An ode to the indefatigable nurse

The entire health system worldwide is perhaps built on the backs of nurses, most of whom are female. Representation pic/iStock

There are many unforeseen advantages to living as remotely as I do. You learn not to take yourself too seriously or get too immersed in the everyday politics of one's work environment. You get better at travelling light because you know that taking a flight involves taking multiple trains till you arrive at the airport and vice versa on the way back. You learn to co-habit with nature and feel attuned to seasonal changes. You begin to glean, instinctively, whether the wind that you feel blowing is coming from the north or the south. Sometimes, when everything with the rest of the world feels like it's going south, you find hope in small gestures, the magnolia buds that rest resiliently all winter at the tips of branches, the burst of yellow that is the ‘Ginster' signalling early spring, the harmonious sound of wind instruments playing Christmas carols and other rituals that you didn't grow up around, necessarily, but have become familiar, part of your eco-system.

But, of course, there are numerous drawbacks to living in the Alps. Even if your friends from back home manage to procure a visa, they prefer to visit the more famous Italian cities. Where I live is too much of a schlep. Most people have never heard of South Tyrol, so there's no lure, nothing to draw them in. It's often impossible to find a lot of basic ingredients as well to maintain your immigrant kitchen. On a recent trip to Napoli, for example, I visited three shops that had drumsticks, karela, saag, bhindi and other delicacies. Here I'm lucky to find a coconut that isn't rotting from the inside by the time it arrives. I've had to adapt in ways I hadn't imagined. My inability to find a good mixer means that my Xacuti recipe has had to be modified. I frequently have to manage without coriander and I'm always running out of ghee.

A few days ago, though, I chanced upon another disadvantage of living so far away - the fact that despite having been released in Italian cinemas, Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light is not showing anywhere close to me. I considered travelling to see it, but my partner helped me understand that in all likelihood, the film would have been dubbed in Italian. I couldn't fathom the idea of hearing a Malayalam-speaking cast speaking Italian instead. I've never been a fan of dubbing in general, though in Europe it is the norm… Many Europeans don't know what George Clooney actually sounds like. They only know the voice-over artist who they associate with him. I would have liked to have seen the film now because I am still healing from my recent ordeal and watching anything that has to do with the world of nursing would have felt comforting. I've also written essays in the past about nurses from Kerala, and how they have frequently been featured in artworks. I also wrote an essay on my own mother, who was a nurse and from whom I learned the basics of caring for another human being and the ethics of empathy. So, this is a subject that is dear to my heart that felt recently reinforced because I was the recipient of so much care by nurses.

While I have this slightly traumatising memory of waking up from what I learned later was three days of being sedated and anaesthetised to the vision of a nurse who seemed robotic in her movements, I still remember feeling in awe of how attentive she was to my every need while I was in the ICU. She was always around, attuned to my every movement. For at least five days, there were nurses - almost always female, except for some exceptions - who were sponge-bathing me, changing my hospital gown, helping me brush my teeth, putting lip balm on my lips to hydrate them, among numerous other chores. On day five, a nurse, Birgitte, decided it was really time to comb my hair. She spent at least 30 minutes un-knotting my tangled tresses. She was determined to be gentle. She formed two braids and put rubber bands at the end and I felt like a schoolgirl. All the nurses worked 12-hour shifts. It was evident that without them, doctors and patients would be helpless. I was so amazed by their level of attentiveness and the love they seemed to invest in every task. I was reminded of the times I was hospitalised in India, too, when the majority of the nurses were from Kerala and were as caring and attentive. The entire health system worldwide is perhaps built on the backs of (mostly female) nurses! I had a long conversation with one of them in the ENT department where I was convalescing after the ICU. She told me how the hardest thing daily was ‘switching off' after work. She said she'd also, long ago, lost consciousness of what constitutes a weekday and a weekend. But she loved her job. I told her how my mother always used to say, ‘Once a nurse, always a nurse'. She couldn't agree more.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx

Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper