[Pic : vikatan.com]
Pugazhendhi[not the Arjun of Mudhalvan]. As the name goes, this Gold Medalist from the Madurai Medical College, has bagged infinite wishes from the villages in and around Kalpakkam. Has been servicing the village people for just Rs.3 a consultation.
Fourteen years back, after his passout from the medical college, when his scientist friends persuaded him to come over to Kalpakkam, he setup his first hospital in a remote village called Sathurangapattinam. People from in around that area intially misunderstood him to be duplicate doc. As time rolled over, his fair intentions became clearer and he is now lovably nicknamed as the Three Rupees Doctor. Still single and away from his family, he makes a mediocre living by selling medicine to the villagers at a nominal profit.
In his upstanding interview to Ananda Vikatan, Pugazhendhi attributes his college professors for guiding him to this noble service. He also remarks about the training he gives to the unemployed youth, empowering them to setup clinics at the villages nearby. This idea, at a first glance seemed like an illegal act. He could rather convince his fellow doctors who are busy in the metros to join him in the villages. Because this training-a-youth-as-a-doctor should never have a reverse effect on the diseased. Then, Pugazhendhi’s noble ideas would be dubbed otherway. Thanks to the current media which can transform a mouse into an elephant[or paen into perumal as in tamil].
Reading this article in today’s Vikatan, I was prompted to blog about this. Not just that. Incidentally due to my viral fever, I was at a local hospital, few hours back. While they charged me a half hundred for the consultation, the prescribed medicines amounted few more hundreds. Imagine the cost of setting right a a chronic disease. Pretty costly. Just like everyone, I only hope we have many more such examples. This dude Pugazhendhi, certainly needs to be be celebrated and encouraged.
If Adam and Eve had been Chinese we’ll all be in Paradise, because they would have ignored the apple and eaten the snake. A heady gag. Who else but Kamal Hassan cracking this during a chat about 
kirukkal.com 