The India Group Blog by Paul Ramsey

Fourth Entry         

Monday, June 19^th, 2013

Baba, Krishna, and I were at the hospital by 7:30 AM.  The first call for surgery was 8:00 and we didn’t want to miss wishing Milli luck if she were with the first group to be operated on, but she wasn’t.   Milli’s group wasn’t called to the surgical floor until around 10:30 where there was more waiting, but on both the pre-op ward and on the surgical floor the patients were keep busy: lessons on hygiene, talking with counselors about the impending surgery, and games, I guess, to keep the mind from fretting.  Milli certainly heard the words before she left home that she was “going to have surgery to fix her lip,” but I don’t think she had any idea what surgery was or why her lip needed fixing.  

Milli looks in the mirror a lot.  I wonder what she sees.  She is a cute but not pretty girl.  Her nose is always running, we found out through specialists provided by Operation Smile, because she has a crooked bone in her nose on the cleft side and allergies.  This runny nose bothers her teachers at school (and me).  There is something unkempt about Milli--hair askew, blouse untucked, uniform wrinkled.  Her father certainly doesn’t obsess about his looks, and her mother doesn’t seem to have the neatness touch.  (I notice that Milli always looks a little better after a visit with Bablu’s wife.)  Several times Milli and her parents were asked if children made fun of her because of her mouth.  I don’t think Milli or her parents had any idea what this question was getting at.  Whatever Milli sees when she looks in that mirror doesn’t seem to worry her, and for this let us give thanks and hope this self-possession or obliviousness or whatever it is carries her through adolescence into adulthood.

Milli’s name is finally called, she looks up when she hears her name and follows the nurse through the open door of the operating suite without the slightest hesitation.  I thought waiting during the surgery would be tense, but there was so much going on, no one had much time to think about Milli’s predicament:  Operation Smile provided for Ramakuiyan to see a dentist.  She has a tooth that has been bothering her off and on for months.  The dentist says it definitely has to come out and puts her on antibiotics to prepare her for an extraction in 2 days.  Krishna and Haman are seen by the pediatrician. 

Much to my surprise, if the answers that Baba gave are accurate, they are up to date on their shots, though I would like for them to be vaccinated against typhoid since at least once a year someone, usually Krishna, seems to come down with the disease.  I worry that one of the children will get too dehydrated and die.  The pediatrician suggests we go to the state hospital to get the shot and prescribes some vitamins and decongestants for the boys.  I’m hoping that Baba and Ramakuiyan can see a doctor.  Ramakuiyan has some periodic condition where her hands and feet darken; this has started happening again.  It seems that she can pass this temporary darkening on to the children when she is breastfeeding (and it is not uncommon for breastfeeding to go on until the child is 5 or 6.  When we had dinner with Bablu he mentioned that his 4 year old son, Deepak, wants his mother’s milk before he leaves for kindergarten each morning).  Baba drinks too much.  A harsher rendering would simply call him an alcoholic.  He can go without a drink for about a month and then he falls off the wagon.  

His blood work suggests that he is a step away from alcoholic hepatitis.  A doctor in Delhi told him that if he didn’t stop drinking he would be dead before he was 50.  He said he didn’t want to die (few of us do), but he bemoaned the reality that the doctor didn’t want him to drink, smoke, or chew betties, a nut that many Indian men chew that has them spitting red.  (There are plenty of graphic public health campaigns on the TV showing the effects of bettie chewing:  rotting teeth at its best, mouth cancer at its worst.)  What Baba wondered was what he was to do for enjoyment and satisfaction.  If I had his life, I’d drink too much too, and when I think about it, would it be so tragic if Baba were to die in 20 years?  Milli will almost surely be married by then--very important for a girl and her family--as will the boys (but the marriage of a boy is of minor significance culturally).  Ramakuiyan might mourn him though she will hardly miss all the headaches his drinking brings, and by then she will have grandchildren and her sons‘ wives to boss around.  Baba is so poor, is it realistic to expect him to give up one of the few things he has, “minor” vices.  Really how much of a life does he have to lose anyway?

In a previous post, I explained that Bablu literally had to flee his home village because of gambling debts he owed.  He moved, eventually with his family, to Delhi because he had relatives there.  At the end of our last TIG “pilgrimage” in February, a few of us visited Bablu’s new home, the wretchedness of which I described previously.  The relative he was living with had a paralyzed brother. 

He crawled around on the ground, using his hands and arms as most of us would use our feet and legs.  All I really remember about the young man, probably 20, was that his eyes were like black discs and very sad.  I asked Bablu about him.  He said that his mother had died 6 months before and no one really took care of him anymore.  He had a terrible cough; I suspect he had TB.  One of the TIG members, Bobbi, who was also visiting, noticed the daughter in the family, Chahat, who is 3.  Bobbi saw something in this little girl and said she would pay her tuition ($350) for a year, so she could start pre-school.  We’d already identified a school for Bablu’s children, so we asked Chahat’s parents if they wanted her to attend school.  They said of course they did, so we enrolled her.  Had Bobbi not been there, I never would have noticed this child (one of the things I’ve learned by making these trips to India with a small group is how much I miss on the interpersonal side.  I think I’m so into getting from place to place that I forget to see the people we’ve come to work with), but once Bobbi had pointed her out, I did see that Chahat had incredible charisma.  

Chahat and Family

When we leaving, I told her father that we were helping his daughter out and I’d like for him to do something for us:  take better care of his paralyzed brother.  He said understandably defensively that they did take care of him.  That’s not what Bablu said and not what I saw.  I said to the young man on the ground that when I returned, I was going to see if we had enough money to take him to a doctor to find out what was up with that cough.  I thought fleetingly that maybe we would even find a place for him at one of Mother Teresa’s homes as TIG members volunteer at a home for disabled boys and men outside Kolkata.  If we couldn’t find a place for him near Delhi, maybe we could find the funds to move him to Nabo Jibon near Kolkata.  All this I said and thought quickly without really looking at the man, though I did see him there on the ground.  Two days after I got home Bablu called to say the young man had died.  The family noticed too late one day that something was wrong with him--so wrong that they couldn’t ignore it anymore--so they found a cab to take him to the nearest hospital.  On the way there, he died, in the cab.  I suppose not wanting to waste money they didn’t have, they told the cab driver to turn around and take them home.  No need to waste money or time on the dead in a hospital.  When I talked with Bablu about the young man’s death, he said, “I’m glad he died.”  It’s sort of what I’ve been thinking about Baba and his life and possible death.  How tragic would it really be?  The tragedy is the life he leads.    

An Operation Smile staffer walked us over to the Mahendra Mohan Chandhury Hospital “complex” (Operation Smile is an independent hospital within Mahendra).  I believe it is a privately run hospital, but the chaos we encountered seemed like that I’ve seen in state-run Indian hospitals.  The bottom line is that they had no time or staff to waste on Ramakuiyan’s and Baba’s minor health problems.  Ramakuiyan tried to explain to a nurse about her darkened hands.  The nurse looked at her and said, “There’s nothing wrong with them.”  When we returned to Delhi, we were able to get an appointment with a doctor who said that the darkening was caused by some kind of calcium deficiency and has prescribed a medication but Baba says it’s expensive.  Baba also saw the doctor in Delhi.  Baba reports that the doctor says his liver is better but he didn’t give Baba a blood test.  When I asked Baba how the doctor knew he was better without testing his blood, he said the doctor looked at him.

By the time everyone had seen or tried to see a doctor, it was time for Milli to be out of surgery.  They had just brought Milli into the post-op ward when we arrived.  Her eyes were open but she was clearly out of it.  Her lip had definitely been cut.  She wasn’t crying, just staring off into space.  She didn’t respond when we asked how she felt, but Baba noted that often Milli doesn’t respond to questions.  He says she just looks into space.  She was definitely looking into space after her encounter with surgery.

Baba, Krishna, and I went back to the mineral waterless restaurant and got “a pack” of food to take to the hospital.  I suggested to Baba and Ramakuiyan that they take the other children and go back to the apartment so Ramakuiyan could shower and rest.  I said I’d stay with Milli.  Somewhat to my surprise they agreed to leave their recovering child with me.  About half an hour into the book I was reading, a nurse came by and said that Milli should eat.  She was still looking dazed, so I ignored the nurse.  The family had taken most of the food we’d bought back to the apartment, but they had left some dal and rice.  The nurse came back and again told me to feed Milli and get her changed as she had urinated on herself.  I panicked.  I didn’t know exactly what to do with the dal and rice and had no idea how to get Milli changed.  I opted for doing the food, explained to the nurse I was alone and asked if she could wash Milli up while I prepared dinner (I poured the dal over the rice). Since Milli had urinated, they could take her IV out and led her away to clean her up. 

She came back in a new gown, scooped that dal and rice into her mouth as if she hadn’t had surgery, and she and I began to play a card game of War.  When her family returned, they were beaming to see her so recovered.