Despite the lines that form in front of the bonesetters of Shahdara, the traditional practice is an affront to many formally qualified doctors. “They should be put behind bars,” says doctor Anmol Maria, an orthopaedic surgeon and President of the Delhi Orthopedic Association. The danger, according to Maria, is that there is nothing to stop anyone from setting up shop. “No licence is required, no registration. The result is that the majority creates more complications, after which the patient comes to us.”

Maria explains that an ankle fracture, for example, is commonly mistaken for a sprain. Despite their claims, most bonesetters cannot read X-rays, he says, and would just massage such a fracture. “When the patient then comes to us three or four weeks later, the fracture is much more difficult to treat, and might result in chronic pain.”

It is indeed easy to set up shop as a bonesetter. In South Delhi’s Rangpuri village, close to the Indira Gandhi International Airport, 18 year-old Zahid Khan runs his own shop. He says he finished school up to 12th standard and trained for one year with his uncle, Ikram Khan, who runs a nearby shop. Zahid, too, claims he can treat all kinds of bone fractures and even make his own plaster cast around arms and legs, if necessary. Like Ghughi Pahelwan, Zahid admits he won’t treat complicated fractures. “For those, I send people to the hospital. I can help with easy fractures, sprains and boils.”

Asked why he thinks people come to see him at all, rather than going to the hospital immediately, irrespective of how complicated their fracture is, Zahid simply says: “The hospital is more expensive. There is no need to go there.” For a plaster Zahid charges up to Rs 2000, depending on its size. A simple check-up won’t cost more than 100 rupees. “But it depends on the patient. If he has less money, or wants to give more, it is also alright.”

Like most bonesetters, Zahid’s shop has several shelves lining the wall that are filled with his medicinal blends. Apart from some jars with regular kitchen spices there are empty Old Monk rum bottles filled with dark brown liquids. Zahid is less secretive than others about their contents: “Mustard oil and three to four plants I pluck in the jungle around my village.” His village is close to Ghaziabad. In this part of Delhi, most bonesetters use the name Chaudhari, rather than Ghughi, and Meerut as their city of reference.

Zahids uncle Ikram is not in town. Instead, his 16 year-old son Shavez Rana is receiving patients in his shop on Mahipalpur’s Mata Chowk. He has already learned how to make medicine and how to apply bandages, but acknowledges that he needs at least two more years of training to acquire his father’s set of skills. It is not Shavez’s ambition to become a full-time bonesetter, however. He is currently in school, in class 11, he wants to pursue higher education in an engineering college.

Further down the road, ‘Meerutwala’ Mohammed Arif finds the number of new kids on the block worrying. Arif says he alone really is from Meerut, and that he was the first bonesetter to set up shop on Mata Chowk about twelve years ago. “I have lost some patients to the new guys in recent years”, he admits. According to him, many of them are not as genuine as he is. “They say they can learn all skills in just a year or two, but this is impossible. You need to train at least five to six years.”

The rivalry is evident in Shahdara as well. About a ten minute walk away from Ghughi Pahelwan, Ashu Shirqy boasts of at least as much legacy as the Lahorewala. His shop is called Bakerewale Pahelwan, “because my grandfather used to organise goat fights in the area”. The 21 year-old claims his father’s grandfather opened shop as a bonesetter eighty years ago, even earlier than Ghughi Pahelwan. “We are both very old and good”, Ashu says. “It’s just that he is much cheaper, that’s why he has more patients”, he adds. “All the new guys,” Ashu says, “are just in it for the money. They are not real.”