It was in the early part of the eighties we used to live in Colaba Bombay, near the Post Office Nearby the fresh
flavour of the potato chips being fried in Victory wafers a shop at the corner
of the lane which lead to our apartment ,wafted in the air.
Just near the post office the road bifurcated , one leading to the famous CharagDin store which produced colourful shirts, and further down to the Reclamation Bay
with its skyscrapers .The other lead to the Sassoon Dock with a fishy smell when one went past it ,down to Colaba area with the famous landmarks like the Strand
book shop/Leopold café/Regal theatre .
At
the beginning of the road was Dr. Sippy’s clinic. He was a very popular paedriatic doctor
as the hordes of people standing outside the clinic in the early hours proved .They
waited patiently till the shop was opened by the pharmacist at about 9am. Once
he settled down he would ask every one to stand in a line and give pieces of
paper with a number on it. One could take the number and return later .
It was a small shop which was bifurcated with a
portion for the pharmacist to sit and in the other the doctor sat.The doctor himself would come in past 9.30 am and start seeing his patients who ranged from babies to small kids with the usual cough, cold & fever which kids normally are afflicted with.
There was very little place to sit there
,so could wait outside or return later depending on the number you got .
Sometimes in the morning session the papers issued could easily go way above
50. He would have an equal amount if not more for the evening session. The doctor would take about 10 to 15 min per patient so one could
calculate roughly when their turn would come.
He would look at the baby/kids and check the pulse ,tongue as he played
with them and soon dished out a prescription which could only be read by the
pharmacist.
The pharmacist himself would read the prescription
and then slowly get out of his chair , pick out a few pills put it in a white marble mortar and smash the pills into powder with a pestle. He would then pick up a small rectangular bottle
and paste on it the number of doses cut out on a paper. He would then ladle the
powder into the bottle and pour a liquid into the bottle, cork it and
vigourously shake the bottle and hand it over the counter to you. The mixture invariably was pink in colour.The fees for
the consultation and the medicine would be about Rs. 10/-
In a couple of days the kid got well. As
long as we were there , our son who was a baby, had that mixture for various
ailments which babies get from time to time.
To this day we remember it as Sippy’s Magic
Mixture.
