Mood:
cheekyNow Playing: Accident victims fend for themselves
Topic: India and worse
Former President and Army General of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf was known for a quirky sense of candidness when in power, which few in international media could comprehend. In his first address to the UN General Assembly in late 1990s, he matter-of-factly stated that Muslims are in majority in most of the hotspots in the world. These regions dominated by Muslims are riddled with strife, violence and brutality. The news media simply failed to make his statement the banner headline. His statement epitomised the prevailing double-speak on security. Measures taken by various government agencies are inevitable, yet we in this country would delude ourselves. But I will come to that in a bit.In his book, In The Line of Fire President Musharraf with unconcealed glee, wrote that cat has nine lives, and he was still counting. He lived to tell the tale after facing so many assassination attempts and death threats, and he was certain the terrorists in Pakistan really had hard luck. About two weeks ago, I felt exactly the same way -- divine intervention interrupted, standing at the bank of the road at Radhanagari at Kolhapur on my way to Pune with my colleagues, minutes after being caught in an ugly accident. I walked out of the ramshackle car like a ghost, just as my two colleagues, except that one was grievously hurt in his head – gods had run out of luck.
About ten years ago, while driving on Mumbai-Nashik road one night, I became drowsy enough to drive up the divider and enter the opposite lane. When the car scraped a tree I was rudely woken up. My friend sitting beside me did not, even after the jerks and jolts, wake up. I had to actually check if he was alive. Bad luck, Gods! But the irony in India lies in the fact that when God proposes, man disposes. At the car crash site at Radhanagari, when the onlookers walked away after watching the tamasha for about 15 minutes, I was struggling to recollect any emergency number that would fetch medical help. My colleague Zafar who was bleeding profusely was losing consciousness and I knew time was running out. In any road accident the first hour, known as the ‘golden hour’, is critical to save lives. My other colleague Liju's presence of mind saved the day. It is tragic that basic infrastructure is sorely missing, though reports of India topping the list of road accidents in the world, make good copy for morning editions. Union minister Kamal Nath a few days ago said, “produce as many cars as possible, we will build the roads for them”!
To talk of medical services, a couple of years ago at a Mumbai suburban hospital (where prospective prime ministers with bullet wounds are known to die unceremoniously) I was admitted with a bad bout of jaundice. At the casualty, one charmingly cheerful lady doctor told me to go through a colour Doppler test. I was wheeled into a lab which was swarming with technicians, doctors, nurses and ward boys. With little or no qualms a nurse walked up to me, checked my name and details on her writing pad and then told me to strip. Even though not an irrepressible exhibitionist, I full-montied after downing the meagerly white pyjamas and shirt. I then mounted an examination table and lay there like that for full ten minutes before I was covered with a green towel enough to cover the essentials. I looked around to find that there were all of six male patients in the lab surrounded by various machines, hanging wires and colourful lights emitting in various directions. All patients lay mostly naked. But the patients undeniably were visibly squirming for having to put up with hospital staff who outnumbered them.
On December 3 last year, in the aftermath of Mumbai attacks, when I landed up at Bhubhaneswar airport to take a connection flight to Mumbai, the scene was equally titillating. Security personnel found the likes of Kasab in every passenger, some randomly picked up and sent trooping to the isolation zone. The tales of the passengers emerging from the examination room sounded incredulously funny, and some edging on profanity.
The difference I noticed was that most people, even the youth, who were subjected to the hands-on approach by the security police were livid, foaming in their mouth, talking about how humiliating the war-on-terror was. “Do I look like a terrorist?” was the common refrain. Not one amongst the patients I have noticed at any hospital complains, at least loud enough, on more humiliating incidents that occur in the labs, examination rooms or the operation theatres. Not that healthcare personnel have any Vatican-endowed morality in not making use of a situation for their own pleasure, any less than the security personnel at airports, who are lowly-paid and doing a tough job in harrowing working conditions.
Security measures, the world over, when highly paid software engineers are turning into terrorists, are considered a necessary evil. But for us Indians it is the best opportunity to wallow in hypocrisy. How often do we see traffic regulations being flouted so brazenly. The inexplicability of the situation adds to the charm. We Indians are scared of the police, and would do anything to keep them at arms’ length. The hidden policemen at traffic islands can be so spooky that even the rich and the famous shudder at using their mobile phones in the parking lot. Yet, look at the way we try to circumvent every traffic regulation and escape the law. Most road accidents, like the one which almost took the lives of two of my colleagues, occur for one reason – lack of respect for the law, to put it mildly. In India successful crime is a virtue like nowhere else.
Recently, at a short-film festival at Bangalore, a docu-drama by a Java-based film-maker who had written, produced and directed the flick on the city life in African state capitals, presented the prevalent lawlessness and immorality with unusual candidness. Though the movie was made for the western audience (something like Slumdog Millionaire), the jeering and exasperation were reserved for the large-scale violence, the unbridled and often clumsy sex life of young delinquents and betrayal. But in one scene which was a re-enactment of real life from police record, the driver (a fugitive) waits patiently at the red signal for it to turn green on his getaway after a felony. And none of his accomplices in the car tells him to jump the signal, though the audience at Bangalore loudly wondered what is the big deal in breaking the law when he has already committed so many crimes in the past. That’s probably honour among thieves, as they say. We Indians don’t even have that.
Posted by Anil Nair
at 1:18 PM
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