“Nagaram” - A Story by Sujatha
Writer Sujatha
WARNING: This article contains spoilers, so you might not want to read this if you despise them.
Hello guys!
Today we’re going to be reviewing stories again!
So, basically, I am someone who can’t even read his own mother language and of course I am not proud of it at all. I am slowly learning it from my parents. My language appears to be a big field for literature. The language is *drum roll please* Tamil. Tamil is like Latin to me. But Latin is going to pretty easy for me very soon since I am planning to take up the subject in middle school.
But anyways, my mom reads these super cool stories for me each night. They’re not related to gaming or anything, which is quite a disappointment, but they’re still good stories. It’s not like one of those stupid fairy tales like that one about a princess with long hair – Rapunzel. They call that “a fairy tale” but honestly that’s “a story which is about torture and nothing for children”.
Getting to the point though (as I easily get distracted), there was this one story that my mom said that was not fun, but the writer had managed to really describe how bad the government hospitals were back in the day (and some are even today).
The story was written by a super good writer called Sujatha. In fact, it is his wife's name. His real name is Rangarajan. I have also watched the movies he wrote the script for. I had really enjoyed one of his jokes about an Indian actor in a book yesterday (of course, my dad told it to me). Sujatha is also a scientist, which means that he also had lot of technical knowledge. Unfortunately, he passed away in the year 2008 leaving behind many awesome works.
And one of those works, of course, is Nagaram, the story we’re going to be talking about today. “Nagaram” means “City”. The story happens in Madurai, a big city in a state called Tamil Nadu in India, just like how New York city is in New York state. Of course, Tamil Nadu has many big cities but Madurai is just one of them.
The story is about an uneducated and poor lady called Valli Ammal whose husband passed away. Her daughter, Papathi, had a severe fever, so they had gone to the hospital of the village they lived in, Moonandipatti. The doctor there had made Valli Ammal scared that it was a very serious case and asked her to take her daughter to the big government hospital in Madurai.
The very next morning, without even eating breakfast, Valli Amal took Papathi to Madurai via the bus. She arrived in the outpatient ward and right at that moment, there was a big doctor who also took lessons for post graduate medical students. He started examining Papathi along with his students as a course study.
“Acute case of Meningitis.” The doctor said.
The doctor started explaining the many symptoms and indications that someone had Meningitis and the students were taking notes. Valli Amal started to feel a little disturbed, because she was uneducated and didn’t understand why everyone was discussing things instead of taking a proper treatment.
After the doctor had finished explaining, he said to someone else, “Admit this girl, I have classes to attend to.” That someone else was called Dhanasekaran. He told another guy called Srinivasa to handle this situation and went with the big doctor to attend his classes. Srinivasa asked Valli Ammal if she had admission papers. Valli Ammal didn’t know what those were so she just said “No.”
Srinivasa immediately started asking questions about Valli Amal and Papathi to put on a paper. Srinivasa, not even minding that Papathi was in a severe case of Meningitis said that she had to go straight and find the person beside the staircase to submit the paper. Valli Ammal became very reluctant as her daughter just lay alone on a stretcher in the middle of the outpatient ward.
But if this was the only way to get her daughter admitted (whatever that meant), she had to go to the person to give the paper. When she found the place, there was a big queue. The chair of the person who was supposed to be collecting papers was empty. The chair’s back was filled with a disgusting brown tint. The chair had probably not been cleaned in a very long time.
Valli Ammal waited for a very long time and when it was finally her turn, the person there asked her many questions about her whereabouts, income etc.., that were confusing for Valli Ammal and in the end the person told her to go to another room, number “48” to proceed with admission formalities. But Valli Amal couldn’t understand anything and even forgot the number and she was starting to get anxious. She had left her daughter Papathi and she had no idea where to go to find room number 48.
For a while, the story continues about how Valli Ammal has a lot of anxiety and doesn’t know where to go, but in the end, she finds her way to room 48. But then, the staff said that there was no more admission space and that Valli Ammal had to come the next day. But then she didn’t know where the outpatient ward was and she had lost her way.
She became more and more anxious, perplexed and started to become worried that she had left her child behind. After a lot of tension, she asked a lady doctor where the outpatient ward is and she gave directions. Valli Ammal rushed to that place, but the gates for the outpatient ward were closed. Then her sadness slowly turned into fear.
Valli Ammal started crying. And this is the part where both me and you will realize how the hospital staff have no empathy after seeing so many patients cry in their everyday routine. When someone saw Valli Ammal crying, they said, “Go cry in the corner.” And so, she did.
But then she tried to get the gate open, and a watchman there said, “The gate is closed. You can’t go in now.”
After a lot of arguing, Valli Ammal somehow convinced the doctor to let her inside. After all that hassle, Valli Amal didn’t want to come back the next day. It’s probably just a fever. She thought she will go to Moonandipatti and give an offering to god with Papathi.
Then the doctor returned and asked to the people in the hospital if Papathi was admitted. When the people there said no, the doctor became infuriated.
“TELL THEM TO ADMIT HER! THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS CASE!”
But the people said that the admission area was full. But if the patient was a family of the doctor, then they could arrange it since they were of higher class. Even after realizing it was Meningitis, they didn’t care.
“But then...” The doctor became more and more mad, “You do understand that that girl won’t survive the night, right?”
Meanwhile, Valli Ammal had left with Papathi to the village, not knowing what was about to happen. She just hoped if she prayed to god all would be well.
Anyways, my opinion about this story is that Sujatha perfectly documented what it’s like for people out of a village what they suffer in government hospitals. No matter how serious the issue was or whether the person they were talking understood everything, the medical staff had to follow the protocols.
And even after they realized it was Meningitis, they didn’t care and asked if the person was from the doctor’s family because they were higher class and they could arrange that. Why did that matter in the middle of a big disease? The staff made no sense, I felt like slapping them in the face and talking sense into them that money didn’t matter.
Actually, this is how my grandfather (from my mother’s side) passed away. He met with an accident with a drunk motorcyclist when my mom was seven. When they went to some private hospitals for a quicker treatment as the problem was life threatening, they said they can’t do so because of some formalities in admitting accident cases. And in general hospital there were no proper facilities to treat such cases. So, they had to take a two hours’ drive to another city to admit him. If that had not been the case, he would’ve survived.
Doesn’t this sound atrocious? The treatment will be given immediately if the person is of rich or politician or recommended by some influential persons, but they wouldn’t if they are of lower ones. Economic partiality. Wow. Now, I’ve grown up in Belgium and I did go to India a few times for vacation but I haven’t really been to a hospital (because my family is that careful, especially due to the current Covid-19 business going on).
Sujatha managed to describe what an average government hospital would be like. He has described it beautifully in a wayI could viualize everything. Now, I did narrate the story all over again, but the original was way better and there will be a link to it below in the comment section. But anyways, let’s get back to some of my personal thoughts about this.
First of all – an hospital is not an airport. Admitting a patient is not like boarding an airplane. You can’t say, “Hey, look, you have to wait for three hours.” And then three hours later, “Hey, your child has passed away, you could’ve saved her if you came earlier.” And then the worst part will be.
“We feel very sorry for you, mam.”
Why does a hospital need all these protocols? If I had a hospital, I would just let everyone with minor issues sit down and wait for their turn and send the people with emergencies to the admitting area immediately. For the minor people, tokens. And also, the money would be given at the end but that would be like “a minor priority” (also, I won’t let anybody have black money using that cash).
Also, those airport protocols, as I call them now, are not going to help an uneducated lady who has no idea what’s going on to her daughter. Please reduce the confusion. I repeat, this is a hospital and not an airport.
But moving onto my next thought, do you remember the part where a staff basically told Valli Ammal to continue crying in the corner when the gates were closed? They had no empathy, they just thought, “Just another person grieving over a loss.” And they didn’t even care what was going on or that Papathi was stuck in the outpatient ward. Wow. Another five million claps and applauses please.
Just because you saw a million people cry doesn’t mean you need to have no empathy towards a person who is just another one of those million. Those people would understand if they get a loss and they have something to grieve about.
Anyways, my next thought is that, I felt very depressed when I realized Papathi was going to die and Valli Ammal just happily sighed and went to give an offering to god. Normally I would think this was superstitous, but in this context, Valli Ammal doesn't know the problem, so we shouldn't accuse the confidence she had in God. Doctors could have just been like God in this situation, but they failed.
Sujatha has done a fantastic job writing this story. It left me with an eerie feeling. It felt like hell. Hell means “Naragam” and the story’s name is “Nagaram”. Hmm... This story was more like Naragam than Nagaram at the end. It left me with such a bad feeling, I felt like I had to cry.
But anyways, hopefully you enjoyed my article about Nagaram. I’m starting to get very impatient to do other stuff than writing – so uh, bye!
See you in the next one! Don’t think this is abrupt or insensitive. Uh, see you!
Wonderful Lives,
NAMMY
(AmritaSai Elango)
===== CREDITS =====
Credits to Sujatha Rangarajan for writing the awesome story “Nagaram” which inspired so many thoughts into me and gave me aclear view in what the government hospitals are like, some doctors are like, and also a couple of entertaining moments.
Credits to my mom for helping me a lot with writing this article a lot and also for telling me the story so I could write about it.
Credits to pretty much my entire family and friends’ circle for motivating my writing talents and encouraging me to do more.
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