Clinical Reflections #4
The Miss with the Mandate to Magnify
June 20, 2025
A sixteen year old girl came to my clinic today with her elder brother. The girl was shorter than average and was thin built. Both live in a village about two hundred kilometres away from our hospital. There was only one stool, so the brother had to stand. The brother was too tall for the comfort of my neck muscles. Nevertheless, he started speaking the moment his sister arranged herself on the stool. She barely moved and made no sound.
It is my habit to listen to complaints from the horse’s mouth, unfiltered, untutored and dripping in inflections of emotions which only the patient can convey. When complaints are presented by others, they get distorted. Once, a lady complained that she was having pain in her legs and her husband, who started speaking before her, opined that her headache was enemy number one. I interjected to quieten him, but no sooner the pain in her legs had vanished and she placed her hands on her head and her face was contorted like a samurai in a Kurosawa movie.
Coming back to our brother-sister duo.
I interjected the tall fellow and asked him, if the girl sitting before us had an intact ability to speak. He smiled, while at the same time acknowledging, he had overstepped himself. The girl, caught off-guard, raised her head slowly upwards, looked at her brother and without speaking a word gestured as if nonplussed. After a bit of cajoling, she claimed she couldn’t digest her food, there was pain all over her body and that she felt weak. I was in the mood for some conversation. So, I asked them, how do they know she is not able to digest food. They were perplexed. I asked again, to which they said she feels weak and that is evidence that her food wasn’t digesting well. I then ventured to disabuse them of the notion that there was any connection between the two. They felt mildly dejected at my suggestion. Nevertheless, they had come with the resolve that they will make her stronger. So, they reiterated that she was weak. I asked her to tell me how they came to that conclusion. Now, they were angry. To them it was so obvious that only a fool would suggest so. I persisted. No definite answer. So, I asked them what could she do previously that she can’t do now. They replied in the negative. They confirmed that her functioning at home and in the farm was unchanged. So I asked her again, why do you think you are weak. At this point of time, I was sensing the stool could very well be thrown at my head with at least twice the force of gravity. The brother’s face was reddened and he let out a compressed volume of air out of his nose and mouth. He was telepathically telling me to run for my dear life. Then, he finally said something I had been waiting for. He said his sister’s physique doesn’t look appropriate for her age, she is too thin.
When the brother had uttered she looked weak, I had made my diagnosis. I was only trying to get them to say it without embellishments. Basically, they had come to enlarge her! Next obvious question was, why, of course. I knew the answer but I wanted to hear from them. I was in the mood for a chat, after all. The brother, as if sermonising to me some kind of divine truth, said, that as people age, they should grow. I then reminded them that people come in different sizes. He duly acknowledged it but he was adamant that his sister should grow to a predetermined size that their family had decided. Apparently, the family had sent them on a trip to our Jodhpur hospital to get tips to magnify his sister.
He was adamant. He suggested that I write some appetite inducing drugs. He felt the key to her increasing in size lay in how much food she could put inside her. I assured them that was a foolhardy exercise, that she was alright and needs no supplements. They were far from satisfied. After a lot of back and forth with both them and I re-iterating our firmly held beliefs, we had reached an impasse. The brother had decided he won’t return empty-handed. He expressed his predicament that if he returned with no solution, the family would reprimand them.
Then, I said, fine! Join a gym and eat a protein rich diet. That is the surest way to bulk up and the only good way I know. They laughed at my suggestion and said it was prohibited in their village for a girl to go to a gym and they are vegetarians so they can’t consume eggs (which I had suggested). Yet another sticky situation!
At this point of time, I had lost the willingness to have a chat. I just wanted them to leave. But I couldn’t suggest so. I told them they could consult another doctor in our clinic and see if they would get what they wanted. They left, after all of us agreed that they were after something which even they don’t really know why they want, it is society which wants them to think they want it. It is, my view, worse than the society thrusting its collective ill-gotten ideals unwillingly upon them.
There is a common misconception in the public when it comes to what is morally correct. Selfishness is balked upon while selflessness is celebrated. The act of doing what the society wants you to do is considered a selfless act. While wanting to be as unique as you are is considered selfish. But think about it again. When people succumb to societal pressures, do they even acknowledge their sense of self at all. How can you become selfless when you don’t have a self in the first place? When your self is rooted in the norms of the society, do you even have an identity? Dressing to look nice is euphemism for acceptance. Becoming average built (which this girl was being made to) is an act of killing your existing self. In our society, the very idea of identity and self-recognition has been turned on its head.
I wish I could convey this to my visitors but I couldn’t. Next time, may be.
Alice O’ Connor (1905 - 1982), better known as Ayn Rand, was a philosopher who popularised the concept of objectivism through her famous works like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Some of her quotes will give a glimpse into her beliefs.
A Conformist is a man who declares, "It's true because others believe it" - but an Individualist is NOT a man who declares, "It's true because I believe it."
An Individual declares, "I believe it because I see in reason that it is true.”
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“To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone”
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“It's the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.”
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"To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I'
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"Any alleged right of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another isn't and can't be a right."
Thank you for reading.