The Yakshi and the Doctor

Chapter 1: Introduction

It was a regular day for Dr. Karna Bhaskar at the hospital. Dr. Karna was a man of morals. He had taken up medicine to serve the poor and downtrodden. Being an idealist, he had rejected postings in reputed private super speciality hospitals and had chosen government service to serve the weaker sections of the society.

Money and other material comforts beyond basic necessities were not an attraction for him. It is for this reason, in lighter vein, his friends and relatives called him a doctor who needs medication.

But people around respected and loved him for the same reason. His genuine love, concern and affection for all the cross section of people around him.

It is this idealism that landed Dr Karna Bhaskar, one of the foremost leading minds in pediatrics, at the moment in Wyanad district in Kerala. The place had high infant mortality and it seemed to the logical mind of Dr Karna, that the country needs his services at this place.

After all, he was already 35 years old and was a bachelor. His parents had passed away long back and he had devoted himself in service of the poor. The thoughts of marriage and domestic bliss were not in mind. His thought process seemed to work on the fact that why would any lady from a good family be interested to struggle in a remote place with him. So despite, his friends and well wishers prodding him in that direction, he was a happy bachelor.

For lack of better world, it could be safely assumed that medicine was his better half and he got a great deal of satisfaction by bringing smiles on faces of poor children who could not have other wise got Services of a doctor like him at this place.

So Government Hospital, Wyanad despite all its shortcomings and lack of facilities looked like temple for him to practice his religion, Pediatrics. He was also like a god to the population in the area, whom they could talk to and get blessings from, in form of curing the sick.

The doctor had come to this place only 6 months back. He was well aware that the place reeked of superstition and ignorance. Being a man of medicine, he found beliefs such as that of female ghosts locally known as Yakshi as workings of illiterate minds.

According to local beliefs, yakshis waylaid men in guise of a beautiful woman and brought them to their doom by drinking their blood and killing them. One such yakshi locally named mohini had terrorized the whole area. The rumours in the area was that 1000 men had lost their lives to her.

He also had active interest to bring the people of the area out of such stupid beliefs. After all, science could logically explain all that mattered in the universe, or so he thought. How wrong he was, he would be discovering the same shortly.

To be Continued.