Empirical Ironies / Of Mobilities

I cannot stop myself from thinking of the image of a person on a treadmill...A person running on a treadmill is mobile or stationary?  During COVID, for example, when most people were stuck at home, mobility became a serious issue for those who are genuinely concerned about their health. Apart from fitness freaks, there are also diabetic, cholestrol ridden people for whom a regular walk is essential. What do we make of mobility in the city then? During such a situation, we found people finding different ways to move in their own homes, in turn, reinventing the geography of their own homes. The domestic interior became the extents of mobility - short or long, and movement got reinscribed into a new spatiality. The treadmill is a trope to compensate the spatiality of movement. It not only serves as proxy for unavailability of long distances to jog or trek, but also when it may not be possible to do so during extreme weather like rain or snow. Thus, the treadmill is a machine designed to keep you mobile while you are still at the same place, in the same environmental conditions. People further try to access this exterior environment by switching to music or watching something, feeling mentally transposed into the reality outside. The journey of running on the treadmill is just to be in the same place, but having traversed a long distance. 

On the other hand, a month ago, my 76-year old friend broke her hip bone as she slipped while having a walk on her building terrace. Bedridden with stitches, she suddenly became immobile without being able to move her limb. However, basic daily activities like defecating, urinating, bathing, eating, opening the door also requires one to be sufficiently mobile. In the context of an aged body, these could mean a lot of effort. For my friend for example, a simple task of visiting the washroom became herculean. For what she took a minute, now she took more than ten. Besides, her mobility had to be aided by another person and a walker. While in the case above, the journeying long distance kept you stationary, the second case, in the second case, the walk from the bed to the bathroom became a journey. These contrapositions offer new ways to think of mobility beyond the assumed bodies, and allow to expand the meaning of mobility for a variety of bodies - while keeping in mind its literal physical understanding of movement on ground. 

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The above thoughts emerged in response to a discussion with German group of students who were in Mumbai to compare notes towards a framework for creating 15-minute cities where they mapped people's movements in different neighbourhoods across cities within a 500 m radius mapping which programmes are accessible and how may they be more efficiently worked out towards reducing environmental pollution caused due to vehicular movement and other aspects. the empiricism of their study was jarring to an extent where one of their findings speculated that the lack of a garden within the minimum time reach of people within an Indian neighbourhood may create a disincentive for a family to plan a baby while they continued to live in that area. I felt it was very reductive a proposition and also an unconsidered imposition of a certain spatial value that was based purely on numeric study, without taking into account cultural factors through which people choose to be in a given space. Nevertheless!

Of Stranger Conversations

Long ago, my cousin had expressed to me her unwillingness to engage in conversations with fellow passengers in mail or express trains over long distances. "Once you begin to entertain them, you have to follow all the social obligations - smile at them, enter into conversations, offer your food, accept their foods, accommodate requests regarding changing positions, seats, sleeping places, offering window seat if you don't want to..." I could not agreeingly share more disgust - this common culture of bonding over long distance train travel that were once common (and still are, despite much people now take flights) for middle and lower class people in India, is often discussed for how sociality is so easily produced within the millieu of india. The talks in such conversation, primarily among middle aged heterosexual married women, or men, are about long laments and languishes of family life, introductions to relationships, places and people, movements and migrations and such other small talk. I have largely abhorred these discussions, as they seldom have any content, merely initiated for timepass. These are small talks over an extended time in a forced situation which strangers cannot escape. These conversations hold strangehood in the fake cover of familiarity - an assumed sameness amongst strangers that holds the awkwardness of the moment. Here, banal conversations are made with utmost interest and concern, with no expectations and with the full knowledge that these would have no futures. I am intrigued about how these strangerhoods are performed, what content gets shared, what backgrounds get assumed, and what questions get asked. There are no stakes in such conversations - they are free reeling exchanges of everyday nothings.

I began to think about all this just because one such characeters, a man, began to speak to me over my short train  journey back from Nashik to Mumbai. As i settled in my seat within the train, he - a middleaged guy, waited for a few minutes, until he broke into conversation: "So you are going to travel until the last stop?"

I said, "Not the last, one before...I get down at Dadar"

"That's the last one..."

"That's not technically the last, because the train goes ahead until CST."

"Ah yes"

"So you live in Nashik"

"No I was here for work"

"Ah, you were sent by your company?"

"No. I came by myself"

"What do you do?"

"I am an architect. I was here to write about a building"

"Okay" (gives a blank look)

I smile

"What about you, what brought you to Nashik?"

"I was worshipping Shirdi and Trimbakeshwar"

"I hope it went well"

"Shirdi was very organised, Trimbakeshwar was messy?"

"So was Shirdi crowded?" I asked 

"I was in the general line, but then i upgraded myself to the VIP line by giving 200 Rs."

"Ah okay"

"I was in Nashik the day before - i went to Panchvati, to other ghats, and then went to Shirdi"

"Okay" (by this point, i was already getting bored, since I had no interest in any of these details, neither did i know why was he telling me all this)

"So you are married?"

As much as i was taken aback, I obliged and answered "No, I am single"

"Okay, i went with my wife and kid"

"Okay"

"So you are not from Nashik"

"Yes, I am from Mumbai"

"Okay, so you were sent by your company..." (somehow his worldview could not digest the fact why I was in Nashik alone, by myself)

"I teach architecture in a school, I am a professor. I write independently on buildings, hence I was here"

"Okay, so you are a writer?"

"Yes" (I didnot know how more to enlighten this seemingly educated man).

"So where in Mumbai are you from...." (he was still trying to grapple why was I in Nashik)

"I live in Goregaon"

"Okay, so you are from Mumbai?"

"I mean, I am Marwari, and I have grown up in Mumbai."

"I am from Bihar, but I live in Mumbai" he said

"Ah ok, which place?"

"xxxx, do you know?"

"Yes, my native place is in Bihar, i mean Jharkhand now"

"Where?"

"Dhanbad, I was born there"

"Okay."

and then he was interrupted by someone, and i took the opportunity to turn away from him, and think, of why was I lending all these personal details and what would he do with these? but more than that, I began to think, what questions do we ask people in our first meeting? What first questions shall we ask a random stranger? And through these - his first interrogations started appearing to me more and more offensive - I kept asking myself,  'why on earth would he ask me if i was married?' and then I began to think about the heteronormal construct of this world, and how lives of hetero middle aged men and women largely take same trajectories, same aspirations - of finding a company job, having kids, managing kids, visitng pilgrimages together on the name of outings, asserting hope through the assertion of common faith... What is the politics of this assumption? And could this assumption be a form of ignorance in itself?

I kept thinking and thinking until i came to write this post, that i perhaps want to develop into something more substantial. But in the mean time, i leave this for more discussion. Please respond in comments if you have come across such unexpected contemplations....

On Stories

Dushyant: (shares a meme) "In the end we all become stories."
Me: (In the end) Only powerful people become stories. The remaining become sea-salt.

Clinical Practice Today

When i must be around 7 to 12 years of age, and when a sickness would necessitate a doctor's visit, we would visit our neighborhood clinic. The ritual would be to take a number from the compounder and wait for your turn. As you entered the cabin, an old man with greying hair would greet and almost immediately ask to lay on the examination bed. This bed would be at waist height or higher, and could only by climbed via two steps. The mattress would be made up of leather, or even faux leather. Mostly we would be accompanied by our mothers who would explain to him the key symptoms. Then the doctor, in a firm voice would ask: 

"Bhook lagti hai?" (Do you feel hungry?)

"Khana peena barabar hai?" (Are you eating well?)

"Sandaas, peshab?" (Stools, urine?)

At the time, i never knew that what we eject from our body could be of so much value to someone. Rather, i would be embarrassed to share those details. Then there would be a laying on the bed and the stethoscope ritual. Breathe in, out, while the doctor hears your chest. These are precisely the acts we perform when we buy one of those toy doctor sets. Then, he would ask to open the mouth, and using the old style steel battery torch, look inside for inflammations of the throat or tonsils. The meticulous order of check up was customary for perhaps everyone suffering from fever or cold. After the procedure, he would write a prescription and none other than the dear compounder sitting just outside in his special cubicle would be waiting to make a pack of tablets. 

I used to enjoy seeing the compounder count his colourful tablets. The colours were always lovely - muted or bright. Sometimes he would break some tablets to make appropriate dosage. I would dread having medicinal syrups. Back then i didn't have the agency to tell the doctor to not give me syrups. These syrups also would be available with the compounder himself. I always thought these must be special, for you can't buy them in a medical shop. Perhaps this aspect also consoled me of having visited a doctor an availed his services. The compounder would take a strip of paper and fold it, and cut the edges diagonally to make a hexagonal pattern. This would be quickly stuck onto a glass bottle that mother's would already carry in anticipation. The pattern on the bottle demarcated the syrub dosage one had to take. The colourful tablets would be packed in a mini envelop that would mostly be made out of brown paper. Such a process would complete the journey to the doctor. The total cost would be 20 rupees.

I am 36 now. Visiting the general physician never leaves me in a happy state. In bigger hospitals, the money has to be paid upfront, and in private clinics it is always a bitter surprise in the end. You enter the cabin. To find the doctor who is more often than not finishing a call or checking their WhatsApp message. While doing so, and even without making an eye contact, he begins his inquiry. In 3 to 4 questions he is ready with his prescription. Over these one and a half minutes you may not even get a chance to look at him on the eye. The doctor's job is done and you are expected to leave. No questions asked, no clarifications expected.

I don't know where such doctors come from and what is their motivation to be a doctor. While i have the agency of voicing my pathological condition today, no doctor seemingly is interested in listening. They do not want to speak or investigate. They do not want to examine you physically at all. I hardly see them using their stethoscopes...if a doctor cannot make space for the patient to converse, the doctor is a sheer failure. He has lost, in my eyes, any respect for occupying the seat he does. These men and women, medical practitioners, may be overworked, uninterested, burdened or just far too bored to listen to a patient repeating the same symptoms as the previous one. However, the art of conversation can relieve any disturbed mind of their pain, at least temporarily. I don't know why i was comfortable with those old school doctors. Perhaps they gave me my due time. I feel cheated every time i visit a general physician in a clinic or hospital today. They are rude, reticent and reserved - who have no empathy with their patients. Perhaps such are doctors in an urban place like Mumbai. Maybe other places may have their own problems. 

I visit doctors today due to the guilt my parents give me. They believe i don't visit doctors when i should, and i don't complete my medicine courses. Perhaps both of these aspects could be true. However this attitude towards the medicine is a rejection to the attitude of indifference and un-empathy that is lent in their first meeting, which puts me in a place of deep mistrust for their prescription. How can a doctor who has not looked at me in the eye, not checked my temperature, not heard my breath, not checked my heart beat get to know what i could be suffering from? On what basis does he write those quick prescriptions with so much confidence? No doctors explain what medicines they are giving to their wards. The only thing they explain is the times at which the must be administered to the body. This kind of apathy leaves me baffled. What kind of a relationship is this, and how is the patient expected to follow such jargonized prescriptions blindly? These are aspects I fail to follow about the medical practitioners. 

I keep thinking about this a lot and i would like some doctors to tell me what are my rights to ask a doctor as a patient, and how can I tackle defensive doctors who create a wall of medical tests (again without explaining) as a way to keep their patients in darkness? Some leads will be useful.