Govt's 'war' against Saridon has exposed some misconceptions about pain that is debilitating Indians
If death is a leveller, pain is the isolator. That one inevitable, distressing feeling which has been defined by different people in different ways under different circumstances — acute, chronic, phantom, superficial, long-term, short-term, sharp, dull, nagging, excruciating etc. etc.
Pain has a long and painful history, notwithstanding the wordplay.
But not everybody's pain is equal and so are the medicinal treatments administered to the sufferers.
That is why when the government banned the sale of Saridon, a mild analgesic and one of the most common pain relievers in India, not too many people felt the pang. Yesterday (September 17), the Supreme Court allowed the sale of Saridon and three other drugs for now. The government last week banned the manufacture and distribution of 328 fixed dose combination drugs (FDCs) for human use.
Public health experts for long have been warning against the increasing use of antibiotic combinations in India which, they believe, may be contributing to antibiotic resistance. The Centre’s decision reportedly came on a recommendation of a panel of experts that favoured a ban on drugs that are “irrational”, citing safety issues and lack of therapeutic justification.
Now to be fair, the pain sufferer doesn't have the patience to find out the medicinal truth about the war between pharma giants and the government. There have been whispers over some other equally popular and therapeutically 'unjustifiable' drugs that have escaped the ban. But how are the ordinary sufferers ever to know the reality? Their minds are already numbed by the pain.
The not-so-ordinary sufferers, on the other hand, are least bothered about the banning of a small pill, which in any case is not the remedy they seek refuge in. Their world of pain is too 'big' to be confined within the circumference of the small, white, dull pills.
Yes, pain is a strange feeling and not everybody feels it equally. Not everybody's threshold for pain is same, or gets equal treatment. Also, not every pain is treated with equal gravity. For instance, a headache is often considered more of an excuse not to attend to one's work or that too demanding spouse in bed. Stomach pain is another such "silly excuse". The word pain needs suitable prefixes to make it earn a certain degree of 'legitimacy'. For example, your headache has to be terrible. So a 'terrible headache'. Likewise, a severe stomach pain and an excruciating or a stabbing back pain etc.
If the chemical composition of some popular pain killers is irrational, the societal structure carefully constructed and preserved by us, especially in India, has produced emotions that lack absolute therapeutic justification. That is why the rich man's pain needs management and healing touch — opening the floodgates of alternative therapies — while the poor either has to endure it or pop one of those analgesics that come with little or no warning, but plenty of assurance about quick relief without spending much money.
Long-term use of such over-the-counter affordable pain killers often lead to chronic kidney diseases besides giving a host of big and small ailments unknown to the ordinary citizens. The poor man's lexicon just knows one expression for pain — there is no escaping it in life. It's visceral.
Pain in India has its own caste system and it discriminates and favours each sufferer based on their social stature. The varna system of pain, not very different from other social structures in our country, mainly categorises four groups hierarchically — 1) Rich, 2) Not so rich but can afford certain vagaries of life, 3) Poor, and 4) Women.
Women in our society are heaped with so much praises for their "inherent high-pain tolerance" that often the burden of that becomes too much to endure. A woman can flinch and wince in pain but is not supposed to shake the 'world order' around her — the system that has been created and that has placed her at the bottom rung.
A woman is not supposed to complain about "normal" pain like period pain or pain during child birth, because "every woman goes through that, you are not the first one". Also, look at the usage of words, period pain is normal, it's your mood swings that are abnormal. Similarly, the fact that they say women bear children, because they know women will carry that 'pain' and 'fear' and 'loathing' within her, hidden in the roundness of her womb. And when it comes out, she is expected to be overwhelmed with joy of motherhood — which, by the way, in any other world would mean a world of pain.
For centuries, verses have been written saying "a cry of pain escaped her lips", because it is not supposed to come out. Since she is not supposed to express her pain, it just escapes her lips, right?
There unfortunately are no drugs that can cure the pain that this social structures are. At least, none that are affordable and available over the counter.