I consider myself a jack of all trades and definitely a master of none. I really just go with the flow. Maybe that helped me when I found myself, with no medical training, running a hospital in rural India when the second COVID-19 wave struck my country so harshly.
For a long time, my job was leading tours in India and Nepal. My business partner and I opened a walking tour company called Namaste Delhi right before the pandemic. We were doing many tours, helping tourists ease their cultural shock from entering Delhi.
After the pandemic hit and the tourist industry shut down, I decided to become a teacher, but I didn’t have much luck given the circumstances. For a while, I had a wonderful experience volunteering as a Story Gatherer for Out of Eden Walk-Chicago. But then I was approached about taking a job at a branch of Apex Hospital and Research Center, located in a small city called Hanumangarh, in the state of Rajasthan in northwestern India.
My aunt and uncle are both doctors who own a group of four hospitals, including this new satellite facility. After the second wave of COVID-19 hit hard, this March, they asked if I could manage the satellite hospital. I thought I should contribute to the community in this hour of need and agreed immediately.
I’ve lost four members of my family to COVID and more than 10 friends. I’m close to other people who are still hospitalized. I felt anger and sympathy, and I had a sense that this shouldn’t have happened with such severity. I thought maybe I could help.
I landed at an unfamiliar job, in an unfamiliar field, in an unfamiliar place six hours from my home in New Delhi. New things happen very rapidly, and no two days are alike.
Author Ankur Arora in rural Rajasthan.
Ankur Arora
Hanumangarh is the main center for about a hundred villages. It’s a developed countryside town with small houses, pretty well off by Indian standards. The area is quite populated, but people aren’t out and about because of the lockdown. The very mixed population includes Punjabi people, Rajasthani people, Hindus, Muslims, lots of Sikh people with their beards and turbans. Mixed cultures and very colorful too, as you expect in India.
This is not a multispecialty hospital. We have facilities for urology surgeries, general surgeries, gynecology and obstetrics. This is not a COVID hospital, but the virus has reached the heart of India now—it’s in every village—and if we can relieve pressure on COVID hospitals, then well and good.
During my first couple of days on the job, right away I started solving things while at the same time quickly learning what was happening. We really didn’t know who was COVID-infected and who wasn’t, so I was a bit scared too.
On the second morning, I got a call at 7 a.m. that one of my staff was not coming in because he had symptoms of COVID. I ran down from my room on the top floor to help patients find their way around. I saw people coming in with scarves carelessly and loosely thrown around their mouths. I urgently distributed some masks, but people said no, no, and no to the masks. I said, “Yes, this must be mandatory.”
I realized people were not taking the pandemic seriously because there was no COVID hospital in Hanumangarh. They were not wearing masks, they had not been tested, they were not social distancing—they were not taking any of the known precautions. People needed to be taught these basic things. The staff was being a bit careless too, and doctors weren’t pointing out these precautions to patients.
Author Ankur Arora in rural Rajasthan.
Ankur Arora
Hanumangarh is the main center for about a hundred villages. It’s a developed countryside town with small houses, pretty well off by Indian standards. The area is quite populated, but people aren’t out and about because of the lockdown. The very mixed population includes Punjabi people, Rajasthani people, Hindus, Muslims, lots of Sikh people with their beards and turbans. Mixed cultures and very colorful too, as you expect in India.
This is not a multispecialty hospital. We have facilities for urology surgeries, general surgeries, gynecology and obstetrics. This is not a COVID hospital, but the virus has reached the heart of India now—it’s in every village—and if we can relieve pressure on COVID hospitals, then well and good.
During my first couple of days on the job, right away I started solving things while at the same time quickly learning what was happening. We really didn’t know who was COVID-infected and who wasn’t, so I was a bit scared too.
On the second morning, I got a call at 7 a.m. that one of my staff was not coming in because he had symptoms of COVID. I ran down from my room on the top floor to help patients find their way around. I saw people coming in with scarves carelessly and loosely thrown around their mouths. I urgently distributed some masks, but people said no, no, and no to the masks. I said, “Yes, this must be mandatory.”
I realized people were not taking the pandemic seriously because there was no COVID hospital in Hanumangarh. They were not wearing masks, they had not been tested, they were not social distancing—they were not taking any of the known precautions. People needed to be taught these basic things. The staff was being a bit careless too, and doctors weren’t pointing out these precautions to patients.
People waiting at the hospital.
Ankur Arora
So this is what I did—help people learn to wear masks and social distance. My role was to organize a bit and relieve the doctors of dealing with common-sense problems.
Later that same day, a woman came to the hospital in labor. I asked if she should be tested for COVID and was told we didn’t have any test kits available. I was told not to worry because the main doctor was vaccinated. But the rest of the medical and nursing staff weren’t. It’s OK, though, was the attitude. If people catch COVID, they will catch it because it happens. This really shook me. I tried to explain the larger impact the spread of the virus could have on the hospital and the community.
Then a beautiful life came. It was the first time I had ever seen a newborn. It was a girl, which the parents were not very happy about—you know, rural India farming community. But I celebrated and treated them to chai. As we drank together, I told them I came from a different lifestyle, a different mindset, that it might take me a while to adapt here and that I hoped we could all learn from one another.
Each day is such a roller coaster ride of emotions. Every patient’s cries are the same. Their pain is the same. But each patient is unique. Why do people come to hospitals? For hope. Let us never spoil that. Let’s keep that hope alive.
Things that happened during the first wave of the pandemic shocked us all because it was so unexpected. I lost a few family members during the first wave, and I wondered, how much worse can it be after this? We were already locked down, we couldn’t even give the ritual rights to my aunt who passed away. We tried to keep the elders safe and had the young people go out and get things for their families.
The author checks in on a woman and her sleeping son while her husband is in surgery.
Ankur Arora
I really, really wanted to hug my young cousin when her mother died, and I couldn’t. We were standing six feet apart in PPE kits at the cremation site. We couldn’t even hug. That was very tough.
In February, the country was in an illusion. “Well, we fought, the damage is done, what more can happen? Nothing can happen.” We suffered from half-knowledge, which can be the most dangerous. The government told us we had won the war, and we celebrated. We started sending our vaccines all over the world, only to realize in March what was coming: the second wave. The magnitude and devastation of this wave was so much larger, and this time it hit youngsters too.
It is not just the government that needs to be blamed. It is us too. We aren’t taking enough responsibility and are taking life too casually. We have so many gods and goddesses in this country (more than 330 million in Hinduism alone) that maybe we’re too dependent on those deities for our well-being. People here to ram bharose, a state of mind where they decide things are not in their hands and they must leave matters up to the god Rama.
We spend too little time and effort working on what we humans could do. We become complacent too soon, and that leads to other problems.
The benchmarks people set are too low. Our standards need to be raised. Indians are very hard workers, but in these times of crisis, maybe God should wait while we take more action ourselves.
This is a big country, and abandoned bodies are still being found everywhere. People shouldn’t have to die like that. This is the darkest side of this terrible situation.
Now that cases are dropping, we don’t have to take patients that have not been tested for COVID-19. We don’t want the staff to get infected. Antigen kits are now available, and the vaccinations have picked up slightly.
I managed the hospital for about two-and-a-half months and then took a week’s break. Now I’m back handling the marketing job while also continuing to help in the hospital. I’ve had my first vaccination, as a hospital employee, and am due for the second jab in August. A hope for a better future is what keeps me going. Helping others helps us collectively.
A form of thought or awareness also keeps me going. It is the analogy between life and nature, an awareness that I remind myself of repeatedly.
If you understand the natural cycle, you know that everything eventually goes back to where it comes from, and the cycle repeats. Every drop of water, or life, has a role to play. It doesn’t matter what the source is. Doesn’t matter if the drop is in a lake, a river, or an ocean. It is meant to be a part of the process. A drop of water will also evaporate and add to the clouds, which will pour life again.
All rivers eventually meet the same ocean. Every drop of good matters in the ocean of love and humanity. Every good thing you do serves as that drop, gets evaporated, and comes back. Nothing good is ever wasted. Every drop, every person, every effort counts. We are all so important. Each one of us.
Ankur "Aura" Arora is the manager at Apex Hospital & Research Center, in Hanumangargh, India, and a Story Gatherer for Out of Eden Walk-Chicago.
The author checks in on a woman and her sleeping son while her husband is in surgery.
Ankur Arora
I really, really wanted to hug my young cousin when her mother died, and I couldn’t. We were standing six feet apart in PPE kits at the cremation site. We couldn’t even hug. That was very tough.
In February, the country was in an illusion. “Well, we fought, the damage is done, what more can happen? Nothing can happen.” We suffered from half-knowledge, which can be the most dangerous. The government told us we had won the war, and we celebrated. We started sending our vaccines all over the world, only to realize in March what was coming: the second wave. The magnitude and devastation of this wave was so much larger, and this time it hit youngsters too.
It is not just the government that needs to be blamed. It is us too. We aren’t taking enough responsibility and are taking life too casually. We have so many gods and goddesses in this country (more than 330 million in Hinduism alone) that maybe we’re too dependent on those deities for our well-being. People here to ram bharose, a state of mind where they decide things are not in their hands and they must leave matters up to the god Rama.
We spend too little time and effort working on what we humans could do. We become complacent too soon, and that leads to other problems.
The benchmarks people set are too low. Our standards need to be raised. Indians are very hard workers, but in these times of crisis, maybe God should wait while we take more action ourselves.
This is a big country, and abandoned bodies are still being found everywhere. People shouldn’t have to die like that. This is the darkest side of this terrible situation.
Now that cases are dropping, we don’t have to take patients that have not been tested for COVID-19. We don’t want the staff to get infected. Antigen kits are now available, and the vaccinations have picked up slightly.
I managed the hospital for about two-and-a-half months and then took a week’s break. Now I’m back handling the marketing job while also continuing to help in the hospital. I’ve had my first vaccination, as a hospital employee, and am due for the second jab in August. A hope for a better future is what keeps me going. Helping others helps us collectively.
A form of thought or awareness also keeps me going. It is the analogy between life and nature, an awareness that I remind myself of repeatedly.
If you understand the natural cycle, you know that everything eventually goes back to where it comes from, and the cycle repeats. Every drop of water, or life, has a role to play. It doesn’t matter what the source is. Doesn’t matter if the drop is in a lake, a river, or an ocean. It is meant to be a part of the process. A drop of water will also evaporate and add to the clouds, which will pour life again.
All rivers eventually meet the same ocean. Every drop of good matters in the ocean of love and humanity. Every good thing you do serves as that drop, gets evaporated, and comes back. Nothing good is ever wasted. Every drop, every person, every effort counts. We are all so important. Each one of us.
Ankur "Aura" Arora is the manager at Apex Hospital & Research Center, in Hanumangargh, India, and a Story Gatherer for Out of Eden Walk-Chicago.
