“In this treacherous world

Nothing is the truth nor a lie.

Everything depends on the colour

Of the crystal through which one sees it” 

        ― Pedro Calderón de la Barca

It was a Saturday afternoon.  I was home. The calling bell rang and I opened the door. It was the ‘police uncle’, a pensioner from the state police department, who lived in the neighbourhood. He was out of wind having come running. And I found anxiety writ all over his wizened face. “There was a road accident in front of my house”, he said haltingly. “C…sir’s scooter hit another one at the blind curve. He has been taken to the ….hospital. His condition does not look good. Please go and see.” C… was a teacher living next door. We hailed from the same village and had known each other from our childhood. We had relocated to the town and had been living in adjacent houses now for a few years. He was like a brother to me.

I stood there for a moment, stunned by the shock of the news. The hospital to which my friend was taken was about half a kilometre away from my house. I had no personal transports. Aftermy wife suffered a series of cuts, bruises, broken bones and close encounters with the angel of death as a pillion rider on my bike, she finally gave me a choice – the bike or the wife.  I opted for the latter and the bike was out of my life for good.   Since I could not then afford to go for a car, we had become completely dependent on public transport. But it was not a situation to think of public transport. So, I simply took to my heels.

At the hospital, I found my friend seated in a wheelchair.  His wife, brother and a few other people were standing around him. The hospital had already taken an X-ray of his head. He had probably hit his head on the asphalt when thrown off his bike by the force of the collision. He did not speak after he was gathered up from the road.  His silence had set off a variety of speculations. Although he had started speaking after reaching the hospital, he sounded confused and disconnected.

In the place where we live, all specialists in all the hospitals vanish into thin air every Saturday afternoon to reappear only on Monday. My friend had suffered no serious visible injuries. Since there was an apparent problem with his memory and comprehension after the accident, some internal injury of the head was suspected. Being risk averse by default, the hospital was reluctant to say anything based on X-ray they had taken.  It needed no genius to guess that the hospital was disinclined to admit or treat the patient. And the non-availability of specialists was a handy excuse for them to get rid of the risk of ending up with a dead man on their hands on a holiday. So, they advised that we should better take the patient to the city where there were many big private hospitals. They told us that bigger hospitals should be in a better position to get the services of a specialist on any day and any time.  

There was hardly any choice before us. So a taxi was summoned. The patient’s wife and his brother got into the backseat and the patient was laid on their laps. Those who stood by suggested that I too accompany them. It was then I discovered to my horror that I was in my housedress and had not put on any footwear. The long and short of my situation was that I had nothing underneath my tatty dhoti and sore feet, and had not a paisa on my person!  Time was critical and distractions were unaffordable.  I quietly got in to the front seat.  The driver switched on all the lights, activated the blinkers and, depressed the horn and the accelerator to the bottom. It was already nightfall.  The car sped. The displays of emergency around us were impressive.  Pedestrians and vehicles scurried aside to give us way. Inquisitive eyes from the kerbs peeped into the car whenever it slowed down in the traffic…   

There were several renowned hospitals in the city. Also, there was the district hospital run by the government. Somehow, people conceive that government hospitals exist for the poor who do not have the wherewithal to seek decent medical assistance from the private hospitals symbolizing class and quality.  Of course, we too harboured the same perceptions and therefore, ruled out the government hospital as an option.  We went to one of the private hospitals named in the memory of a long dead politician. The security guard at the gate waved us to a halt, made a quick assessment of the situation and said without ceremonies that only casualty doctors were available.  We should better take the patient elsewhere. We headed for the next big hospital.  And there too we were stopped in front of the closed gate.  After the security guy had a close look at the patient sprawled out on the back seat of the car, he too turned us away parroting the narrative of the absence of specialists.   

The night was darkening.  Fifteen odd years ago, the city had no nightlife – no all-night discotheques or round the clock bars. (The only exception was the hospitals, most of which had hoardings announcing 24-hour accident care!)  Most of the wayside establishments had already pulled down their shutters.  The roads lay almost empty before us. Very few people were then rich enough to own cars and hardly anyone ventured out with it in the night.  We were desperate. It had already been several hours after the accident.  And we still had no idea about the actual medical condition of the victim. The dangers of further delays were chilling. Every moment mattered.

There was at least one more big private hospital for us to try. It was a Christian institution. But for our driver, all the occupants of the car were Christians.  I remembered having been taught from my childhood days that the essence of the Gospel of Christ was love and compassion. The Bible tells me that Jesus Christ had suffered and ultimately shed his sacred blood and sacrificed his divine life on the cursed cross for saving humanity from the killing bondage of sins and the malefic grasp of the devil. I had no doubt that an institution anchored on Christian values would deal differently with our life-threatening emergency.  

My anticipations of better behaviour at our new destination notwithstanding, we chose to be cautious. We stopped the car slightly away from the hospital gate.  I approached the security guard on duty and asked for the casualty department. He opened the gate and pointed towards a building close by. The car stopped in front of the casualty block.  Its entrance looked more like that of a warehouse. I got out and walked towards it. 

The rolling shutters of the entrance had been pulled down leaving a narrow slit underneath through which the light inside was creeping out. I could hear that there was life, noise and laughter on the other side of that iron curtain. I fisted the shutter. The racket behind it did not cease. I bent down and pulled the shutter up.  There were three people inside – a middle-aged  man with hardly any hair on his pate and two young women in their nursing suits. The man who sat on a chair was apparently the doctor on duty. The nurses stood there, one on each side of the chair – a king on his throne with palace beauties in attendance! The black looks on their mugs proclaimed how unwelcome my intrusion was.  

I was seething with terror and frustration. But I could not afford to displease them. Beggars can’t be choosers! After all, they might have been holding the life of my friend in their hands. So I started hurriedly telling about our situation to the doctor. But he had no interest in what I was trying to convey. His concern, if any, was that we had botched up his moments of bliss. Eventually the doctor came up with the alibi of non-availability of specialists …blah…blah.  “The patient may be in serious danger. You should take him somewhere else immediately”, he said. Some words of consolation indeed! I am a man of average intelligence.  But even that was unnecessary to grasp the true meaning of what the doctor had told. It was, “Why don’t you just shut up and stop being a bug in our heaven!”   

I could appreciate the probability that the doctor was not qualified to deal with a patient with suspected internal injuries. But as a doctor working in an institution supposedly built up on the bedrock of love and compassion, he could have at least come out to take a look the patient.  May be, the patient needed some immediate medical support to survive the trip to the next hospital. He could have been more empathetic, more compassionate, more human… I wondered whether the people running institutions in the name of Christian love and charity had ever paid any attention to the teachings of Jesus Christ whom they worship and adore in tearful supplications. Jesus had said, “…I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me… Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these (people who were in need), you did not do for me“.

There was only one final destination before us. It was the government hospital. None of us relished the proposition of going to a government hospital, particularly with patient probably battling for his life.  But we had run out of options. The car raced towards the district hospital.  We reached there in twenty minutes.  No security personnel stopped us at the gate. We went in. None told us about non-availability of specialists until Monday. The patient was admitted and was immediately examined by the doctor on duty.  The specialist arrived within minutes. There was nothing critical about the patient’s condition. There were no internal injuries. The memory problems might have been the result of the sudden shock and panic triggered by the collision. Nevertheless, the patient would be kept in the hospital under observation for a day or two…  

Day in and day out, we hear the prophets of public sector doom pointing out how foolish was it for the government to run any service or enterprise. The business of governments is to formulate policies and create business friendly environments. Let the private sector take over from there. Governmental systems are utterly corrupt and unacceptably slow, sluggish and complex. An IPS officer is at the head of a commando force one day and at the helm of a condom making corporation the next day.  What do these people know about running a business?

I am not saying that there are no merits in the above arguments. Public sector has its problems. But there are also certain ground realities that the proponents of privatization are either ignoring or suppressing. The private sector is a commercial apparatus wed to the objectives of maximizing profits and thereby maximizing the owner’s wealth. It is risk averse.  It has no public accountability. The policy of profit maximization creates serious difficulties for the citizens. Human values are tossed out into the gutter. But a government cannot operate like a commercial outfit. It must have different value systems. The citizens look up to it in its moments of distress and desperation. It must have certain commitments that go beyond the concerns of making profits,  inventing excuses or hair-splitting rules to escape responsibility and accountability.

That apart, the critical learning for me from the experiences of that night was, that appearances and assumptions are not necessarily the truth.  It is wise to rein in the urge to prejudge.   As Shakespeare says, many things might “look like the innocent flower” and hide a “serpent underneath”.  I also learned that most disasters in our lives are creations of our own minds.

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