Calcuttans run to healthcare haven Vellore at the drop of a hair because there’s no choice. But when it comes to buying medicine the choice is tough to make: Do I go to the shop next-door left or to the one next-door right?

This city may not have a lot of things Delhi or Mumbai boasts of but drugstore ain’t one of them.

Calcutta has 6,500 drugstores, more than Delhi’s 4,000 but less than Mumbai’s 7,000, says Samir Ranjan Das, the general secretary of the Bengal Chemists and Druggists Association. The other two metropolises sprawl over a much larger area and in the absence of data about drugstore per square mile in each of the big cities a comparison isn’t possible.

We, however, beat Delhi and Mumbai hollow when wholesalers — 3,500 here, 600 in Delhi and 500-600 in Mumbai — join the force, making Calcutta the country’s capsule capital. That is not to suggest Calcutta is any less a tablet or tonic titan.

The four metropolises consume about Rs 10,000-12,000 crore of medicines a year. Calcutta is right at the top with the big boys, though individual figures are not available.

Das says: “The number of medicine shops has grown manifold in the past 20 years. In the early 1980s, there were 3,000-4000 wholesalers and retailers in the entire state. (Now) We get about 1,500-2,000 applications for licence every year.”

It’s the likes of Kakoli Ganguly who spike the demand for drugstore licences. The prawn pakoras at Dolly’s Tea, in south Calcutta, smelt and looked too hot for the homemaker to resist. An hour later when she returned home, the heat was somewhere between the stomach and the chest — the acid burn.

It’s a phenomenon more popularly known as “gas” among Bengalis who will, uninvited, add “sugar” (the ‘s’ pronounced with a hiss rather than a sheesh) and “pessure” (that’s not a typo; we feel comfortable saying it that way instead of the hard-pressed “pressure”) to their list of health achievements.

“I popped a Zinetac,” says Ganguly. “It’s been a routine for more than a year now. A few days back I did try not taking it for a day, but about lunchtime I just couldn’t do without it. I know in the long run it will stop helping me, but I’m completely dependent on it.”

A true-blue Bengali, Ganguly doesn’t count “gas” as her sole regular tormentor that needs a frequent lash. There’s the pill for high blood pressure (there you go!), which is prescribed, and for backache the painkiller that was prescribed a few months ago.

“I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to continue with them (the painkiller). I never went back to the doctor. But I feel good when I take that medicine, so I continue with it at intervals,” she adds.

Medicines are supposed to make you feel better, so good is not so good, really.

Some people we know go to far greater lengths to feel good and spend a fat lot more, not to speak of the travelling they have to do.

Travelling is an option for the feel-good pill chaser, too — to walk 50 yards or 60.

“There’s enough (business) for everyone. We don’t feel much competition,” says Sajal Bardhan, the proprietor of the New Market store of Blue Print, which has opened a chain of shops, a relatively recent development.

Dhanwantary is another, with a string of 10 stores.

Chain stores, often seen as a threat in other retail businesses to the existence of small shops and a political hot potato in Bengal, where a Spencer’s outlet came under attack last week, and elsewhere, hasn’t killed the cat of competition in the medicine market.

No one has protested against the opening of drug chain stores yet. That may be because the nature of the business is such in Calcutta that even a Bengali — stereotyped as a race with little talent or inclination for commerce — can’t lose in the drug trade.

A source associated with the trade estimates that “a well-stocked shop in a good locality will require an investment of at least Rs 20-25 lakh”.

With a large number of wholesalers battling for shelf space, the drugstore owner is cosseted with supplies on credit. It means the drugstore pays much of what it owes the wholesaler only after the stock of a particular medicine is sold.

If it’s not sold, and a medicine is past its sell-by date, the distributor takes it back. “Also, if there is a change in the trade name of a certain medicine, making it difficult for us to sell the earlier stock, they are taken back by the distributors, and retailers get their money,” says Das.

The retail trade is allowed a profit margin of 16 per cent minus the excise duty and getting a licence is easy — all you have to do is show you have a pharmacist. Most don’t have one exclusively to themselves since pharmacists are few and stores are many. There’s a gap in the market waiting to be plugged.

Sudas Roy, professor (marketing) at IIM Calcutta, throws light on the non-seasonal facet of the business that holds demand steady. “There are seasonal increases in the demand for some medicines, such as cough-and-cold medicines in winter, but the business does not generally slump.”

There may be money in the honey-linctus but it’s not just the commerce. “It’s a very respectable trade,” says Das with a smile, “it is a service that is being offered.”

True, a drugstore is not the same as a grocery or a jeweller’s. So where does it rank in the social hierarchy of stores? Somewhere near the bookshop?

When Butto Kristo Paul opened one of the first medicine shops in the city at Sovabazar in 1858, he was driven by a pioneering spirit.

“In those days medicines were not available. He had opened the shop in his residence so that people could be helped,” says Ashok Kumar Paul, one of the current owners.

Butto Kristo’s son Sir Hari Shankar Paul helped expand the business and popularise Edwards Tonic, “a medicine for malaria and fever”, and the family has carried on. The old bell, with its rope extending to the street, hangs in front of the store as a still-functioning relic from a colonial past.

“Medicine is a necessity, not a luxury. It saves life. Obviously it has more prestige than any other business,” says Paul, the fourth-generation owner who is an advocate but looks after the store with brother Anup.

“Even our children have started taking an interest in the shop,” he adds with pride.

If the business has a Bengali tradition, so does the consumption side. Poushali Banerjee, 26, remembers the well-stocked box her grandfather used to keep. “Every other day I would see my uncle go up to him to get something for acidity or peter ashukh (stomach ailment). My grandma would keep asking for medicines for her headache and even my little cousin would line up for everything from a cough syrup to a Calpol.”

Doctors and psychologists worry. “There is a general belief that Bengalis treat themselves as qualified physicians. But the increased tendency to pop a pill has a serious side to it. So often I hear my patients say they cannot afford to be ill and rationalise it by saying that they cannot stay away from work. So they want to pop a pill the minute they detect signs of an illness,” says Anuttama Banerjee, consultant psychologist.

Dhiman Banerjee, a general physician, labels the middle class pill-happy. “The poor often make do with home remedies and the rich check with their doctors. It is the middle class that resorts to self-medication and asking pharmacists.”

Every economist worth his/her growth hormone tells us how the middle class is expanding. And if the middle class is growing, drugstores have a hotbed to proliferate.

Mrityunjoy Mukherjee, general manager of Dhanwantary, thinks education has made people more conscious of their health. “Naturally, there is an increased demand for medicines and medicine shops.”

Education, and this is just a warning, can turn you into a “cyberchondriac”. WebMD, a website on healthcare, writes how the Internet, with ready availability of information and knowledge, can fuel hypochondria.

Brian Fallon, MD, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, is quoted as saying: “For hypochondriacs, the Internet has absolutely changed things for the worse.”

Sujoy Deb Burman, a general physician, has come across Net doctors. “Some people read through the general symptoms of the illness and try out the medicines prescribed there,” he sighs.

The sigh comes out of the depths of the tragic realisation that it’s a lost battle.

Let doctors despair. But find a person man enough to be such a loser as to have turned a drugstore into a flopshop.

It’s easier to open a drugstore and see. Game anyone?

What is hypochondria?

It’s a psychological disorder with physical symptoms. Often, the bodily symptoms are real, such as a cough, a sore on the skin or stomach pain. But people with hypochondria misinterpret these symptoms and attribute them to an imagined disease, such as cancer, heart disease or cerebral stroke. Some hypochondriacs may attribute non-physical problems to a serious disease. For instance, someone who can’t remember where they put their car keys or eyeglasses may believe they have Alzheimer’s.

Are you like this?

Some hypochondriacs are sure they have a certain disease, and getting a diagnosis becomes their primary focus in life. They visit numerous doctors and specialists. If one doctor tells them they aren’t sick, they don’t believe it. They may seek numerous tests, or even exploratory surgery. They may think the lack of a diagnosis means they’re getting poor medical care. They may relentlessly talk about their symptoms or suspected diseases.

Or this?

Some others are so afraid that something’s wrong they can’t bear to go to the doctor for fear of bad news.

Are you a hypochondriac? Take a dozen tests:

• Do you fear or are anxious about having a particular disease or condition?
• Do you worry that minor symptoms mean you have a serious illness?
• Do you seek repeated medical exams or consultations?
• Do you go doctor shopping, or frequently switch doctors?
• Do you get frustrated with doctors or medical care?
• Do you have strained social relationships?
• Do you obsess about health research?
• Do you suffer emotional distress?
• Do you frequently check your body for problems?
• Do you often check pulse or blood pressure?
• Do you not feel reassured by medical tests?
• Do you think you have a disease after reading or hearing about it?

If your answer to one or more of the above questions is yes, you’re a hypochondriac. No, that’s just a poor joke.