Happy Birthday, Dr. Kersi Chavda…

My friend Dr. Kersi Chavda, the popular and eminent psychiatrist, will be celebrating his birthday today. At least, I think so. When I asked him how he intends to spend the day, Kersi vaguely replied that his lovely and vivacious wife Mala was in charge of the celebrations. I was in favor of that because Kersi though the life and soul of everybody else’s parties, cannot be trusted with hosting his own. I have been to their house and watched with anxiety bordering on horror how he killed a rare single malt that had proudly lived 25 years in its cask by mixing me a weak and intolerable drink. It had neither character nor complexity. But Kersi was grinning like a showman bartender shaking up one of his signature cocktails. They make a fun couple. He is a Parsi. And the Parsis are genetically interesting people. Quaintly courteous and delightfully eccentric. Mala is a Sardarni, warm and hospitable but also excitable because she’s married to this genial shrink. They are gym rats. I bump into them in the gym most mornings. Mala walks in first, a spring in her step. Kersi shuffles in listlessly a moment later, dragging his feet. Like he’s just rolled out of bed and is unwilling to work out. I suspect he’s been up the night before counseling a restless patient and is feeling the strain a bit. Psychiatry is a grim medical specialty. It is amazing how medicine attracts young doctors to take up the subject when there are more glamorous and fascinating alternatives. But there is Kersi, distinguished in the field, a top-drawer psychiatrist consulting with all the major multi-specialty hospitals in Mumbai, quoted by newspapers whenever an editor wants to authenticate an article on the illness of people’s minds caused by 21st-century lifestyle stresses. I suppose this must take a toll on his own mental health. Unlike other doctors who wake up at midnight only when a patient takes bad calls, psychiatrists carry their medical cases home and worry over them through the night. I know Kersi does sometimes. That’s why he hits the gym. It is his distraction. But I have rarely seen him exercise. Instead, he moves among members who are seriously pumping iron, wickedly cracking jokes, and generously spreading cheer, like he was in the psychiatry ward. Dancing is another way he unburdens himself of the emotional baggage he carries around for others. Some Mumbai doctors are insufferable highbrows. And Kersi, with his solemn Parsi face, bespectacled inquiring eyes, and 19th-century goatee, could pass off for one. But you would not find a more rollicking companion than him if you wanted to get up on the bar and do the Russian squat dance after a few drinks, I can guarantee that. I have seen him jiving with reckless abandon at formal medical dinners and have admired his ability to go from psychiatrist to party animal in the blink of an eye. I hope Mala’s birthday plan includes dancing because tonight will be the maddest, merriest night of the year for Dr. Kersi Chavda and he will dress up and show up in his dancing shoes. Happy Birthday, my friend…