What's in a language?...Victoria Hospital, Bangalore

Victoria Hospital

No linguistic academy can ever surpass the success that Victoria Hospital, Bangalore boasts of. It merits immense credit for evolving even the dullest medicos into multilingual civilians. Situated strategically in the densest populated, secular part of the city-Kalasipalyam- this healing home effortlessly betters the records of any self-help guide that claims complete mastery over an Indian language in thirty days. Amusingly though, the initiated are blissfully unaware of the linguistic mastery that has been bequeathed on them until they encounter the next medical emergency. (Probably because they are more preoccupied with the academics of surgery, Medicine or O&G than with the nuances of learning a language). And then, in one busy OPD or in a dinghy in-patient room, they are astounded as the colloquial lingua franca rolls out on and out of their flabbergasted tongues, in utmost fluency. Their unbelieving ears notwithstanding, they silently marvel at the ease with which they are able to answer back in the same dialect or language of the sick patient!

            I was first initiated into concurrent language classes in the hallow precincts of the surgical outpatient department in Victoria Hospital. Universally, medical students are taught that medical history taking is an art. But in India, especially in the culture cauldron of Bangalore, it begs to be an obligatory craft too! From the moment we set our eyes on the patient! What probable language suits this face? I’m sorry if I sound regionalistic but it is really what we start off thinking. Imagine a very sick patient in the emergency and you want to elicit some vital history. Strapped for precious minutes, we can ill afford to try out one after another language. We simply have to zero-in on the most possible language this patient can speak and begin conversing and examining simultaneously!

            The knack of zeroing in on the probable language and region from which the patient hailed was then a necessary prerequisite, being as important as the examination and diagnosis of the patient’s ailment! So, as I learnt history taking, I began training as a regional language interpreter too! Learning the methods of examination of a wound and a swelling, I perfected my first language lesson. I could now ask, “What is your name?” in five different languages! (Nimma hesarenu?-Kannada; “Nee pereme?”- Telugu; “Yenna peru?”-Tamil; “ Naam kya hai?”-Hindi and “Paerendha?”-Malayalam.)

            And so it progressed. With lessons on examination of the abdomen, my penta-lingual vocabulary added word meanings of pain abdomen , loose-motions, hard stools, vomitus and urine along with their frequency, colour, consistency or any other relevant sensory observations. However, I must admit I had difficulty with adjectives. I circumvented this by stringing in a few words in place of one-words! Example: If I did not know the correct word for colicky pain, I would either mime-opening and closing my fist rhythmically till the patient understood or said-‘Pain goes-comes, goes-comes!’...

In the Medicine wards, bedside clinics on asthma imparted regional equivalents of sputum, cough, chest pain and wheezing, while alongside examination of thyroid I learnt words for spit, swallow, bend, raise, blink-wink, sleep and so on. Most naturally, I also learnt many more words that no self-help book publisher would ever dream of putting in print-eg. defecating, micturating and other physiological processes of the human body.

By the end of the month, my knowledge of the southern languages-the dialects, accents and colloquial words stunned my non-medical friends and earned the admonitions of my elders (for the apparently un-lady like words and accents I had imbibed!). Also, my verbose tongue had probably instilled a fear in them that I would turn traitor to my mother tongue or worse still, be a case of delayed manifestation of identity crisis! But for me, it was a survival policy. How else does one establish any kind of contact with a patient in pain without being able to ask him basic questions? How do you counsel a young couple about contraception without being able to tell them how to- and what to- in the language they understand? What dietary advice for the infant do you give a mother who cannot understand your tongue? The surest path to a patient’s satisfaction and eventually in future practice, to their purse, is certainly, through words and language-his/her language-dialects, accents, profanities and all!

However cumulative, my medical vocabulary left me in a strange predicament. As easily as I could converse in their tongues within the confines of the wards and medical symptoms, I was an utter failure when it came to making even ordinary, cursory conversations outside the hospital. I did not know common place words like ‘Hello’ or ‘Thank you’ or ‘Sorry’ or ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ in their tongue! Learning the ‘ordinary’ vocabulary was not really a necessity for any medical student and the tight academic schedules precluded any attempts at it.

 I thought I was ripe enough to bring out a book-“Words that Learn-a-language-by-yourself would never print”! Thus selectively learned in linguistics, I was unsure if it merited brickbats or bouquets for me in future....

Coming up next: What’s in a language?...Labour ward!