Real life drama

IF you caught the promo for "Hospital" on BBC World, you might think it was a desi version of "Chicago Hope". But, actually, all that hyped-up drama it suggests is missing from the first truly Indian attempt at reality TV. Based on a concept originally pioneered by the BBC in Britain, this new programme on BBC World's 10 p.m. India band is a local product, with parameters set by Indian conditions. And if the first episode is anything to go by, it is actually under-hyped. No dramatic use of music or other devices to heighten the tempo of events. Instead, even when there is the urgency of a dying man being brought in, the action moves at the even pace of a government hospital.

The first episode had moments when you felt you were watching a documentary on the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Plain shots of the buildings, statistics being trotted out on personnel patients, etc. When it was over, though, you remembered more than anything else the incredibly moving wizened face of a prematurely born infant whose mother had died in childbirth. "Hospital" may not be everybody's cup of tea, but if the pace picks up and the emotions remain underplayed but effective, it could become a compelling series to watch. And certainly the only show on the 10 p.m. BBC band that enters the world of ordinary people. Unlike "IT: India Tomorrow", "Mastermind", "India Business Report", Karan Thapar's "Face to Face" and "Question Time India", all of which revolve around the worlds that India's ruling classes inhabit.

Why did the producers, Niret and Nikhil Alva, pick the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for their series on life inside a big hospital? And how did the Institute agree, particularly when it does not get to clear each episode? As government hospitals go, AIIMS offers both the crowds of a large general hospital as well as the speciality angle, the research and teaching aspects that could offer the gamut of a medical institution's experience. The folks at the Institute were intrigued by the proposal: it took them, according to the producers, two and half weeks to make up their minds. Without permissions from higher up, apparently, which is a bit difficult to believe. After all, this is a country which treats roads and bridges as security installations which may not be photographed.

If you watched the show you would be tempted to think that the first thing AIIMS did, upon agreeing to the shooting, is give its wards a face lift, and rush out and buy clean white sheets. Or the soft-looking yellow ones in the nursery. It certainly does not look like any government hospital in our country. But the producers swear that this is not the case. They say that they shoot at different locations in this huge hospital, and the sheer pressure of numbers makes it impossible to present a cosmetic front. It would be difficult to do or maintain such a wide scale sprucing up. It is just that a camera focussing on a patient or a doctor, tends to move grubbier aspects out of focus. The naked eye would see more, says Niret Alva.

How do you spin stories out of candid camera? The first episode had two parallel stories developing: one of a man brought from a village three hours away, with his head bashed in by attackers. Will he survive? And in what shape? The second story is of the motherless infant, being cared for in the hospital nursery by a nurse from Kerala. The father takes 15 days to materialise, and then disappears. Comments the nurse: "it would have been different if the baby was a boy. When the baby is fit enough to live outside an incubator, will she have a home to go back to?" The family got to hear that the baby's story was being filmed. And nobody will know for sure whether that is why the father shows up at the very end and says he has come to take her home where his sister-in-law will bring her up.

How do you track real cases? There are three camera teams constantly filming , and even when no filming is being done, cases are followed through, often on the telephone. In the case of the premature baby, the camera continued to track her progress even after she left the hospital.

There are privacy issues which arise in a series such as this. The bottom line being followed at the AIIMS is that either patients themselves or their families or those accompanying them have to agree to the filming.

Sometimes the doctors themselves step in to object, as was the case with the psychiatric ward where doctors in charge ruled that patients were not sufficiently competent to judge what was in their best interest.

There are moments in this series when you wonder whether the doctor should be spending time explaining to an off-camera reporter, rather than focussing on a badly injured patient. But, apparently, that is the pace at which things move. Doctors do not demonstrate frantic urgency all the time. Sometimes it is the reporter they stop to explain to, sometimes an intern following them, and there are times when they confer unhurriedly with fellow doctors.

My gut feeling is that "Hospital" could become addictive. Well produced real life drama, which sometimes tugs at the heart strings, is difficult to resist. A blind child in search of an eye? A pair of brothers who just happen to land up by separate routes at the same casualty ward? Which script writer could beat that ? And surely even the most cynical Indian would be softened by the positive spin this series puts on the country's premier public sector medical institution. They are telling you that much of the time, the system delivers.

And that the doctors and nurses here are humane, never mind the horrific memories Delhiites have of the times they have been on strike.

SEVANTI NINAN

E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com

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