Chennai experiences - Arumugam an everyday hero!

Arumugam's (not his real name) skin is the colour of burnished teak. In the sun it glistens a deep brown and there is a hint of red. He has a mop of grey hair. He carries his compact body with quiet strength in his security uniform. He has a ready gap toothed smile, high cheek bones and even features. All in all unremarkable, put pleasant up close and personal. He minds the doors at the entrance of Ward G. Downstairs are the operating theatres and ICU and upstairs the individual rooms - standard, premium and deluxe. My m in law is recovering here after knee surgery. This is a small hospital in the heart of Chennai, managed by Catholic nuns. It has a reputation for its cleanliness, orderless and good patient care. Several prominent Consultant Physicians have their patients registered here. Also, as private healthcare goes, it is more affordable than most.

Given its location and prominence, and the need to maintain it pristine, the hospital is very strict about visiting hours. It is Arumugam's job to watch the door and to ensure people have an attender or a diet pass. The attender is someone who stays at the hospital with the patient and the diet pass is used by those who deliver food for the patients from their homes. The hospital does have a diet kitchen, however patients are allowed to have food brought in from home.

Arumugam sits on a plastic chair from 1 in the afternoon to 10 pm rising for doctors and other hospital professionals. The heat along the corridor is oppressive . The fan over his head in perpetual motion, gives him limited relief. Orderlies and cleaning staff, ie people at or beneath his station stop by and exchange pleasantries with him. Some folks like my husband press some money into his hands. Not so bad a job except the pay is modest. He is luckier than most.

So what is extraordinary about this human being who sits all day long on a chair policing the entrance? Nothing really - except the effort he has to make everyday to provide for his family. Nothing other than the fact that he is beginning to represent the urban poor.

Call me inquisitive. I have to stop and enquire after people's lives. I choose an opportune moment when he greets me with renewed zeal as I enter the hospital with my sister one evening. Her dental clinic adjoins a medical lab and Arumugam has a part-time job there washing lab equipment containing human effluents and chemicals. A tough job where he could potentially be exposed to virulent infections, given standards in this country.

As he escorts us to my m in law's room up the elevator I have found out part of his life story to have the rest filled in by my sister. He finishes work every week night at 10 pm. He cannot afford public transport and rides his bike for an hour and a half to get to his home in a distant suburban slum, the only place he can afford a place. It's only then that he eats dinner. It is 1 by the time he hits the sack, exhausted. The next morning he is on the road by 9, in peak heat, travelling 2 hours through traffic to put in a couple of hours, at the lab, before start of shift at 1. He gets one day off on which he takes up random cleaning jobs at people's homes.

Arumugam has two grown children. His son thirty is an alcoholic and constantly lying drunk somewhere and his daughter married to a man with alcohol and money problems. He comes home to stories about daily calamities that involve creditors, brawls, police and medical emergencies given the precariousness of his children's lives. Even Polyanna would have struggled to remain optimistic. I would definitely have forgotten to smile, to be gracious and pleasant. But Arumugam is the epitome of dignity, equanimity and cheerfulness.

How do Arumugam and the millions like him whose life is an endless road of abject poverty and desperation, despite all their extraordinary efforts to keep their mind, body and pride intact, sustain day after day? What is it about their spirit that keeps them buoyed up with enthusiasm to face another day of extreme physical and emotional hardship. What is that threshold and how can each of us raise our tolerance to take on a little more everyday. Till I talked to Arumugam, I saw Chennai as a chaotic place characterized by disorder, assymmetry and dirt everywhere. I had this extraordinary urge to shake people up and awaken them to the squalor of their living conditions. That evening everything changed. I see each person here as a hero triumphing under extraordinary odds. I now see the need to accept, be curious, raise the bar for my softened body and to help where I can!