Today, on the day the markets touched a historic 10,000, on the day that our anchors wore jumpers and bandanas that said 10,000, on the day that we tossed to scenes of celebration everywhere, on that day I went to the emergency ward at a Government hospital in NOIDA.
We're filming for a series on the doctor-patient relationship and after being refused permission to film this particular story at emergency wards at the large hospitals we arrived at this tiny one.
Mistaken nurse
We're following a paediatrician on his rounds and, getting bored of tailing the camera, I tail off to linger by the corner bed. A little girl is staring vacantly at me and her mother encourages her to say hello.
"Tata kaho, taa-taa." She explains to me in Hindi, "She can't say tata because her hand is bandaged." It has needles sticking out of the tiny palm.
After much baby-talk, Yasmeen begins to reach out her hand to me. How friendly. She clutches my fingers with her tiny hand and continues to stare, unsmilingly, at me.
"She's been here with fever for eight days," her mother explains.
Everytime I try to move away, she reaches out to me and then I realise she's not really being friendly as much as she's asking me to remove her bandages. Yasmeen thinks I am a nurse and quietly, every time I move away, she pleads with that frail outstretched arm for me to release her from the IV drip.
Unseeing, unrecognising
At the main emergency ward is an eight-year-old boy who will have to be moved to a bigger hospital. He has a severe form of measles or something and now he's making involuntary jerky body movements. He can't recognise either of his parents, although the doctors stress, "Ma ko nahin pehchanta". Both parents sit helplessly by his side, almost as though disbelieving of the doctors' dire predictions for their son.
Take two
It's such a light day at the Emergency that we haven't seen a patient being wheeled in yet. FInally one comes in when we were shooting something else. There's an old, frail man in the wheelchair and I have to ask his son to wheel him in again.
We've set up the lights, he wheels him in again, but an enthusiastic guard steps in the frame. Again. This time someone crosses the path. Then again, a third time.
Perversely I want the son to tell me to get the hell out of his life. His father is old and frail and I half-wish he'd angrily tell me he wants some healthcare and for the camera to get the f*** out of his face. Like I would do if someone filmed me while I was ill.
But instead he obliges me again. And again. And again. And then his cousin sidles up to me, this young man with greasy hair, asking me if he has some story of exploitation, will we cover it? Can he have my card? Won't we be the "spokesperson for the poor?" It sounds so awkward when he says it in Hindi, like "voice of the poor". He tells me about some Government job that was a con job. In the Emergency ward. With his uncle wheezing away under him.
How do people still have so much faith in the media? I remember an afternoon outside the District Collector's office in Shivpuri. A group of villagers had come up for the weekly meeting and they showed me ghastly photographs of their relative who had been cut into pieces.
"The DC won't hear us," they pleaded, "do something. Cover this."
Where did this blind faith come from? I want to say, "our anchors are wearing 10,000 tee-shirts because the markets have crossed a big mark," but I know the reason I'm here filming, or was in Shivpuri, was because there still is space in mainstream media for these stories.
Can't tell if I'm depressed or not.
