My view of travel from an Indian hospital
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
room 2223 Apollo Hospital
My view of travel from an Indian hospital
It's strange to be making a blog entry when I'm not really being a traveller. I will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow morning. But I will still be constrained to stay in Madurai for another five days, as I will be coming to the hospital twice a day to finish my antibiotic treatment.
I have seen so much the past nine months travelling in India. Being confined as a non-tourist for a week has made me think about the past. I discovered my limitations to convey my experiences on this website. After a while I fell into a pattern where I got stuff on the site I wanted people to see. Of course, there is so much more I could add, but there is only so much I can do.
Now that I'm feeling better but now am waiting to be discharged, and then waiting for the course of antibiotics to finish, my time is really a test of how to live when my one thing to do is to wait. In the hospital, the course of my day has been to get up and wash, eat breakfast, receive my pills and IV injections, wait for the doctors to make their rounds, eat lunch, eat dinner, receive the next round of pills and injections, and go to bed. In the meantime I have been filling my time by reading, sleeping, watching tv, and working on the computer. I also have been on the phone each evening back to the U.S.
Right now while working on the computer, I've got the television on CNN. I am watching the opening of the U.S. Congressional hearings of Robert Gates for confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Time in the hospital has meant catching up on U.S. and world news, at least as it's presented to Asia. There is a filter that limits the number of stories and they tend to be repeated. But I get an idea of what's going on. I also get a window on the bizarre news about India.
I have been in India so long that I see right through all of the sights that seemed unusual and striking when I arrived here. I walk down the streets and ignore auto-rickshaw drivers, storekeepers, street vendors, and crippled people all vying for my attention. I don't even think about it. I would have a hard time now listing the most obvious contrasts between life in India and life in the U.S. That's because I have been here for nine months. At one hour, one day, one month, and six months, I noticed different things. At nine months perhaps I notice some of the more subtle differences in culture.
Perhaps travel changes a person. But travel changes a person less the older he or she is. I have been to university, I have been to graduate school. My ideas are more set than a person who is twenty-one years old. I have formed my opinions about politics, religion, and spirituality. I have wrestled with office politics in the corporate world and learned from interpersonal relationships in the rest of my life. Travel is more of a backdrop against which to test my ideas than a crucible in which my person is formed.
My view of travel from an Indian hospital
