Sri Balaji Hospital – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Indian Friday: Sri Balaji Hospital, Chennai

My diary, revived from my trip to India back in 2007. Only this bit isn’t my diary. It’s the notes I wrote back home: because diary writing, even if I’d been well enough, would never have been permitted during my hospital stay. Lie back and get better!

Sri Balaji Hospital, Chennai

3rd – 8th December

What picture have you got of an Indian Hospital? I bet it’s wrong. My ward at Sri Balaji Hospital resembled pretty much any hospital ward in an older-style British hospital that you may have come across – only cleaner. It sparkled with clean paint, fresh blue and white candy-striped sheets and general good order. 4 beds in my ward, with 2 nurses by night and 6 by day, all in a smart white jacket and trousers uniform. The nurses, being Tamil, are of quite astonishing physical beauty: I really couldn’t take my eyes of ‘my’ night nurse, Jhoti, whose loveliness extended to her personality. They appeared equally taken with me, and would pat and stroke me, or chuck me under the chin at the least provocation. As I started to get better, they amused themselves teaching me Tamil. With one exception, they didn’t speak much English, but what they did know, they’d learnt at Nursing School. Phrases like ‘Go to the toilet’/’Use the bathroom’ etc. were not understood, until light dawned. ‘Ah! You want pass urine?’

Besides nurses there were:
– nice ladies in saris who appeared to fulfil some kind of auxiliary role.
– doctors – lots.
– men in blue jackets and trousers who seemed to be gophers, called Ward Boys.
– men in brown ditto- porters.

Dili and friends, the Ward Boys at Sri Balaji Hospital

The night nurses did 12 hour shifts and before you feel too sorry for them, they told me that when doing night shift, they work just 10 nights a month.

Medication and tests of all kinds flowed freely – they make the French look amateurs.

No TV, no radio, no nice ladies from the WRVS dispensing sweets, newspapers and library books. No getting up either. You lie in bed until you’re good and better, and meanwhile you do nothing. I was caught attempting to wash on my last day, and was chivvied back to bed and given a bed bath.

The biggest surprise to me was that the wards were mixed-sex. In a country where (at that time at least) it would have been a monumental faux pas for me to have sat down next to a man on a bus, that seemed to me astonishing.

At visiting time, those of us without visitors did not go without attention. Dozens of noses were pressed against the glass wall of the ward as curious onlookers gave us all the once-over. I felt a bit like an inmate of Bedlam in the 18th century.

After 5 days, I was deemed well enough to go home, though I was still feeling pretty ropey. I knew insurance would pay up eventually, but I was terrified at what the bill might be for my stay in hospital, and they woudn’t let me go till I paid up. Would there be enough money in our account? It turned out to be … just a little over £30.00…

Incidentally, the insurance company DID cut up rough. Why hadn’t I rung them to tell them of my indisposition? Well, lots of reasons actually. I was far too ill for such a thing to have entered my head. And on my first day in hospital, because the only phone available was that used by all the doctors and nurses on the ward, I was permitted to make just one call. So I didn’t even ring Malcolm, who was in transit from France to England. It was my son in London whom I called, and he had to contact anyone who needed to know (no, he didn’t ring the insurance company either). I have no idea who took it upon themselves to change my flights, but it wasn’t me. Instead of a direct flight, I had an internal flight to Bangalore, and then a dreadful wait from about midnight to 4.00 a.m. with nowhere to wait but a gloomy hall with no seating, clinging on to my luggage before my connecting journey to London.

And then it was over. We were back in England for a short while before we returned to France. I was by no means the full shilling for a while. Malcolm said I hardly uttered a word for days and days …

My featured photo shows the view from my hospital bed.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is it. My Indian diary. Next week we’ll go to Bradford, where, to ease us gently back to the UK, my post will have at least some Indian connections.

Sri Balaji Hospital, Chennai

Heavy rain in Mamallapuram. My last view of the town, and this calf trying to shelter, just before I caught the bus to Chennai.

I quite forgot that I had already written in July about how my journey from Mamallapuram, via Chennai, to the airport then home to England was severely curtailed by my Indian Adventure ending up in a hospital stay.

My rickshaw driver in Chennai: after that – a train ride … and an ambulance ride.

But you might like to hear a little about it.

What picture have you got of an Indian Hospital? I bet it’s wrong. My ward at Sri Balaji Hospital resembled pretty much any ward in an older-style British hospital that you may have come across – only cleaner. It sparkled with clean paint, fresh blue and white candy-striped sheets and general good order.

View from my bed in Sri Balaji Hospital, Chennai.

There were four beds in my unit, and it really surprised me that there were both male and female patients. This is a country where I had quickly learnt that it was not OK for me to sit next to a man on a bus, yet here I was in the much more intimate setting of a hospital ward, right next to one man and opposite another. We were looked after by two nurses at night and two by day, all in smart white jacket-and-trousers uniform. The nurses, being Tamil, are of quite astonishing physical beauty: I really couldn’t take my eyes of ‘my’ night nurse, Jhoti, whose loveliness extended to her personality.

They appeared equally taken with me, and would pat and stroke me, or chuck me under the chin at the least provocation. As I started to get better, they amused themselves teaching me Tamil. With one exception, they didn’t speak much English, but what they did know, they’d learnt at Nursing School. Phrases like ‘Go to the toilet’/’Use the bathroom’ etc. were not understood, until light dawned. ‘Ah! You want pass urine?’

Besides nurses there were:
– Nice ladies in saris who appeared to fulfil some kind of auxiliary role.
– Doctors – lots.
– Men in blue jackets and trousers who seemed to be gophers, called Ward Boys.
– Men in brown, ditto – porters.

The night nurses did twelve hour shifts, just like many of their counterparts in British hospitals. Before you feel too sorry for them, they told me that when doing night shift, they work just 10 nights a month.

Medication and tests of all kinds flowed freely – they make the pill-popping French look amateurs.

No TV, no radio, no nice ladies from the WRVS dispensing sweets, newspapers and library books. No getting up either. You lie in bed until you’re good and better, and meanwhile you do nothing. I was caught attempting to wash in the bathroom on my last day, and was chivvied back to bed and given a bed bath.

When I was discharged, I had a bill to pay of course: one which, together with my altered journey arrangements, would eventually be settled in full by my travel insurance (there’s a moral there. Though they made a big fuss that I hadn’t got in touch with them from the hospital. I told them that on a busy ward, I’d been able to make just one call – and that wasn’t even to my husband). I was utterly terrified of what horrendous sum might be taken from our bank account for my three day stay. I can’t remember exactly what it was. But it was in the region of £30.

So that was it. Feeling still pretty ropey, I had secured an internal flight back to Bangalore, and after an interminable wait through the middle of the night in a draughty luggage hall, an onward flight to London, and later, back home. Where, apparently, I barely spoke for three days. But I made up for it later.

Indian Journeys: A Local Train Journey with a Dramatic Ending

It was my last day in India. I woke up to driving rain – the first I’d seen – a raging temperature and a sore throat. But there was shopping to be done, packing to be done, general busyness. I forced myself through the day, feeling worse all the time.

Chennai Station (Wikimedia Commons: PlaneMad)

I eventually made it to the station where I planned to catch a train to the airport: a local service with a quick journey time. How was I to know that the train would fill and fill and fill until people were hanging from the doorways in true Indian Travel Documentary style? With me crushed in the very middle of it all, feeling iller by the second. Actually, ‘crushed’ doesn’t even begin to cover it: the only reason I didn’t fall to the floor was that it was physically impossible.

An image from Wikimedia Commons (archer10) gives the general idea…

At a certain point, I couldn’t stand it any more, and somehow forced myself and my luggage off the train, with everyone shouting behind me ‘No! No! Airport is two more stations!’ By then though, I was sprawled across the platform, vomiting and vomiting as the train departed without me. A lovely man tried to help. He brought me water which he poured over me, washing my face and making me drink. A concerned crowd gathered, but by then I had lost all pride as I lay there, being repeatedly sick.

Two policewomen turned up, at as much at a loss as anyone else. Finally, they made a decision. They hauled me quite roughly, as if I were a dangerous demonstrator rather than a rather sick and weak woman onto a train – a fairly empty train, now the rush period was over – and chucked me on the floor.

At the airport station, we were joined by a rather handsome male officer who carried me, ‘Gone with the Wind’ style up the airport steps (a shame I was way too ill to appreciate it), and heaved me into a rickshaw, together with my luggage. Our destination was the airport medical centre. I was examined and at last a decision was made. Hospital. An ambulance appeared and I was dumped on a stretcher. Bang! The ambulance driver revelled in using his siren – who wouldn’t if it meant actually moving in the streets of Chennai? I was at the Sri Balaji Hospital .

I remember little of the rest of the day. But the British Consulate must have been told, and someone there must have dealt with the fact that I was no longer travelling back to the UK that night.

This is the last of my ‘Indian Journey’ posts. I’ll write more about my trip later though. You haven’t heard about the Rainforest Retreat, Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, French Colonial India, Couchsurfing in Thanjavur, Mamallapuram … or life in an Indian hospital….

Today’s entry for the Ragtag prompt: Sick