What's inside Abraham Verghese’s medical bag? Visit the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History to see. Verghese, MD, vice chair for the theory and practice of medicine and a physician at Stanford, is one of the notable Indian Americans featured in the exhibition "Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation," which runs through August 2015 in D.C. and then will tour the U.S.
An article in The Caravan dives into the diversity and complexity of experiences lived by Indian Americans in the United States and opens this way:
IN JOHNSON CITY, Tennessee, in 1982, an Ethiopia-born, India-trained medical resident named Abraham Verghese coveted Dr Steven Berk’s doctor bag. He saved enough money to purchase one for himself, then rubbed it with neatsfoot oil to approximate the well-worn, talismanic quality of his mentor’s bag. Verghese then filled it with his kit—eye drops, calipers, prescription pads—and his hopes of assimilating into the American medical establishment.
Verghese's bag, one of the exhibition's hundreds of objects on display, is coupled with the physician-author's memories from earlier in his career: “I had to ask someone how to tie my tie with a thinner knot so I could fit in," the article notes. "And the only way I could eat the bland hospital food was to put Tabasco sauce on everything.”
The piece continues:
Verghese’s words capture the familiar dual imperative of immigrant life: on the one hand, fitting in, with a tie knot of appropriate girth; on the other, maintaining one’s tastes, through the strategic application of chilli-approximating Tabasco. His story reminds us that even blue- and white-collar immigrants have to negotiate resistance to the perceived “Third World invasion” of the United States, whether through neutralising accents or by softening the stiffness of difference with neatsfoot oil.
Previously: Abraham Verghese shares what’s in his lab coat, Stanford’s Abraham Verghese honored as both author and healer, Stanford’s Abraham Verghese = “today’s most creative person” and Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone: Two years as a New York Times best seller
