Touching the Untouchables ~ Part Two

Poor Mintu, because of the rawness of the burns on his face (that ought to have been bandaged after his first visit to a doctor), and due to having two white women tending to him, he became a spectacle to leer at. We were all on display. A continual stream of people stood behind the glass opposite his bed, standing on their tiptoes or craning their necks that afforded them the best view.

Meanwhile, we looked back, mostly in disbelief at the things that we were witnessing.

After the urine bag of the man with a tube in his nose sprung a leak, I watched and waited for someone to come and clean up the yellow puddle. Instead, it got stepped in and smeared around until it (mostly) evaporated.

Families had the task of shooing away the swarm of freely admitted mosquitoes buzzing around the patients that were flying in through the open hospital doors. Til and I stood on either side of Mintu’s bed whooshing them away with our hands.

The family visiting the man in the bed to the right of Mintu sat on the floor at the foot of his bed, eating their lunch from silver tins with subji (vegetables) and chapatis (indian flat bread). When the doctor camein to check on his patient, he squatted on the floor, (with no where else tosit) scribbling notes on a scrap of paper.

Armed soldiers sat at the entrance of each common room, most of them half-sleeping of boredom. Occasionally they’d rise from their post and tell the gawkers to move along, but after a few minutes they’d all return. It seems they had nothing better to do. Or maybe it was the whopping story that they’d be able to tell their families and friends; therefore each detail must be collected for future discussion.

Mintu speaks no English, so communicating with him was an effort. We mostly relied on gestures, so when he pointed his pinky finger skyward he was telling us that he needed to go to the bathroom. First they gave him a (used) plastic urinal bottle that was lying under the bed of the patient next to him. We covered him to allow him to pee in private - while all eyes were watching - but he was unable to. So, while I held his IV bottle, Til took Mintu’s arm and we walked him to the bathroom. When he went to the sink to wash his hands, i saw him glimpse his reflection in the mirror. He quickly looked away at a face I don’t think even he recognized.

A colleague of Father Frances called us when she learned that the hospital was not going to admit Mintu, instructing us which hospital to take him to, a different one that the doctors referred us to. He was going to be seen by a plastic surgeon specializing in burns, and the funds from Father Frances’s clinic would be paying for his care.

Mintu left the hospital with two pints of IV fluids in his parched body, but his face remain uncovered and vulnerable to the elements.

We climbed into the auto rickshaw that Til had arranged, and told the driver where we wanted to go. As we exited the grounds of the hospital saw entire families camped alongside the roads, with their bedding, and campstoves, and food supplies. They could not afford to come and go, so simply stayed, on the perimeter of the hospital. And if their loved one died whilst inthe confines of the hospital, their bodies were simply put outside on the ground to be collected and disposed of by the families. There was no zippered blackbag, no coroner, no hearse. Just an “expired” body that the family isresponsible to take away. (The term expired is used when speaking of death).

In India, nearly nothing is hidden from view. The messy rawness of life lives, breathes, rots, and dies in the streets, a phenomenon that can shock our western sterile sensitivities where everything is neatly hidden away.

A few minutes into our journey, the rickshaw driver stopped his vehicle and turned to us announcing that he could not take us to the hospital that we asked him to. He looked at our “untouchable” friend Mintu and kept saying, “no possible; private hospital”. Not take him. Go to government hospital”.

Both Til and I told him not to worry, that the doctor was expecting us and that we were taking care of it. But when he kept insisting, adding the exalted title “baba” when addressing us, as a way to try and emphasize his point, I lost my patience, telling him that we hired him to takeus to the hospital, to not worry about the rest.

Still, he refused.

Til and I agreed that we had no choice but to look for another taxi, so we helped Mintu out of the rickshaw, while the driver continued trying to convince us of where we could not go and where we needed to go. We wouldn’t have wasted as much time arguing with the driver as we did had we been in an area where taxis were plentiful. We had to walk quite a distance to find another, while letting Mintu lean into us for support.

Nothing angers me more than injustice, and this incident, with the driver refusing to be the one to deliver a Dalit to a private hospital, had me spitting nails. This was the reason why the three of us were under the microscopic eyes of India; the “untouchables” (they are also called the “no-castes” or “outcasts”) are given no respect. Their very presence is consider “polluting”. Their only perceived value to the rest of India, to the other castes, is as servants.

And this philosophy is a way of keeping an entire group of impoverished people oppressed. It’s tied in with the ideology of “karma”, which determines a person’s station in life as determined by one’s previous life.Their actions and deeds. The goal is to work one’s way up the hierarchal ladder to the highest caste, that of a Brahmin. The Indian idea of human evolution.

In a previous hotel where I stayed, the manager, proud as a peacock, announced shortly after meeting me that he was a Brahmin. He looked rather insulted when I failed to laud him. “Big deal”, I thought, knowing that this likely means that he sees those in the castes below him (there are a total of four castes, excluding the “untouchables”) as inferior. He was equally offended when I refused his offer to walk to the river together. Sorry, it doesn’t impress me. It offends me.

Classism however, exists in every culture. In America, for example, factory workers don’t mix with lawyers or doctors. Toilet cleaners don’t shake the hands of scientists, unless it’s to collect the bacteria from beneath their nails to set it in a Petri dish.

The Dalits (dalit means “oppressed”) are beginning to riseup in some parts of India fortunately, as they slowly realize that they are being exploited. Governments have been accused of withholding food rations from communities where the “untouchables” live. It’s a sort of extermination.

After we walked about a block and a half with Mintu, we reached an intersection where several empty rickshaw taxis were lined up along a street bustling with honking traffic. We found a driver who spoke English and guaranteed that he knew where the hospital was and that he’d take us there, so we were once again on our way.

The road leading to the hospital was in even poorer repair than the first one, but worse was the portion of the road that was constructed of unevenly laid bricks that caused the vehicle to bounce with wild rapidity. Mintu, who had been laying his head on Til’s shoulder, cried out and leapt upto try and steady his head and avoid further damage to his face.

Our entrance to the hospital looked more promising than the previous one. There was a waiting area with chairs and an actual reception desk. In the room were mothers and fathers with their young children who had cleft palate, the primary practice of the clinic.

Though we were told that the plastic surgeon was aware that we were coming, the staff (consisting of all men wearing tight fitting jeans) seemed clueless. Several phone calls later, and the guarantee that Father Frances’ clinic would be responsible for the expenses, finally allowed Mintu to be admitted to a room for another IV drip, and for treatment to his wounds. At long last, over 24 hours after the accident occurred, his face would be tended to.

With higher, different expectations of a private clinic, we were astonished when, upon entering the exam room, we found the bed sheet soiled from previous patients. Splotches of blood, though dry, seemed a certain risk to Mintu with his open wounds. The steel bowl under the bed was crusted with dried fluids.

“My god”, Til kept repeating, “you can’t believe it!” She was equally horrified, especially as a nurse, when one of the attendants smeared some salve into Mintu’s swollen shut eye without a washed or gloved hand. Burn victims, with the nature of their wounds, must be treated with the utmost care, though the group of men tending to him used no precautionary measures.

When they asked us to leave the room, Mintu looked like a frightened child, as if afraid that we may leave him there. I was trying to imagine being in his place, not properly treated by the first doctor that he went to, sent out into the world to deal with the severity of his wounds with a prescription for a tube of cream and an ibupofen pain reliever. And then treated carelessly and without a hint of concern at the hospital. Worse, therickshaw driver refusing to transport us to a private hospital. And then a longdrawn out process while Til and I had to assure and reassure the staff at theprivate hospital that the bills would be paid for.

In India, patients must have someone with them in their room, 24-hours a day. Mintu had no family in the area, and we had no way of reaching any of his friends. We sat with him until the clinic administrator brought someone from Mintu’s village to stay with him.

After they moved Mintu to his “private” room, the most expensive in the hospital at 750 rupees a night ($17.00), a housekeeper was rushed in, mostly, it seems, to impress us. He hurriedly tried scrubbing away the dirt on the floor, some of it caked on, but mostly just pushed it into the corners. After five minutes or so, he was done with his job.

I went into the bathroom to have a look. That floor too, was dirty. A pile of swept up dirt lay in the corner near the sink. And the toilet (a squat toilet) I’m quite certain, had not been cleaned in a dreadfully longtime.

And all the impressive talk from one of the attendants whosaid that Mintu must be in a clean environment, thus the most expensive room, to protect him. Appalling.

A lanky, wizened, gray haired man, carrying a woolen blanketunder his arm, arrived with the clinic administrator. I asked the administratorif Mintu and the man knew each other. The man moved closer to have a look at Mintu, though only one eye and a bit of his cheek was visible; the rest of his head coveredin bandages.

He shook his head no; they did not know each other. I was impressed that a stranger would agree to stay with Mintu; that felt a lovely gesture to the end of a day long day of rejection by the rest of the world. But this man too was an “untouchable”, and in that, could identify with Mintu’s situation.

Mintu stayed in the hospital for two days. The clinic nurse determined that plastic surgery was not necessary, even though the plastic surgeon warned that the burns were deep and would not heal well on their own.

It turns out Mintu had an epileptic seizure while cooking, and that is why he fell into the fire. The doctor says he was in the fire for a few seconds before regaining consciousness, thus his injuries were serious,deep.

Still, Lizzy, the head nurse at the clinic, insisted that she could care take Mintu with daily dressings. She felt that the doctor was overstating the case in (erroneously) thinking that Til and I were going to be paying for the plastic surgery. In the end, Father Frances said that he agreed with Lizzy’s assessment, admitting that they did not really have adequate funds for surgery.

We visited with Mintu on three occasions since he was released from the hospital. He is less swollen, looks more alert, and I can see a hint of a smile peeking out from the bandages around his mouth. But the fear is still there, in his eyes. The sparkle from them is gone and he walks slowly and deliberately. He is (back on) medication for his epilepsy. He had apparently stopped taking it for the last month and a half. Likely due to not having the money to procure it. And now he will have to live with that the rest of his life, half of his face deeply scarred, adding to his burdensome status in life, that of an “untouchable”.

His quiet humility has profoundly touched my life. I am blessed to have Mintu as my friend.