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Get your act together
Ethel da Costa
I have an attitude and I know how to use it. If this
sounds like an ultimatum, it is so because it’s also the complete truth.
The happenings of last week have left me gasping for air, a pounding in my
head and a muscle strain in my back. Not to forget what’s it done to my
breathing patterns! Since I’ve long given up on yoga, I can’t think of
heading to the gym either because the healthiest man behind the pumping
machines has succumbed to jaundice himself.
It has left me convinced that the title to the Number 1 State was probably
acquired/bartered for a price tag, going by the increasing leaflets of
prescription bills piling on my study desk, the repeated visits to the
doctor, the sleepless nights of temperature note-taking, not to forget the
virtual drug store the kitchen cabinet has turned into. This after living
in Goa’s Number 1 capital – amche Ponje!
Hell hath no fury like a working mother juggling a hectic, stressful,
walking-on-landmines-everyday-deadline-routine, a bustling home and a
highly sick little girl puking all over the floor, on my shoulders and
right up to GMC at 3.30 in the morning. Braving rain, nerves and panic
you’re seeking succor and the man behind the registration counter looks at
you like you’re hell broken out from Mars. The off-duty nurses warming the
chairs couldn’t care less if you dropped dead right in front of them
(they’ve all had a hard day, you see, while they assume we float around on
candy clouds), even if it’s a very sick child barely able to sit (and
she’s sitting next to them) and visibly moaning from high fever and
nausea. I run between child and bathroom, which is another hell to behold,
if you don’t have a strong stomach yourself. Hey, clean public hospitals
with running water is a miracle to find in Goa, so why should the GMC be
an exception. There’s enough mess in the washroom, from the clogged wash
basin full of somebody’s puke, to the floor to the toilets, (besides the
stench) to give you a free ride to typhoid, urinary infection, jaundice,
hepatitis and diarrhoea and God alone knows what else is lurking in these
sewage pipes. If you’re overworked and need a genuine excuse to take a
break – this if you’ve survived eating at the city’s restaurants -- all
you have to do is take a walk inside Goa’s premier medical institution.
Your medical leave should sail through without a hiccup.
The paediatric ward is another scene.
Soiled linen, dirty floors, beds
that have seen better days and some sad looking children groaning and
moaning loudly. My little girl froze at the sight and looked at me very
worried. If it hadn’t been for the prompt attention, patience and
understanding of the doctor and nurse on duty, I would have bawled right
there and then looking at the scum covered on the tap and the wash basin –
for a woman obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene, it is an acid test
always -- the dirt hanging off the walls and the general bleakness of the
situation. If you think that the restaurants in Panjim are unsafe even for
a sip of water, think again. The entire notice-waving team that goes
clamping down restaurants for their merry sewage fest, should pay a visit
to Bambolim and stick their clear-it-or-close-down notices all over the
place. Safe health starts with clean surroundings, especially in a
hospital. It starts with us. But who to dispute this when we’ve been so
used to being served with a cockroach masked in a biryani; rice and waste
that feeds the neighbouring clan of rodents that survive on this free meal
ticket; soggy undergarments (hanging overhead) and leaking sewage pipes
that adds flavour to your paratha and pau bhaji; or drinking water that
conjoins with its soiled sister because everyone looks the other way when
hoteliers set up their eating establishments using the same greasing
techniques that wins our political seats. I’m sure the palm-grope extends
right up to the health departments and municipalities – it justifies why
they have been turning a stuffy nose and a blind eye the other side all
these years, when it is these authorities who should conduct periodical
checks at all eating establishments (big or small) to ensure that what is
cooked and what is served, is indeed what is ordered and paid for.
Who issues licenses to these
establishments without checking if the premises are fit to carry on a food
business and are not a threat to public health?
And when the licenses are
dispensed, shouldn’t these authorities carry out yearly checks to ensure
that sanitary facilities, food standards and hygiene meet the stipulated
requirements? The municipality has been passing the buck to and fro the
health department. While you and I have been paying the price with
diseases. But nah, why fret? This is Goa, remember? We haven’t earned our
`sossegado’ sobriquet for nothing.
While I’m on this butt-bashing trip, I learn that the municipality is also
responsible for doling out permission to all the shady looking vendors
selling their wares on the St-Inez-Campal road -- whose bare butts I see
every morning (since Monday) going about their natural ablutions without a
care in the world, because the municipality have conveniently forgotten to
provide them with sanitary facilities or mobile toilets. The St Inez
nallah right down is bearing the brunt of more than just drain water
flowing into the river. Another epidemic waiting to break out because
somebody is obviously dozing on his job. I have since asked PI Rina
Torcato to ensure periodic police patrolling after watching a duo
attempting to eve tease local residents.
I have yet another example to prove that being `sossegado’ seems coded in
the gene pool of our population. This extends to our rights, and our
voluntary decision not to exercise it -- even if we’re indirectly party to
an illegal act. It is precisely because of this that we are constantly
subjected to shoddy services, because we are so used to and getting
comfortable with the idea of being treated like second-class citizens in
our own State.
A movie in town has been doing booming business. Or so says their
`Houseful’ notice board that greets you, irrespective of whether you are
privy to the morning show or night, that even pleas for advance booking
falls on deaf ears. Intrigued by the reviews of the said flick, I forced
out a couple of crisp notes and bought the tickets to a `Houseful’ show
from the black market after giving up on advance booking. The seedy
looking bloke doling out the tickets to double the price, flashed me a
toothy grin when I questioned him as to how he had managed to get a thick
bunch of tickets while the ticket counter remained closed. My kids were in
no mood for a question-answer session, so I let him be. It’s another story
when I stepped in and took my precious seat I had paid half my pocket
money for, to see that the `Houseful’ was in fact, half filled. (And this
I’m told has been happening for the past two weeks). The scene did not
change even when the credits rolled on after a good three hours. I had
been taken for a ride!
Last week I headed for a re-run. And was accosted again by the `Houseful’
board, the same seedy chap and two others going about their roaring
business in the parking lot. I watched, I waited, the serpentine queue
towards the ticket counter faded yet again with another no-show at the
counter, same with advance booking. I fumed. My kids sulked. I
half-heartedly approached a shifty eyed eager-beaver to be told he had no
tickets, only to re-appear again in a different corner, thrice in a row,
getting richer by the minute. I decided I had seen enough and walked out.
My next course of action was purely prompted by the appearance of the
seedy chap who proceeded to tell me that he would sell me tickets to the
next evening’s show. I’m no second time fool. I reached for my cell and
called the cops.
Think of this: Our government is seriously intent on promoting quality of
life. The only quality of life I see improving is their own. The 11-member
delegation on a foreign picnic proves just that. This is a study tour in
how to better your own lives. This is not a study tour to improve ours, if
you look around at what is happening to our capital city. Probably, we’ll
have a few hi-tech bins now, some more steel entrapments as art, natural
water bodies revolutionized with water scooters, more cement poured down
sidewalks to choke our drains, and probably a new dress code for all the
montris,
since the `khaki’ is here to stay.
Ethel da Costa
August 25, 2003
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