Strange Names, Strange Places, Strange Professions!!

My name is George Paul. I am a Maxillofacial Surgeon practicing in Salem. It might actually occur to some that this is some weird guy with two first names (and Christian ones at that) practicing an ominous unpronounceable profession in Salem. Since Salem (Massachusetts) is historically linked to witchcraft I would not be surprised if people thought that maxillofacial surgery was in some way related to that dubious craft. So let me explain. Maxillofacial Surgery is a surgical specialty of Dentistry/ Medicine and Salem is a ‘witchless’ city (I believe) situated in Tamilnadu, India. But first, the business of the unusual name.
I do not know of any place in the world where people have two Christian first names. It is a unique practice amongst the Syrian Christians of Kerala in India (where I was born). In fact I know a young man who had the not unusual name of M.M. Mathew. Indians in the South of India often prefix their name with an initial. Therefore the name is not unusual until you got him to expand his initials. It turns out that this gentleman from Kerala is indeed Mathew Mathew Mathew. So George Paul is not too bad. I am now a naturalized domicile of Tamilnadu. The name George gets a bit of a battering in these parts. For some reason most people cannot spell it correctly. Those who can, sometimes pronounce it wrong. This is again surprising when one considers that the official seat of Government of Tamilnadu is housed in a building called the Fort St George (a carry over from the British East India Company). In any case I get by with being spelt as Jorge, Gorge, Geroge and other such combinations which invariably involve the addition, deletion or replacement of some vowel or consonant. The only time I was actually offended was when I ended up being spelt as Garage in a hotel register.
Most people (anywhere in the world) would find it difficult to even pronounce ‘maxillofacial surgery’. It is therefore unfair to expect them to know what part of the body gets chopped up by the practitioners of this unpronounceable surgical specialty. In fact the specialty is a fairly complex one- at least as complex as its origins. The Wikipedia, and for that matter most authoritative sources, call it a surgical specialty of dentistry. Dentistry its self has a rather tenuous origin. It branched off from mainstream medicine (and surgery) a spot earlier than it ought to have and established itself as a separate specialty of the teeth (and later the mouth and jaws). Most medical specialties have gone through the mainstream of medicine and then separated out. If you ask me why Ophthalmology or Otolaryngology did not go the way of dentistry, I have no reply. We can only call dentistry an anomaly of medical history. The Maxillofacial region was annexed to dentistry by adventurous dentists who moved their surgical ambitions from the teeth to the gums to the mouth to the jaws and finally laid claim to a good part of the face. This insidious expansion is best captured by the evolution of the specialty’s nomenclature. It went from being called dental surgery to oral surgery to oral and maxillofacial surgery. Here it must be mentioned that the military violence of the two World Wars and the subsequent violence of high speed motoring and bar brawls, with heady ‘spirits’ as a catalyst for both of the latter, contributed to its establishment as a sound surgical specialty. Today maxillofacial surgery involves facial trauma, pathology, oral cancer, cosmetic surgery and more. At the risk of sounding morbid, I must admit that it is a good livelihood in Salem. The chaotic (and often spirited) traffic and the average motorist’s disdain for any protective gear keeps me and my family well fed. Today Oral and Maxillofacial surgery requires a double qualification (dentistry and medicine) in many parts of the world due to its complexity. Thank God, we do not need that as yet in India!!
Now Salem. This Salem that I live in is in Tamilnadu. It has nothing in common with the many other Salems around the world. I know of two major cities/ towns in the USA and there is one little Salem that I whizzed past in Jamaica. Of course Jerusalem has an etymological connection with Salem (Shalem). Other Salems include a popular brand of cigarettes, a rock band in Israel and an accused terrorist who for some reason spells his name as Salem (Abu Salem). Our Salem is a sedate city of a million people. Nothing dramatic happens here. No earthquakes, no floods, no terrorist bombs, no witchcraft (as in Salem Massachusetts); in fact it has nothing that merits ‘breaking news’ kind of publicity. It is relatively clean by Indian city standards. It has better than adequate facilities on nearly all fronts (relative to Indian standards again). In fact it has a surplus of hospitals, eateries and more recently educational institutions. Other surpluses include trucks, HIV/ AIDS and other unpleasant stuff, but we will pass those. The food is unique in these parts. The famous non vegetarian joints serve up some real mouth watering, spicy and biologically suspect food from small innocuous looking joints. The hospitals do good business, thanks to two national highways which intersect here, the chaotic city traffic and its central location, fed by numerous smaller towns and villages. The teaching institutions range from fly by night operations to highly rated professional institutions.
On a personal front my interests range from reading, writing, traveling (I hope there was a way of getting to places without the drudgery of car, bus, train and planes) and surgery to weekend appointments with Bacchus. Thanks to a recent qualification in law and ethics, I have a new interest in medical ethics. I also like talking. That’s right, talking. If I cannot find anybody I just talk to myself. Crazy? Well maybe a little bit of that too!
George