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Journalism of Courage
The tent wala desperately needed a smoke. He bundled white fabric under his right arm, and attempted to light his beedi behind the giant peepal tree in front of 6A, Krishna Menon Marg. It was a quarter to four on Thursday afternoon — still over an hour before the announcement of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s death was made — and humidity was at its peak.
The lanky man had been at work for a few hours, tacking white cloth to the rim of a makeshift plywood stage on the footpath, and had been craving a beedi. But the police, security officers and prying cameramen made him keep his vice at bay. Around him, as seven NDMC safai karamcharis used giant brooms to sweep rainwater into gutters, even leaves outside Justice S A Bobde’s ‘out’ gate on the opposite side of the road were not spared.
Meanwhile, police barricades were dragged onto the road to cordon off Krishna Menon Marg. Then, everyone waited. For over nine weeks, a release from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences said, Vajpayee had been admitted to the hospital, but his condition had “worsened” over the last 24 hours. “His condition is critical and he is on life support system,” the August 15 release read.
On the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stopped by to see one of his party’s tallest statesmen. Then came other ministers — Prakash Javadekar, Smriti Irani, Harsh Vardhan — and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu early Thursday morning. At 8.52 am came BJP president Amit Shah, followed by Vajpayee’s daughter Namita, health minister J P Nadda, and senior party leader L K Advani. Several other cabinet ministers, MPs, family and friends stopped by. As the day wore on, chief ministers and opposition leaders arrived in large convoys with cell-phone jammers.
The scene transformed over Thursday morning outside the “lal building” — the Cardiothoracic and Neurosciences Centre. From two barricades that were loosely tied together, it became five that were sternly in place to keep out the press, patients and anyone with a phone camera. Fathers carrying sick children, the elderly, young mothers with toddlers were diverted to an alternative entrance towards the back of the building. Some were curious, others oblivious.
Some, like Phooljahan, who has been riddled with a painful tumour on her neck for four months, temporarily forgot their woes. At AIIMS, she was asked to wait four hours before she could see a doctor. “I didn’t want to go home to Sangam Vihar, so I stuck around.” She had never heard of Vajpayee, though.
It was Pooja, a young security guard working for a private company, who was swiftly motioning people away from the VIP entrance. Her shift began at 6.30 am, she said. Amidst waving patients away, she called her mother: “Arre mummy, aa jao, card ban gaya. Yahan hoon, red building peh,” she yelled into her phone. “My mother has problems with her liver and she is only 50. It took me eight days to get a card made,” she said.
Around her, the hospital machinery was in full swing. Trolleys filled with laundry, food, biomedical waste and trash went up and down the corridor like clockwork. “The hospital doesn’t come to a standstill because of anyone,” said a woman doctor.
To one side, leaning against the wall, was S K Dwivedi, whose desperate search for good medical care for his 18-year-old son’s kidneys took him from their home in Bihar to Lucknow, then a private hospital in Chennai, and now to AIIMS. “Vajpayee bolte kum lekin kaam zyada karte the…,” he said. Hours later, his work finished, it was time for the tent wala to relish his reward. He hugged the white fabric, squatted on his haunches behind plywood steps, and puffed on his beedi.
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