edited a medical journal and also served as the dean of the medical school. Like many physicians, Dr Gupta wrote extensively in medical journals, often ao-authoring the manuscripts of his residents whom he mentored. But it was his experiences as a physician treating patients in the wards and the ICU that moved him to capture those moments in an unexpected way — through poetry. He believes poetry is the best way to capture the fragility, tenacity and universality of the stories patient bring in the hospital.
वियोगी होगा पहला कवि, आह से उपजा होगा गान। निकलकर आँखों से चुपचाप, बही होगी कविता अनजान. Sumitranandan Pant wrote this poem when Dr Gupta was dissecting human bodies in a medical school. He seems to have been influenced by Hindi poets- Maithili Sharan Gupt, and the four pillars of Chhayavad- Jaishankar Prasad, Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’, Sumitranandan Pant and Mahadevi Varma. His early exposure to Hindi prose and poetry not only shaped his thoughts but also helped him blend medicine with humanity.
Dr Gupta knows what it takes to handle and endure a heart disease. In the late eighties, he had a tryst with a heart attack. A few years later he underwent a bypass surgery and recently had an angioplasty. In “Himalaya melts: heart attack”, he vividly describes the symptoms of a heart attack. He uses sound and figures of speech to take this mundane symptom to the higher levels. In another poem, he sketches a patient with Parkinson disease- the way he looks, stares, talks, walks, shakes, stumbles and falls. A disease as marginalised and neglected as Hansen’s disease didn’t escape his critical eyes, as he describes the agony and pathos that the disease evokes. In another poem, he turns into a philosopher and breaks into “Who am I” trying to discover the essence of human life. In the hospital, he keeps on seeing patients with heart attacks, high blood pressure and diabetes. He uses a poem to offer pearls of his experiential wisdom- how they can stay happy by simple changes in diet, exercise and response to stress.
His poems also address the experience and meanings of healing and illness and stresses how to cope with human misery. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, and forgiveness are a leitmotif that shape his several poems. “All you need is within you”, he writes, “ Find your heart, and you will find your way.”
The stress imposed by the COVID19 pandemic inspired him to pen a poem. He acknowledges the fear and anxiety, panic and desperation that this pandemic has caused. In a poem “Stress”, he advices-
Shed the ego, forgive and forget for mental peace
Keep health, relax and meditate
To enjoy each moment of life, the contentment
And the eternal bliss
Moved by the plight of a child struggling with thalassemia, in a poem titled “Imbalance” he dwells on the cell, the gene, the haemoglobin, transfusions and therapies. And in another poem- Integrate- he recalls Aristotle who wrote that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. He warns the physicians to think beyond a symptom, a sign and a test and integrate the mind with the body and to adopt a holistic approach to healthcare.
In a poem that focuses on palliation, Dr Gupta shows how poetry teaches us to be healers in a broader sense and allows us to be more empathetic at a difficult time for patients when we can provide comfort and be present for them.
All his life, Dr OP Gupta has been seen as a physician who walked his talks. At the stroke of dawn, he puts on his walking shoes and treads on the Sevagram streets. Little wonder that in a poem (Walk, walk, walk) he explains how walking to health can boost your mood, strengthen your bones, and help you sleep better. His take home message is simple- Stay active, keep exercising, be mindful, remain persistent, be positive, show gratitude, and live on.
Rhythm is the pulse of his poetry; and rhyme, its echo. Rhyme, along with metre, make his poem musical. Indeed, in the entire collection, As I read his poems, I discovered that metre has helped his poems maintain a steady and predictable ebb and flow.
Rafael Campo, physician and award-winning author, prescribes poetry for students, patients, and doctors. He once famously said, “When you listen to a heart with a stethoscope, you can hear the beating of the physical body. Poetry also has a rhythm, a metre. Poetry and medicine are both visceral and physical. If you dig a little deeper, there really is a profound connection between them.” True. Dr Gupta’s poems show us how poems can help convey the parts of the medical experience that don’t make it into textbooks.
SP Kalantri, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine
MGIMS
Sevagram