The Heart of the Octopus

The hospital was like an octopus waving its arms in the air. All its occupants living, breathing inside its multi-wingedness. The teams of folks in blue,green and black scrubs huddled in various corners discussing the new, strange arrivals. The patients. And their medical and non-medical quirks! While patients sat in designated areas, talking about undesignated topics like the yawn coefficient of the doctors, the stubborn and lost intern, the sleepy inefficiency of its staff,the outdated methods of the hospital and the callous bureaucracy of its money-depositing personnel. At the Emergency wing of the creature, multiple visits to the billing counter, lab and the pharmacy, located on different floors are designed to keep the attendant 'entertained' and on a decent workout, while the patience of the patient is tested inside. 

 

Just below the surface of the mollusc though, lurked compassion. The staff that speeded up when I yelled 'Can you please behave like you're actually in Emergency?' And the lab test woman who centrifuged my mother's blood in a jiffy after I mentioned her age. The billing fellow who 'believed' me, when I said she was entitled to the Central Government Health Scheme's (CGHS') discount, without  producing the CGHS card, because it was an emergency. 

 

The hospital is a unique place, where panic, rivalry, confidence, love, humor, humor under heavy pressure, reassurance, rigid protocol and overcrowding among all sections of society, sit next to each other, interacting, hollering, moving, mixing. It's where compassion comes out raw, and sometimes the extreme life and death scenario. It's where one swings between complaining about the competence of the doctors on whose shoulders our lives rest and the overwhelming feeling of dedicating everything to them, when they turn around and do a good job. 

 

While this feeling of awarding doctors the status of gods is ancient, it seems that 'Google God' has taken away at least half the holy status, both enabling and terrifying patients with the deeper how and why of medicine, beyond just the symptom-fixing and quick explanations. The real 'how and why' that doctors across the world have an unsaid consensus about. The vow to never open that pandora's box. As a friend of mine and a doctor says, the medical profession 'eats cooked food, without most of the worries of gathering ingredients, which is the domain of research'. This brings me to how a field can be exalted, specially in India, beyond necessity too, without due credit given to its very basis. Where, for example, in covid times, (or any other times), does the fluid in the injection come from? Is the most important part of the process the insertion of it or the 10-15 years of biological research on average that go into developing the vaccine? Research is for the ones who don't 'make it' to medicine, of course. 

 

As a researcher-turned-writer, a question does plague me though. When will the arms of the octopus start to coordinate what's going on with a patient? A friend of mine passed away, supposedly because of her various bodily systems being treated in silos. 

Where, pray, in other words, is the heart of the octopus? Or is it in the general physician's office? In which case, the various scrubs might need to talk to each other. 

 

As I leave, I pay a final visit to the MRI facility to book a scan. My job half-done, I turn to see an old man, talking to me in rapid Kannada. 

 

'Sorry?' I say blinking at him stupidly. 

 

'I'm giddy, can you help me to the lounge outside?' he finally says in English. 

 

'Of course,' I say taken aback but offering him steady support. 

 

His brimming eyes tell me that he's braving his illness alone, as the desensitised nurse perched next to him decides to stay put.

 

I return to the MRI facility, to finish my booking and ask the nurse if the patient who just headed out is alright. She goes out with me to the lounge area, where he's nowhere to be seen. 

 

The octopus at the end of it all, is a great leveler and a reminder of the trust and play of altruistic human instincts that society is based on. And how closely medicine’s Hippocratic oath resonates with  community initiatives like 'Medecins Sans Frontieres' and ultimately activism, in its willingness to go out of the way to 'fix' wrongs.

Broken Glass (published in Muse India)

My New York-to-Delhi flight landed, its wheels whirring in satisfaction on the runway, as if with a sense of accomplishment. I had just been offered my first job as an Assistant Editor at a prestigious not-for-profit organization in Delhi. I was to join the next day. I collected my belongings, mostly afraid of not being able to collect myself entirely for this brand, new opportunity.

 

Day one. I walk into my editor-in-chief’s office, only to be sent out. A copious amount of c(attitude) wafted through the room, mingling with her cheap perfume. When I finally did get a chance to speak with her, she was already eyeing me scornfully. Then her eyes moved to my resume, sitting on her desk.

 

‘Your resume’s all over the place!’ she remarked. I could almost hear mastiffs growling in her epiglottis.

 

‘Well, M’am,’ I tried to be at my polite best, ‘you have to be able to see the common thread running through it all..’

 

‘Who hired you? Are you related to the Director?’ she barked out her next question.

 

‘Sorry?’ I displayed surprise at this one, more in sheer amusement at the non-profit’s dynamics, than in righteousness.

 

‘Alright, the only role I have for you, at the moment, has nothing to do with the interests you’ve listed. We don’t have any slots there. Is this acceptable to you?’

 

‘M’am, I was hired to fulfill a role linked with my education and expertise, so I don’t think that’s quite fair..’ I trailed off.

 

‘This is all we have. Take it or leave it,’ she beamed at my squirming self.

 

‘M’am, please, I’ve started work with a lot of aspirations. Please see what you can do..’ I pleaded, getting the gnawing feeling, I was doing so vis-a-vis a stone-heart.

 

 ‘I don’t have all day, so tell me if you’re ready for us to place this responsibility on your shoulders,’ she smirked in satisfaction.

 

‘M’am, I can’t take up this role..I’m willing to wait for a new..’ I was cut-off by her grinding her teeth.

 

‘Look, even men don’t propose after just the once, so, who do you think you are?’ she laughed, spewing a little spit-spray into the air.

 

Back at my desk, I tried smiling at the middle-level editors who only source of entertainment seemed to have been eavesdropping on my conversation.

 

‘Hi,’ I said to the one I was to report to, touching her arm slightly.

 

‘What are you doing? You have to prove your worth around here before acting friendly,’ she was reprimanding me already. I stared at my laptop, wondering whether I’d imbibed too much Americana, while making the fatal mistake of returning to the famed Indian workplace.

 

I excused myself to take a break and call my ‘seasoned-corporate-fellow’ friend, asking for his advice on if there was a special way to deal with  this hell-hole, but my phone was out of battery.

 

I returned to my desk and slumped, poring over an article. This was supposed to be one of the most exciting days of my life! When I could display my prowess at manipulating the written word, while of course, it seemed now, preventing others from manipulating me.

 

‘She wears barbed wire and eats broken glass,’ someone said to my back. Taken aback, I flipped around in part-panic, to see a smiling face standing behind me.

 

‘Hi, I’m an illustrator here,’ he said.

 

‘Hi,’ I managed slowly at this point.

 

‘Santosh,’ he extended his hand.

 

‘Priya,’ I replied, still surprised.

 

‘Ya, our editor-in-chief..she wears barbed wire and eats broken glass,’ Santosh said again, placidly.

 

‘What?’

 

‘She wears..’

 

‘Ya, I heard you. What does it mean?’ I quizzed him.

 

‘She’s very demanding and she’s on the board of directors, so this organization can’t do without her,’ he declared slowly, like he was decoding a mathematical theorem.

 

‘Well, why did they hire me, if they don’t have roles for me?’ I said grumpily.

 

‘Let’s get coffee!’ he suggested.

 

Coffee tasted confused, like I was. Santosh maintained way too much deep eye-contact, all at once for my liking and as we finished our last sips, I decided to give the conversation with the editor-in-chief, loaded with sharp objects and other ‘cutting edge’ weapons, yet another go.

 

‘M’am? May I come in?’ I asked her.

 

By this time, she was sitting with a male colleague of hers and they were both giggling over something.

 

‘Yes? What do you want?’

 

‘M’am..’

 

‘You know what? You think you’re such a great writer? Do the cover story for our monthly magazine. Six thousand words. It’s due in five days,’ she finished my sentence for me. Only, this time, I could see the shards inside the shark.

 

‘OK, M’am,’ I muttered and left, not knowing quite what to make of this rather odd challenge.

 

 I stuck to my desk in the coming few days and toiled away at the cover story, burning the midnight oil to meet the unreal target.

 

When I finally sent it off to the middle-level editor assigned to me, she didn’t make significant changes in track-change mode, but changed a few skin-shades when presenting it to the editor-in-chief, in private.

I was summoned to the glass-eyed prickly chief next. A little weary, I walked in.

‘Hmm. Priya, you did a decent job, but you couldn’t do it alone, could you? You did need Rohini’s help after all!’ she declared, tapping her pen on the cover story, leaving little ink marks on it, like the little inky, scars on my psyche.

 

‘HELP’ ran the alarm bells in my head, as I returned to my desk.

 

‘Hi!’ Santosh appeared out of nowhere. ‘Coffee? Tea?’

 

‘I need to get out of this place…’ I muttered under my breath as we left.

 

Santosh was the only thing stopping me from losing my mind. He smiled too much and lingered on, on my eyes too much after the conversation was over, though. In broad daylight? In the middle of office? I was more of an evening-person to even just feel my ‘sentimentality’ better. I looked around the coffee-place and there were at least six ‘innocent’ bystanders lurking, looking -- randomly, purposely.

 

‘Santosh!’ I said. ‘We have to get out of here,’ I said.

 

‘Where?’ he asked.

 

‘Back to our desks,’ I replied.

 

My first week turned into weeks and weeks into months. The sights and sounds of the folks at work started to blur into one amoebic, never-ending monster that assaulted my senses and threatened to swallow me at any instance. The work itself stimulated my surviving neurons.

 

At the end of each ‘politically’ monotonous day, I’d drag myself into my car, slump and drive wearily through the traffic python, to go home, wade through dinner and unwind with a book that lay half-opened on my face, until I’d wake up the next morning.

 

‘We’ve a conference next week to prepare for, people!’ declared the chiefy-chief on a morose Monday morning.

 

‘Priya, write the first draft of my speech and put it on my table by tomorrow, after proof-reading it,’ she picked on me last.

 

'Ghost-writing?’ I asked.

 

‘Yes, ghost-writing’ she repeated. ‘You have a problem with that?’

 

‘No, M’am,’ I replied.

 

On the day of the conference, our team left in cars that parked themselves at the lobby of a grand hotel.

 

The announcements and talks began, without much ado. But twenty minutes before the chief was to go on stage, word went around that she’d just discovered she’d brought the printed copy of the penultimate draft of the speech with her. By mistake. And, smartphones hadn’t been invented yet.

For the first time, I saw her face wilt and go a fairly deep-crimson.

 

‘What am I going to do?’ she asked looking at the faces of the team of editors and illustrators, that had gathered backstage.

 

‘M’am..’ I said, very slowly. ‘May I?’

 

‘What?’ she turned sharply to me.

 

‘Only I know where the differences between the ‘pen-ultimate’ version and the latest ones lie, and I can fix it for you in less than 20 minutes,’ I stepped up, a little amused for the first time and before anyone could say another word.

 

‘Really?’ the chief-editor took a staggered step backwards in disbelief.

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘Then do it,’ she said, un-frowning just a little.

 

When the speech was done, members of the audience sought the chief out, but I knew that once she was done, she’d perhaps look for me. I walked towards the exit, deliberately.

 

‘Priya,’ I heard her voice call out to my back.

 

I turned around, in slow-motion, without saying a word, in possession of the ‘upper-hand’ temporarily.

 

‘You are an outstanding writer. And thank you. The Voice, surprised me, which too tended to be something of a surprise.

 

I flipped around again, only to walk away in sure steps, the twin-mongrels of disbelief and disgust trailing behind me.

(https://museindia.com/MuseIndia/Viewforum?topicid=89113)