The Barefoot Doctor
Part Three of a Series on the 'Pavement Dwellers' of Mumbai

Raju, a child at Dadar Station, the train depot where Dinesh treats his runaway patients.

A group of children at Dadar Station. Dadar is a popular destination for street kids looking for recyclables or leftover food. Photos: Martine Crandall-Hollick

May 5, 2002 -- In the third part of his series on the "pavement dwellers" of Mumbai, India, Julian Crandall Hollick makes the rounds with Dinesh, a 22-year-old, self-taught doctor. He treats runaway children arriving by train at Dadar Station in the city once known as Bombay.

Dinesh looks for unaccompanied children who seem to need medical care. When he spots a potential patient, he rushes to the platform with his medicine kit, a plastic shopping bag filled with bandages, scissors, a thermometer, various ointments and some pills. Dinesh, though youthful and barefoot, must overcome initial wariness from the children

"They all, first time when you meet them, they all say 'I live here in Bombay. I've not come from outside'," Dinesh says of the newly arrived runaways. "But I can make out from their faces and the way they talk that they are not from Bombay."

With commuter trains arriving at Dadar Station every two minutes, Dinesh rarely finds himself without patients. Hollick watches as Dinesh approaches two brothers, a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old, to inquire about open sores on the younger brother's leg. Dinesh treats the sores with Dettol, a disinfectant, before discovering an untreated boil on the 6-year-old, which he treats with Neosporin. He suggests further treatment at a nearby hospital.

Through his experience transporting street kids to hospitals and observing the doctors' treatments, Dinesh gradually acquired the skills he uses to help the runaways at the train station. Even so, if a patient's ailments are beyond his capabilities, Dinesh still accompanies the child to the hospital and stays close by during surgery.

"I've learned simply by watching others," Dinesh says. "I did it on my own."

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Other Resources

•Pictures and text to go along with the "Sadak Chhap" series.

•The entire "Apna Street" series can be found at Hollick's Web site.

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