Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls by Anirban Bose

Author:Anirban Bose [Bose, Anirban]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789350292884
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

The only virile facet of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors was their acronym, MARD, the Hindi word for manliness. This organization of doctors in residency training spearheaded agitations every so often, protesting issues as diverse as the exorbitant price of meals in the canteen to the lack of toilets for the resident doctors on call. The residents were the bulwarks of the hospital, performing most of the actual work of patient care. From starting IVs to complicated surgeries, from examining patients to pushing gurneys, there was no hat that didn’t fit those young, devoted heads. In addition, they carried the onus of teaching the students, for which they had to make time in the evenings, beyond their normal working hours. For their services, they received a stipend that was meagre by all standards; an outrage the administration sought to justify by reminding them that they were still students. They lived in miserable makeshift rooms in the hospital (named ‘Resident Vista’ by somebody’s grandiose imagination) whose narrow, alley-like width inspired immediate claustrophobia on the so afflicted. The thin plywood walls separating one room from the next were rumoured to be porous to the sound of a cockroach’s fart, and at the end of such pigeonholes were two bathrooms to be shared amiably by the inhabitants during the morning rush.

The residents worked tirelessly, ignoring these hardships with a fortitude that bequeathed on them a martyr like aura. However, a subtle undercurrent of exploitation periodically haunted the fraternity. It found a voice in the protests organized by MARD, though the issues were usually so trivial that the demonstrations took the form of black armbands worn for a week or posters put up outside the administration offices in the stealth of the night. Their ineffectual methods of protest were looked on by the hospital administration like the rebelliousness of a truant child who would eventually learn his lesson. The lack of financial backing and a reluctance to assume leadership for fear of authoritarian retribution during the exams were the principal reasons the organization lacked a coherent voice. In addition, the common sentiment that residency was simply a temporary state of torture to be endured for three years and then forgotten, led to half-hearted commitment on the part of most residents towards the protests organized by MARD.

Trouble began on a hot morning that June, when Dr Seema Mantri went to get her shot of penicillin from the outpatient department. Dr Mantri, a third-year resident in ophthalmology, had suffered from rheumatic fever as a child and needed prophylaxis with penicillin on a monthly basis. That day she had had her penicillin injection as on all other days, except that minutes after the injection, she started to feel nauseous and vomited. Although she was in the middle of a busy outpatient department, nobody paid her any attention. Within a few minutes she started to sweat profusely and collapsed on the floor. That got a resident doctor’s attention. He immediately realized that she was having an anaphylactic reaction to penicillin.

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