satire : The Stunt of Stent

 

These days, it seems the human heart is under serious stress — and not just medically. A big share of the blame, I suspect, goes to our movies. Every film is a festival of heartache — dil lagana, dil todna, dil ke armaan…If some aliens were to watch our cinema, they’d assume India is one giant emotional spa where everyone spends their day falling in love and singing-dancing about it. No wonder the poor heart is overworked!

 

So naturally, when your chest feels tight, you start sweating after a flight of stairs, or you breathe like a tired buffalo, you head to the doctor — who, by the way, has been waiting for your heart to arrive. His heart nearly skips a beat when he sees you: a potential case of “stent-worthy chest pain. The ritual begins. The doctor, with the seriousness of a monk and the tone of a banker, informs you that your arteries are 85%, 90%, and 45% blocked. That one surviving 45% is apparently the only thing keeping you from meeting your ancestors up there.

You timidly ask, “What should I do, doctor?”

And with calm philosophical detachment he replies, “If it keeps running, it could last months. If not... well, you might not last till evening.” Then, with surgical precision, he terrifies you just enough to ensure you’ll be back — tomorrow, preferably with a credit card.

 

The schedule is simple: one day for tests, one for the surgery, thereafter 48 hours for ‘observation’ in ICCU.  By the third day, he assures you, you can return to your office. You sheepishly admit you don’t have an office job; he smiles benevolently:

“No problem. Visit a bank. Update your Get your passbook updated. Stay active”.

These days, every second hospital is a “Heart Institute.” Every doctor is a “Cardio-something.” Some even have better PR than movie stars. They whisper-spread myths about themselves:

“Doctor Saab’s hands are magical!”

“People wait six months just for an appointment!”

“Queue of his patients is longer than the visa queue for America!” Consider yourself lucky if your turn comes.    Then begins the poetic recitation of medical jargon — angiography, angioplasty, ballooning, mitral valve repair. Each word costs a few thousand/lakh more than the previous one. The humble “stent,” of the size and price of a paperclip, suddenly demands five-star billing because it’s being inserted by a man who speaks to you in jargons and that too in English with European accent.

 

 I know a man — proud carrier of four stents. He tells about them in conversation like some kind of military medals won in a battle. He tells people, “Yes, four stents, of Titanium, imported, Limited edition.” His chest, he believes, is now a medical marvel, part-human, part-hardware. The irony? The stent costs less than the air-conditioning in the operation theatre.

The real expense is for the doctor’s smile, the hospital’s marble flooring and chandelier of course the Latin terms on the discharge summary included.

 

The truth is, our hearts are not failing from cholesterol alone — they’re collapsing under the weight of commercialization. Doctors have become investment consultants for our arteries, and hospitals, five-star resorts.  These are the times of The Stunt of Stent — where fear is the best salesman, and your heart, the most profitable moving real estate in town.