Four Weeks to Be a Doctor

I recently came across the preface of a new book titled “Four Weeks to be a Doctor”, which is about to be released in 3 months, written by Dr. Jaali Daktar, on behalf of CHADDI - the Char Hafta Association of Different Doctors of India.

The preface is quite disturbing because it describes a four-week roadmap for anyone who wishes to become a doctor in India. The reason I am putting it out here now, is to make you, the unsuspecting public, aware of the existence of this organization so that hopefully you can identify these 4-week doctors, if you run into them.

Here is the preface.

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"This book is aimed at those who want to become doctors and earn more than physicians and surgeons of modern or traditional medicine. Unlike the 4-5 years or more training they go through, which we believe is all humbug, you need only 4 weeks to learn how to be a doctor. Some of you may take longer, depending on how easily you can pronounce the word “diagnosis” correctly and some may take less time, but the average time it takes to learn the tricks is 4 weeks.

Before I start, I would like to thank my English teacher from school, who has helped with the words, the grammar and the spelling and with the podcast.

The first thing as I have already said, is to learn how to pronounce the word “diagnosis”. Only regular doctors are able to do this correctly and to be taken seriously by clients, you have to practice saying “diagnosis” at least 10 times every day.

Then, start with the online reiki course on the CHADDI website. It takes a week to become a CHADDI endorsed reiki master. You have to understand the nuances of the posturing and hand movements and learn the correct jargon. Once this has been mastered, take the next course in pranic-healing. Weeks 3 and 4 are devoted to craniosacral treatment, gem therapy, aromatherapy and magnetotherapy. You will also have to do course work on vastushastra and feng-shui. In the last two days, you will learn some basic anatomy; that the brain is in the skull, that the liver is below the ribs on the right and the difference between arm and forearm, and thigh and leg and how to confidently use words like CT scan, MRI, laboratory, pathology, microbiology and tuberculosis. You will also learn the names of trendy food items like chia, quinoa, goji-berry, etc to impress your clients.

At the end of the four weeks, there will be a theory exam. It is a multiple choice, 20 question paper, which you have to answer over 8 hours after referring to the answer sheet on the website, for which we will give you the link. Your degree will be sent to you over WhatsApp the moment we get the answer sheet.

You are now ready to see clients.

First start with your friends and family. Initially, take on only those people who have coughs and colds, vague aches and pains, backache, general discomfort, heartburn, and similar conditions, which generally don't get enough attention from practitioners of conventional medicine. Spend time with them, while practicing the various movements and spouting the correct jargon you have learnt in the last four weeks. Encourage them to talk about themselves and don't be surprised when they come up with a lot of repressed feelings, buried fears and angst about their lives and the futures of their families and themselves. Impress them by correctly pinpointing their problems, such as lack of sleep and physical activity, faulty diet, "fast" lives, toxin build-up in the body, low immunity, etc., all of which will be present to some degree or another in the majority of your clients. Always give them a “diet” sheet that includes quinoa, chia and old grains like bajra and jowar and tell everyone to reduce “carbs” and increase proteins and if they ask more questions, recommend a dietician friend of yours. Also tell your clients that they should walk for at least 30 minutes and sleep for 8 hours a day and not drink alcohol and not smoke. This covers all bases, as they say in American baseball.

In no time, they will recommend you to their friends and family and you will start becoming known. You should cultivate a serious air and adopt a slightly superior but not condescending or patronizing attitude and charge a lot. Find out how much the local general practitioner in your locality charges…you should charge at least double if not more. The more expensive you are, the better people will think you are. Get yourself a small consulting room, either in your house or elsewhere and design it to look extremely ethnic with low-settees, earthy colors, flower pots, curtains, brocade, zari, malas and the like. Oh, and don’t forget the fancy agarbattis.

When the first really serious client comes in, give an impression that you understand the problem. Ask for all the papers, read the doctors' notes, the pathology and radiology reports and make some comments like, "Hmm...Whew...Tough...". Even if you don't have the foggiest idea of where the adrenal gland is, or what the function of the pancreas is or can't pronounce medulla oblongata, don't worry. Just keep muttering "modern medicine...tch tch" and keep shaking your head. When the patient or the relatives look at you wide-eyed with expectation and hope, tell them "Don't worry...we'll set things right". Don't ever tell them to stop the treatment they have been advised by the conventional doctors they are seeing, whether it involves medicines or surgery, whether Ayurvedic, homeopathic or modern medicine related. If the treatment is successful, take the credit for it, by saying that it worked only because of the reiki that you performed remotely. If the treatment is unsuccessful and the client worsens, blame it on "allopathic" medicine and its ills and the "hard" drugs and "cutting" surgery. You can't go wrong!  

You can further impress the clients by keeping their pathology reports and x-rays and scans and doing reiki on them saying that by targeting the diseases mentioned in the reports, you can heal them faster.

You will get disbelievers and relatives trying to expose you. The more educated they are, the easier it is to convert them. Drop words like "cosmic energy", "positive biofeedback", "yin and yang", "forces of life", "negative and positive energy", "environmental pollution”, “detoxification”, “immune boosts” and if you are a little more confident, "global warming, "ozone hole", "man ruining Gaia, earth's life force”,  "El Nino", “metaverse”,  etc, mix everything into a bhel that is so complicated, it just cannot be challenged.

You must also have a well-designed website by now, which links to the various pages on the CHADDI website. Make sure you have heart-rending and emotional testimonials of miraculous healing from friends and family.  Start posting regularly on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. After a year or two, try and publish a book.  

Never promise too much! Don't say that you can make a man who is paralyzed for 20 years, walk, but do say that "I can make him feel better and maybe in the future he might start walking". Who knows what miracles modern medicine might throw up in the future...at that time, if you are still around, you can take the credit for everything. Don't ever tell them to stop taking their conventional treatment, or you will get into a lot of trouble. And anytime a client complains that the treatment is not working, ask “Did you follow my diet plan, walk for 30 minutes every day, sleep for 8 hours and not drink alcohol?”. Except for one client in a year or so, no one will be able to say “Yes”. Then you can tell them, “Sir, if you don’t help yourself, even God cannot help you, and I am just a mere mortal serving as her guide.”

Add a "Dr" before your name to make you sound big. No one will say anything to you in India. Also add a few initials like MR (master of reiki), PHE (pranic healing expert), VC (vastu consultant) and get an MRSPH (Member of the Royal Society of Public Health), a certificate from Britain (the foreign stamp) which anyone who pays the fees (only 109 pounds) can get.

Without the ten to fifteen years of solid hard work that conventional doctors have to go through, without exams, without the struggle to establish a practice and a name, without any knowledge of anatomy or physiology, without even knowing how to pronounce most medical words, apart from “diagnosis”, you can become a successful doctor. It just needs some savvy and street-smarts.

All this with just four weeks of the CHADDI course, which only cost Rs. 1 lakh!

Before I end, let me repeat. Never compromise on your charges. Ever! Always charge more than conventional doctors, to justify your rapport with the universal soul. Always tell everyone to follow your diet plan or that of your dietician friend, to walk or exercise for 30 minutes every day, to sleep for 8 hours and to not smoke and drink. You can never go wrong.

Lastly, many of you ask where to pay more money and get an MBBS/GFAM/LCEH certificate. We are a legitimate association and will never indulge in such fraud, so if you do this, it has to be on your own. But remember, you can only use a fake certificate in an obscure place where no one knows that you haven't actually done an MBBS or GFAM or LCEH.

The next 200 pages of this book go into more details about how to achieve all this. This book is your Bible…make sure you keep it by your side at all times. Happy reading and all the best!"

Background: This is a “funny” spoof I wrote in a lighter vein in November 2000, in a different avatar, but still relevant today. I have made some changes.

Addendum: While this is a spoof, the underlying problem of unqualified doctors is a definite issue, especially in the under serviced and poorer parts of our country, where access to regular healthcare is difficult or expensive or time-consuming. It is estimated that there are close to 10 lakh unqualified doctors, who fill the gaps in the rural areas and even in the urban poor areas like Dharavi and Deonar. One of my colleagues once told me after meeting both qualified and non-qualified doctors in a village in Karnataka that it was easier to work with the non-qualified ones, because they had no ego, were eager to learn and would follow instructions and guidelines without any deviation, and had better rapport with the villagers, while the qualified doctors always wanted to add their two-bits and subvert the system and kept their distance from the locals.