Credits: Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance
wife, Uma who is from Bangalore
and struggles to adjust in the new
place and with Ajay’s
embitterment; Kamala, a mother,
whose baby is admitted in the PHC
with untreatable sepsis infection;
and Rahul, who doubles up as a
seismologist and a budding standup comedian, enjoys cracking
microbiology jokes. Their lives
intersect and the play slowly
brings out the many problems
each of the characters is facing deftly touching upon various hard
facts of human life, the medical
practice in the country, science
and medical myths, socioeconomic hues in India, and of
course the big villain of this
century, AMR. The play keeps
reminding the audience about
the imminent threat of AMR
through lines such as, “money
cannot buy you protection from
infection”, “earlier, scientists
used to say ‘don’t panic’ and now
they are saying ‘you are not
panicking enough’”.
Ajay’s passionate monologue
towards the end of the play to an
audience of doctors, post the
introduction of Chennai
Declaration (a roadmap to tackle
AMR), alluded to the relevance of
the play’s title - the Vaidya’s Oatha Vedic oath taken by the
physicians around 15 BC as a
commitment towards the
profession. If the oath is broken
“the knowledge shall bear no fruit”
– the failure to tackle antibioticresistant infections will be a failure
of medical knowledge and practice
with catastrophic consequences in
India and worldwide.
The play throughout maintained
an effortless balance of staying
true to the art of theatre and to the
scientific and medical facts of the
subject at hand. The Vaidya’s Oath
is an important demonstration of
how the theatre arts can be used
effectively to convey science and
promote awareness of public
health issues in India and has
hopefully set the stage for many
such theatre-science
collaborations in the future.
BIOVOICENEWS.COM
27