Farrukh Dhondy | Britain’s NHS, the nation’s pride, may be broken, but it’s kind and caring…

To watch the ruined orphans

Collecting consolation prizes

And observing the world’s spectacle

We slunk away in shame

Shunning shades of contrition

That didn’t even have a name!”

From Sir Ji Kul Blues, by Bachchoo

The British National Health Service is now broken. The institution which gives treatment free for all illnesses has been the pride of the nation, but has suffered in the last 14 years of Tory rule from under-financing, bad management, crony contracts to Tory donors, friends and businessmen during the Covid-19 pandemic… etc.

Its doctors, nurses and service staff are not to blame. This from experience.

Gentle reader, I am writing this sitting in a waiting room in a London hospital. Through an unknown cause -- perhaps the undetected bite of a poisonous spider, I developed an infection under the skin of my lower back. Through the last ten days I have spent five, then ten and today, already, seven hours in the “Accident and Emergency” department of the hospital. The origin of the word “patient” is now clear: They also serve who hang about and wait for medical attention. The days recede…

Once you are seen, the staff are immaculately kind and caring and so here I am waiting for a bed to come vacant in an appropriate ward -- perhaps till past midnight -- as the surgeon who lanced the subcutaneous infection wants to monitor it for the next few days and chase it with intravenous antibiotics. I include these details, not through any self-pitying indulgence, being the least sick of my fellow travellers, but to tell you that the NHS cares and is careful.

And to say that it did occur to me what this same procedure would have cost me if I “went private” and paid for the diagnosis and treatment. Both would have been by appointment, so no hanging around in crowded desperation. Estimate: £2,500! (over Rs 250,000). I can’t be sure but it is highly likely that Hedgie Sunak and family and other Tory ministers and cronies use private medicine or they are given very special, smooth treatment by the NHS. And the other 67 million of us in the population, Hedgiewalla?

It’s not first time I have put myself in the hands of the NHS and had several adventures.

After my first year in Cambridge in the mid-1960s I came down to London to start an overland journey by bus and hitch-hike to India. I slept on floor of Adil Jussawalla’s tiny bed-sitter while I and my trip-mate gathered visas for the intervening countries.

I woke up one day with a swollen neck. Mumps! I had to go into isolation in the West Brompton hospital. Friends lent me a radio and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. A middle-aged Spanish lady would, twice a day, push a tea trolley thorough the wards saying “Cup-o-tea, cup-o-tea...” as she went.

We got talking and in a mischievous moment I said to her “don’t say ‘Capote’, say ‘Truman’.”

The poor woman did -- until the head nurse stormed into my cubicle saying: “How dare you… blah blah”. Very angry, very abusive and, of course (curse?), perfectly justified. I said I was contrite and the next afternoon I showed the Spanish tea-lady the cover of In Cold Blood, and to my apologetic relief she thought it was funny.

Not so funny then the next such encounter when I was in bed in a hospital after a car accident with brain concussion, etc. (We suspected as much --Ed… Eh, don’t be so cruel yaar --fd).

Opposite me in the ward was a young Pakistani lady and in the course of the day we conversed. She ran a cigarette, newspaper and confectionery shop with her husband. Late the first night, a consultant and his team came round and began to question her. She had no idea what he meant when he asked if the symptoms had persisted and had resulted in trauma. After a lot of “No knowing this, please... sorry…”, I intervened and began to translate question and answer to and from Urdu, much to the immediate appreciation of the surgeon and his team. But -- Ooof! Up came the head matron, shouting hysterically, from the end of the ward.

“What the hell do think you’re doing?”

In all innocence, I said “translating”. She shouted at me. Only professional, vetted translators could do that! If they allowed the likes of me… The consultant surgeon smiled and moved on.

And so, the last episode: sitting in the patients’ recreation room of a hospital, there was a Nepalese family -- husband, wife and wife’s father in the room. I spoke to them. A young lady with a writing pad came in. She spoke to the Gurkha family before approaching me to ask if I was British. I said I had a UK passport. She nodded and noted it down. Then she said: “I hate my job! That old gentleman needs treatment but he isn’t British.

“Yes, he told me he was visiting his daughter.”

“So, he has to pay for lodging and treatment by the NHS!”

“He fought in the Falklands -- hasn’t he already paid?”

“That’s why I hate my job”, she said.

“Can’t you lie?”

She smiled, gave me a severe look, and said: “Mr Dhondy, maybe you should do this job!”