I got lost in the multiculture of different “dying” professions that thrive unabashedly on Lower Chitpur Road — attar shops selling perfume in vials, entire rows of shops exclusively for sherwanis and fez-caps, a line of Chinese shoemakers, dark bookshops with Urdu books dazzling in their shiny covers and ornate calligraphy, whole blocks of shops selling puja utensils of brass and wood, going on to another row where old men sun themselves as they make cardboard boxes for the city’s sweetshops. And among these carefully organized rows of each individual trade — united in their planned segregation — lie the line of dawakhanas specializing in Unani medicine. Opposite the Nakhoda Mosque, these medical stores, five or six of them, vary in their ‘antiquity’ — a word as inadequate as any other to describe their fascinating dimness, the quaintness of their operations. Though some of them keep packaged herbal medicines, most mix their own concoctions from plants and spices kept in tin boxes labelled in Urdu. I stopped at Abdul Hafiz Dawakhana, its antiquity too pronounced to pass by. It is not so much a shop as a protrusion. It seems to be suspended in air, two-dimensional. Its walls, all three of them, comprise shelves of tin boxes and glass cases with labelled bottles of colourless liquid.

Nehal Ahmed, who runs the dawakhana, expresses surprise when I ask him how he copes at a time when the process of healing has become so technological. “There are many like us, in Metiabruz, Kidderpore, Rajabazar,” he says, sitting on a mattress while a barber gives him a shave. The dawakhana, owned by his father, after whom it was named, has been there, unchanged since 1932. Ahmed asks me to guess his age and swells with ill-concealed vanity when I tell him he looks in his mid-forties: “I am 75, I have been manning this shop since the Sixties. My mother is nearly 100, and my father is older.” I stare in disbelief at this man, who hasn’t a wrinkle on his face, and who exudes the strength of a wrestler. He offers me tea, and touches my wrist. “This is where the truth of all ailments comes from — the nerve of the wrist. I can tell from your pulse what illness you have, whether of the stomach, the mind or the heart. Look at me, I’ve survived all these years, haven’t I?” Indeed.

Ahmed learnt his trade from the Patna Tibia University and recognizes the need for specialized training. A few customers come in with little chits of paper, placing orders for medicines. They are in Urdu, and Ahmed explains one of them — it’s a carom-and-aniseed antidote for the stomach. He believes his mixes cleanse the body better than allopathic drugs because they are free of chemicals. His charm is unfamiliar to me: it is the chivalry of an old world. He asks about my family and where I live, and responds as if I’m a foreigner — welcome, but not from his world at all. As I leave, he says, “I have a grand-daughter your age. Come and see this baba again. I know I’ll be around,” his eyes twinkle.