I know it’s only been 5 days since we left Toronto but I’m feeling as though several lifetimes have passed. For one thing, arriving in India always hits me like a physical shock – you travel for hours, you’re exhausted from the plane and the airports you’ve passed through, you’re finally there and India hits you in a combination of humidity and smell (exhaust fumes, perspiration, and dust). Not in a bad way, just in a very distinctive way. BUT this time, as we arrived in the brand new Bangalore International Airport, neither the mugginess nor the smell hit us! South India is in the mild throes of the winter monsoon and when we emerged out of the airport at 1:30am, it was into a beautifully cool evening. Even before that though, the airport is one of… the airports of the world: all glass and light, gleaming shiny floors and aircon, plants in tall pots, and for someone who’s been arriving at the old HAL airport in Bangalore for ages, it’s a real shock to the system!
Because this is India, which is only really held together by spiderwebs of friends and relatives, we were met by a family friend and my cousin. We emerged blinking to find my cousin waving his cellphone at us, since he was just on the phone to the hospital, where our arrival was being as carefully monitored as though it were a situation room! Since my darling grandma was awake and waiting, we drove straight there from the airport – this will possibly remain in my memory as one of the best rides I’ve had in India: speeding through the empty streets late late at night creates a certain drama of its own that sustains you through the exhaustion of the past few hours. And anyone who’s been anywhere in India will recognize the rarity of empty streets. Though there were signs even on that drive of the heightened state of tension that the South is in following the bombings in Bangalore a few days ago: our taxi was stopped by sweatered and scarved police officers (it’s 20 degrees – practically freezing, dontcha know?!) who wanted to know who we were and where we were going. The check was rudimentary, involving as it did the noting of the cab’s number and the driver’s name but still… the fact that it happened at all (a first for me) is a reminder of the New India. By the way, the luxury taxi cab – hired for the night, basically and including the return trip from Bangalore to Mysore – cost us a whacking $110. Plus a gratefully received $5 tip for the driver.
So we got to the hospital at 4:30 in the morning – I know, I know – very soap opera but it wasn’t really like that – hospitals in India are still evolving so the fact that my mom and her brother and sister were all with their mother in the hospital at 4:30 am is not that surprising. So we went in, after being warned of what to expect, and visited with my grandma for a while. I can’t begin to articulate how awful it is to see her like this – hooked up to oxygen tubes and what not, her hands and feet swollen, her face folded in and her eyes set in deep dark hollows of misery and exhaustion. There is no drama here – only sadness. I’ve now spent hours sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, trying to figure out what she’s saying when she can mouth a few words, trying to distract her from the pain and discomfort… all of this is just excruciating for her and miserable for us who wait with her. The hospital she’s in here is one of the best in the city but it’s an Indian hospital, which means that she’s in a “Deluxe Private” Room – these rooms have a bed for the patient and an extra bed for an “attendant” as someone is expected to stay with the patient all the time. We’re also expected to provide her food (and ours!) and to monitor the IVs and medicines and just call the nurse when there’s something to be done – like changing the IV. To be fair, my grandmother is getting royal treatment here because my mother used to be a well known doctor in Mysore (20 years ago and that, m’dears, still means something here!) and she knows all the doctors here and so on. In fact, we’ve been given the unheard of privilege of having another “Deluxe Private” room which is currently not needed set aside for our family to use – we take it in turns to nap there, eat takeout food in it and so on. I can’t imagine a setup like this anywhere in Canada! Not the “attendant” allowed – no, required – to stay with the patient nor anything else.
But nonetheless, I hate it. I hate the sense of bareness about this best of the options hospitals (I’ve discovered that I have a lot of faith in the technologies so easily available in hospitals in the West – there’s no such thing as a crash cart here; there are no intercoms or call buttons; the nurses have to call down for the one oxygen meter when they are asked to check oxygen saturation levels (and trust me, this is not a complicated or expensive machine!)… everything feels pared down to the basics, which in general is a good thing because I think medicine in the West is too mechanized and too dependent on technology as opposed to trained diagnosis etc but this… this is a little bit too much bare-foot-doctor for my tastes). More on this theme later, I’m sure, because it’s something I find interesting – after all, I wrote about this in my thesis!
More than anything, though, I hate her helplessness, I hate ours and this sense of just sitting there waiting for death to come and relieve her. It’s so cruel that after all these years of enduring life, she has to go through this. That there is no hope of recovery makes it all the harder to bear for everyone – it’s impossible to not resent this phase when there is no chance that she will get better. “Better” at this point is counted in a good hour here or there.
My “break” at home is over so I’m off to the hospital again. I’ll write more soon. In the meantime, please keep the good vibes (and emails!) coming – they’re my only link to my normal (whatever that is) life in Toronto!
