Mumbai: Seventy-two-year old Kishan Thakur is heading to the bank, not for his pension, but for something else. Inside, away from the busy counters, he opens a box and carefully removes its precious contents.
He repeats the routine at a general store. This time he strikes gold. Richer by a sackful, he gets down to work with a doctor buddy.
Kishan Thakur is the medicine man of Thane who works out of a makeshift dispensary in the evenings.
Says Thakur, "Gareeb logon ka ya doosren logon ka bhala hota hai. Waise otherwise phekne se koi hota nahin. Aur aaj dawai ki maang itni hai. (It's useful to the poor and those who can't afford medicines. What's the point in chucking unused medicines. Medicines are in such demand today.")
Thakur has medicines of all kinds — from the ordinary to the outrageously expensive — all collected from various places where people have dropped them.
He first begins to sort them, promptly discarding the expired strips, slotting the rest into boxes according to various categories.
In fact, in the last 10 years he has been doing this, there was a time when his prized collection of medicines was worth well over Rs 10 lakh.
Says an accident victim's father, Bhoja Shetty, "Mere bachche ka jo accident hua hai. Uske liye achcha suvidha hai. Muft mein dawai mil raha hai. (My son's had an accident. It's so convenient for us that his medicines are available free of cost.")
Sixty-six-year-old Bhoja Shetty was Thakur's first visitor and he gets all the medicine that he wants, absolutely free of cost — but after due diligence.
"Hamara doctor qualified doctor hai. Check karne ke bina dawai nahin deta. (We have a qualified doctor who does not give medicines without the necessary checks,") says Thakur.
So the next time you come across one Thakur's boxes, you know exactly what to do with the unused and unexpired strip of Crocin that you have.
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