Midnight in Agra

Since Varanasi, my health issues got worse and worse. As the days passed by, I tried to get as much rest as possible, but being part of a group tour, constantly travelling from one city to another, it just seemed I could not pull myself back together.

It all happened in Varanasi traffic. When it comes to health, I was pretty much prepared for anything when I came to India. But the one and only thing I was not prepared for was the pollution in the cities. Pollution of such great extent that you can only imagine seeing it through your own eyes, stuck in traffic, breathing in this brownish, poisonous haze surrounding you, fading into the distance, everywhere you look. Dust is a natural problem that comes with too much air pollution, and it is seriously everywhere! People here don´t seem to be able to get rid of it. It covers the streets, the houses, the clothes, the shoes, the hair, the skin, the floors, no matter how many times women in saris try to clean it off with their little besoms… it won´t even last a minute until that very space will be contaminated and covered in this brown greyish powder of toxic from anew.

It was the day when we decided to go see Sarnath, the place where Buddhism was born as Buddha taught his first sermon to his five students underneath the famous Bodhi Tree. To get to Sarnath, it required a Tuk Tuk ride of approximately 45 minutes, due to bad traffic, it took us more than an hour. One hour breathing in poisoning gas which I, coming from the swiss mountains and having the freshest air always availeable to any point of day (I know this sounds cliché but it´s true!), simply didn´t seem to process properly. It took us another one hour ride back to the hotel after our little field trip was over, when I finally started to copy people on the streets and covered my mouth and nose with my scarf because I was starting to feel ill. Still, I sensed that it wasn´t helping much. It felt as if the air I was breathing left big and heavy stones upon my lungs. I have no idea how Indian´s can even survive this! I took some rest afterwards, then getting ready for dinner since there was a very nice restaurant with drinks waiting for us tonight, and we were all pretty thrilled about it. But, here comes the deal: another Tuk Tuk ride through high season traffic, another forty minutes exposed to the worst air I have ever inhaled my whole entire life, I was done. When we arrived at the restaurant, I was showing symptoms of a carbon monoxide poisoning: I was sweating, my heart was racing and I wasn´t able to breathe. My whole body was shaking, and I felt so dizzy and sick to my stomach that I was afraid I´d vomit right there all over the floor. And of course, a massive headache started to develop from the back of my skull. Our guide immediatly booked me an Uber that would saflely and behind closed doors bring me back to the hotel, where I could lie down and get better. And I tried, for two days. But my breathing got worse, I battled thrusts of fever, and on the third night, now in Agra, I suddendly got the feeling I couldn´t draw enough breath anymore to inhale deeply. I panicked, worried that I would suffocate in my sleep, and not make it to the next morning. Frightend, I called the reception from my room, and they called our leader who came to pick me up and bring me to a nearby hospital, since doctors were all unavaileable, due to closing hours.

Another Tuk Tuk ride that fortunately didn´t take very long, until we reached a shady looking building with a red cross in front. We were greeted by a man with a machine gun. I was just slightly intimidated. He accompanied us through the front door into the main entrance hall. There were people sleeping and lying all over the floor with blankets, mostly women. I counted 13, but you couldn´t entirely make out how many people were laying underneath the crumbled blankets. And I didn´t mean to stare. I was shocked. And wondered, if these were all homeless people trying to get a more or less safe spot to spend the night. On further thought, I suddenly worried that this was the queue. But the armed guard took over and marched right infront of us, stepping over penned up bodies, to another door at the end of this small waiting room. I felt very uneasy as I realized that the guard was taking me directly to the doctor. What about these other people waiting? Was I getting first in line because I was foreign, because I was white and assumed to have a lot of money? My mind started to whirl with all these concernes and my breathing got even heavier. I looked back and stopped, this was going against my believes, and I was not going to advance on these poor people while I was still able to walk by myself! But my guide pushed me forward, gently, but firm. I hesitated, and the guard gave me a short, irritated but impatient look. «Are these people all waiting for the doctor to have a look at them ? », I wispered towards my guide, voice full of guilt. «No Laura, these are all hospital patients…», she explained. «Ah…», I understood. What kind of hospital let´s their patients sleep on the floor? Well, I guess, you can´t compare this shady looking hospital to a real western hospital like we have it in Europe. It was small, and looked very inofficial. Probably something private a doctor opened up to make good money out of it. I shrugged and went on. We had to take our shoes off and stepped into another small room with about 8 hospital beds, of which were only two occupied and the rest of them left empty. I do not understand, why not at least five more could be used for the people resting in the other room. Five nurses were hurrying around, and the doctor was sitting at a wooden old desk, scribbling. They gestured for me to sit down next to him, and my guide explained to him in Hindi what happened. He then wanted to hear my symptoms in english from me, although I was not sure how much he truly understood of what I was trying to tell him, while a nurse was measuring my blood pressure and pulse. Then she also stuck a clinical thermometer under my armpit to get my temperature, followed by a quick exchange of words with the doctor. He quickly got out his stethoscope and had a listen through my clothes. Then he wrote something down, handed it to the guard and that was it. But before I let them kick me out, I looked at him and expressed my concerns of having a lung infection. He denied, although he hadn´t even examined me properly. But what else was there left for me to do other then to trust on his diagnose? Chest infection, he said. The guard escorted us back into the entry room, where there was noise going on now. They had turned on a tiny TV on the wall, and the movie was showing some Indian woman dressed as a military officer beating up men who were not taking her seriously. Probably some empowering women´s movie which nobody was watching at this late hour. The guard led us to an counter with two men behind thick bars. They were handling all the medicine. The guard gave them the recipe, and while they were gathering it all up, opening different boxes and files, I was sent to the counter next to it to pay the fee for the doctor´s examination. When I saw the bill, I was yet surprised at the high amount: although it wasn´t much compared to switzerland, it seemed like a lot to me for indian standards. And it hasn´t even been 5 minutes! O well, and with grinding teeth (zähneknirschend), I handed over the money. Thank God I´ve brought enough! Switching back to my two legal drug dealers, I had to pay them for my medicine too. Another swallow, praying, that this would really work and help me get better! «I will kill these people if this won´t make me feel better!», I whiz and my Guide nods approvingly. «Me too!», she agrees. I had gotten so many pills, they had to write down when to take how many of which kind per day. I am the kind of person that disposes a big aversion against medicine and swallowing pills in general. I´m much rather a big fan of the concept of nature healing methods and the idea, that each body is able to heal itself when it is given the chance. So taking all of these pills really went against my conviction, but what choice did I really have? I was in a foreign country and travelling, and I simply HAD to function properly for now. I couldn´t just stay behind lying in bed and letting my body work it all out by himself. Well, technically I could have, but I didn´t want to. Not in India, where I had to stay in a hotelroom all day instead of being home in my own bed, and not when I had already payed for a tour and the program was on a tight schedule. No, not this time. So, I had to swallow the pill. In both ways.

The medicine was planned to last three days. After I had taken the first portion of it, I wanted to figure out what they had prescripted me. So I asked the nurse on our group. She told me, that they had actually given me antibiotics. I was shocked. Had I known, I would have refused. I am very bad on antibiotics, and they had only set me on a three days dose rate! Wasn´t that even worse, weren´t you supposed to take antibiotics longer, to prevent the bacteria to become resistent? Well, there was no turning back now, and I finished the pack within the next three days. I got worse and felt like shit, I lost about 3 Kilos of weight and had to start tying my pants behind my back instead of the front, because they had gotten so loose on me. I was shaking permanently and feeling weak to the extent that all I felt like doing was sleeping all day long. Of course I couldn´t do that. On the second day after I had finished my treatment, I finally but slowly started to feel better. What a relief! It still took me almost another week to fully recover, until the end of our trip, but I finally did. And what is left to me now is another good story to tell about a tiny glimpse at the indian health system and the strange presence of an heavily armed security guard at a small public hospital. And in the end, I still got to see what I came here for: The most photographed object in India, the Taj Mahal!