‘Take patient history, keep your bedside manners as they are still the best medicine,’ says Mumbai doctor Farokh Udwadia

For years, Dr Farokh Udwadia has sat by the bedside of his patients at the intensive care unit (ICU) of Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital, holding hands, listening and talking to them.

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“That bond often wins battles because it is about the patient's faith that the doctor will get him through and it is the doctor's faith that the patient will use his will to fight back even when their body is broken,” says the 93-year-old doctor, who is known for his accurate diagnosis and relied upon by generations of patients. The true art of medicine, he believes, has been submerged by the “hubris of technology.” It was precisely to revive the human touch, which he sees fast receding among corporatised young doctors today, that he presented his play ‘Oganga’ (The Healer), based on the life of his idol Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965), at the Ambedkar International Centre in Delhi on April 18. The play, featuring Jim Sarbh and directed by Sooni Taraporewala, was a soliloquy on the conflict between ethics and progress and how the twain can meet.