Lalit Gupta
Dogras are martial, innocent, and religious people who believe that everything in this universe is a grand design of the eternal divine force called Narayana. It is commonplace to hear expressions like ‘jiyaan naraen di marzi’-“As is the will of the Narayana.”
Names and spirituality are deeply intertwined in Dogra and Bharatiya culture. Naming children after gods and goddesses like Naraen-a Dogri syncopate of Narayana-creates a connection to the divine right from the beginning of one’s life. In a way, the name itself becomes a prayer-a kind of blessing that’s imbued with spiritual significance.
Today, children’s names like Tattva, Mivaan, Abhiraj, Mannan, and the likes drawn from mythology and ancient texts have dethroned once common personal names like Jagdish, Bansi, Ram, Shiv, Krishan etc.
The establishment in 2016 of a super speciality hospital named Narayana near Katra, was for natives of the Jammu region nothing short of a benign gesture of Dhanvantri, the Hindu god of medicine. More so when Katra Narayana was envisaged and established under the auspicious of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, the epitome of efficient guardianship of Duggar’s principal spiritual site and pilgrimage of Shakti worship.
My first brush with Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Narayana as an in-patient happened when I went to get admitted there for a bilateral knee replacement procedure. Driven by my Gurgaon-based son, who had miraculously managed a two-week-leave-cum-work-from-home combo from his MNC job, we arrived at Narayana’s vast salubrious campus last Wednesday morning. It was the day when my consultant surgeon was to join duty after a well-earned vacation. He had already guided us to whom to approach in the reception area.
Like any big super-speciality hospital Narayana’s bustling reception area painted a vivid picture of the busy hospital environment: Lined up wheelchairs, stretchers taken away one after another by hospital staff, old and new patients, staff, nurses, trainees-all in designated coloured uniforms scurrying to different directions, floors and the counters dotting the walls of the grand foyer, its side corridors and aisles.
While my son went to share insurance details with the Insurance TPA, I sat waiting on a chair in the lined-up rows under the semi-circular high-roofed foyer. The buzz of conversations, the incessant movement of bodies, the clank of metal walkers, sticks, swirling wheelchairs, and the cries of infants, fleetingly blanked me. But soon the inescapable serpentine malice of voyeurism raised its head, and I inadvertently started observing the people around me.
To my surprise, Dogras of all hues and colours abounded the crowd along with Gujjars, a few Kashmiris, Punjabis and Himachalis adding to the demography of the moment. Patients coming to Narayana include serving and retired government employees, ex-servicemen and their dependents, workers of organized and unorganized sectors and citizens, seeking cashless treatment under various government and private insurance schemes including Ayushmaan Bharat. Some pay in cash and a few get free treatment under the CSR initiative.
My son returned with admission papers after the Insurance Company had communicated its acceptance of the initial claim. Thereafter, it was a smooth sail. Following an OPD examination and a list of mandatory tests, I was finally admitted to a private room (thanks to my health insurance policy). The other options are semi-private rooms and general wards- but lo and behold-all inmates are served the same food menu or as per the advice of the in-house dietician.
Once inside the allotted private room with a view, I was made to wear a loose gown and airy pyjamas. Then followed a flurry of doctors, nurses, attendants, and other technical staff who set on to the assigned tasks to ready me for the next day’s surgery. The visits by a Ladakhi chest specialist, a Malayali anaesthetist, and a Dogra surgeon imbued a national flavour to my approaching major surgical adventure in the reassuring domain of Narayana.
The pre-op preparations started with collecting blood samples followed by my transfer onto a stretcher to go to the radiology wing for ECG, Echo and chest X-ray. Lying on my back, carted on a moving stretcher and treading a maze of corridors, it was the acute perspective of the looming face and the close-up of the inverted nose of the ferrying female attendant with a constant flicker of the ceiling lights that transported me to a kind of Salvador Dali-esque surrealist space and time. The experience of going for the knee X-ray in the late evening was less aesthetic, less intense and stressful as familiarity instills confidence.
Having been advised not to eat and drink anything after midnight, on the following day waking up in the wee hours to calls of cuckoos and other avains, I shaved and had a bath knowing that for the coming days, it was only going to sponge with wet wipes. The dutiful nursing attendant changed my dress and wheeled my bed through corridors to the pre-operative holding area. Following the recording of blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation and other vitals I was ushered into the Ortho Operation theatre and transferred to the operation table.
In the confines of constant-hum and beep-producing machines, a respirator was put on my face. The next moment, the mask-covered face of the Malayali anaesthetist appeared by my head side. With a reassuring gaze of lotus eyes, her sonorous voice announced that she was going to inject my spine to anaesthetize my lower limbs.
Thanks to the spinal anaesthesia, only a score of seconds later I stood split into two persons: The wide-awake, conscious in all five senses upper self, and the detached, numb, senseless and inert lower being. Both stood separated in the middle by a blue curtain to the other end to which Dogra surgeon and his team of young technicians from Poonch, Rajouri, and Doda, had become active.
The instructions from the other side filtered into my ears as was the clank of the plethora of the ‘instruments of healing’-for bone preparation and implant placement. Thankfully, the fantasy of a Frankensteinish fait accompli was alleyed by the Surgeon’s reassuring one-liners in Dogri to his team: sab theek hoi aa, agge chalo, etc. My request for a video view of the ongoing operation was denied with a mild laugh by the lotus eyes.
One knee correction was followed by the other. After two and a half hours, I was wheeled back to the post-operation room and waited until the sensation in my lower limbs surfaced. Back to my room, full of doses of painkillers and antibiotics, my flush of successful procedure soon faded by slow waves of excruciating pain which to my great relief lessened with every passing hour.
Straddled with instructions from Kashmiri Pandit and Reasi-born physiotherapists, I returned home after five days, walking on my legs albeit with the help of a ‘walker’ and strict advice to follow a regular regimen of prescribed Physio exercises. Taking liberty with Robert Frost’s iconic line -I have many miles to ‘walk’ before I sleep! Namo Narayana Namo Narayana.
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