A couple of years back, on a Saturday morning, I found myself at a
leading Delhi hospital with my husband. My husband needed some blood tests done
and then we had to see his doctor with the reports. There were only three
counters for outpatient payment and the queue before each of these was long. In
between the queues at two of these counters was a parked wheelchair, occupied
by a tall, large-built African man and flanked on one side by an equally tall, hugely-built
African woman. While the queue snailed forward, a hospital attendant came by
and tried to move the wheelchair with its occupant to one side. The African
gentleman screamed.
Meanwhile, a middle-aged woman, dressed in
what has perhaps become urban India’s middle-aged uniform- Kurti with a pair of
trousers- with a boy perhaps just past his teens and dressed in what were
perhaps his school shorts, walked up to the payment counters and asked, rather
demanded of me, whether there was any other counter for payment. Yes, I wanted
to say, and we are all bereft of brains and gifted with eons of time to kill
when there are time-saving options available. No, I said aloud. Of course, it
was unfair, the sentence of standing in a long queue that had been just handed
out to Her Highness, and quite outraged, she proceeded to the counter sideways
demanding to know again whether there was any other counter for payment. No,
she was informed by the counter staff. Resignedly, she settled for standing in
the queue behind us.
The African gentleman, by now, was in the
middle of a major temper tantrum. He was screaming and screeching. Language
played the biggest baddie in all this drama. The hospital attendant, through
gestures, was trying to explain that he just wanted to move the wheelchair
aside so as to clear the passage and to ensure that its occupant was not hurt
by the crowd milling around. By then the row had been escalated by the active
participation of the wheelchair occupant’s companion. The Africans seemed quite
agitated and ready to hand out a punch or two to the hospital attendant, who
then started backing off, and finally gave up and slipped away. Bystanders like
us watched and heard, but did not react, for there were no cues in this drama
for us. But Her Highness from behind me could not help herself. In the most
sophisticated and Anglicized English she could manage, she advised the African
couple that they must complain to the hospital management. Not once, not twice,
but thrice she reiterated that the hospital authorities must be informed of how
innocent foreigners were being harassed in their hospital. “Money. All that these
hospital attendants want is money. They will harass foreigners all they can to
squeeze some money out of them,” she pronounced with offended dignity.
My poor husband, the loyal Indian that he
is, could not take it anymore. He opened his mouth to say, “Excuse me, Ma’am,
but the hospital attendant was not at fault. He was only trying to clear the
blocked passage. The patient’s and his companion’s reactions were extreme.” Prompted
by this support from unexpected quarters, the manager of the outpatients
payment counter came out from behind one of the glass counters and said, “Sir,
you have rightly said it is not our attendant’s fault. This particular patient
is quite a regular visitor here. He is generally violent. He has once bitten a
nurse and assaulted a lab technician”. “Oh but then, if the hospital attendant
was not harassing him, why were the Africans shouting and screaming?”, Her Highness
wanted to know of my husband. “They are troubled enough by whatever
health problems life has given them….woh apni bimariyon se pareshan hain.
But please don’t complain against the hospital attendant for no fault of his.
The poor man may lose his job and livelihood, and his family will suffer”, my
husband said with utmost politeness. His turn had come and he moved up to the
counter to pay. I felt immensely proud of him. Trust him to always speak up for
the truth.
“Such bias….”, Her Highness kept whispering
behind my back, “…only because they were Africans! Had they been Americans,
people’s reactions would have been different. We would have been bending
backwards to please them”, she said indignantly. The “We” that she had used was
very obviously meant to exclude herself and her overgrown teenager. By then my husband had already walked off and
I followed suit, concentrating all my energies in avoiding the African
gentleman, whose wheel chair was again found parked in the busy, crowded
corridor. Who knows when he would decide that a bite on my plump arm or
plump neck is what I've been asking for. I even hid behind a paper cup of
cappuccino in the hospital Café Coffee Day outlet while my husband kept walking
up and down the corridor, checking the status of his token number. Of course, he
is a greater mortal than me and I’m never ashamed of it.
