THE
PHILOSOPHER DENTIST OF FORT COCHIN or did you know that the familiar name
VARGHESE in Christian Kerala is derived from the Portuguese VARGAS?
Over
the years I had become accustomed to the excellent dental are of a certain Dr.Jagdeesh
but my later travels were just to Fort Cochin. In Cochin, you would soon
discover that there is an unspoken network, and once you enter it, you are able
to obtain excellent services in each and any field of human enterprise. Over
the course of years I have made excellent friends in Cochin, and Mr. M suggested
that I see Dr. Varghese. A mild mannered man, he waited at his surgery for
nearly 45 minutes after he had finished his daily work, as I was delayed
getting to his place of work in Ernakulum. Welcoming words on the wall of the
surgery included: We treat you as a human and not as a patient, which was later
to be proved by his kind manners and explications of my dental health or shall
I say ill health? He organized a full mouth x-ray which is like a cat scan of
your teeth! Not only that when he learned that I would like to see an ophthalmologist
on this very short visit to Fort Cochin, he arranged me to meet Dr. A of Lotus
Eye Institute.
The
next day we were both invited by our kind mutual friend Mr. M, after my ophthalmic
appointment to a delicious lunch at Nawras Restaurant, which has some of the
best Kerala food that I had tasted in Cochin.
During
the next few hours of conversation, it was evident that he was cut of a
different cloth and is much more interested in philosophy and history than
materialism and that his years in the UK had prepared for his successful return
to the land of his ancestors.
I
am glad to have become a friend of Dr. Seby Varghese. Our conversation centered
around the history of Fort Cochin (the only piece of this part of the world I
know anything about, I came to Fort Cochin from London yesterday and leave for
Kuala Lumpur tomorrow) and while we were talking about the Portuguese period,
he told me something: that his name Varghese is a corruption of the Portuguese
surname VARGAS, a name quite common in South America (I thought of Getulio
Vargas, the President of Brasil for a long time in the nineteen thirties and if
you write down the sound of Vargas in Portuguese, it would be VARGES..And over
the course of time corrupted into the popular VARGHESE in the Kerala Christian
Community). Verghese used as a first name, see the spelling, may have its
origin in the name George?
Also
he introduced me to Mr. G of Burger Street in Fort Cochin of whom I would write
later
