A unique travel experience

Traveling by Bike, Car, train, Bus, Flight is something that most of us do very often. But Ambulance ??

என்னடா, போயும் போயும் Ambulance'அ பத்தி எழுதறானேன்னு  உங்க mind voice கேட்டுது. ( direct translation: what ya, going going, he is writing about Ambulance - your mind voice I heard).. but for me, it was a unique experience.



This is not our Ambulance; but just that nowadays people are not reading blog if there is no picture in it. :-)



Recently, my father was hospitalised at Vee Care Hospital, Koyambedu, Chennai. He was diagnosed with Sepsis and was in quite a critical stage. I’m very glad that he won the battle against the deadly disease and came back home. Thanks to the doctors who treated him at the ICU for a week and gave him a second life after all the early tension.

As he had close to 10 rods from his thigh to calf, the only way he could be taken home, was through an Ambulance. Several times in the past, my dad was taken in the ambulance to the clinics for dressing the wounds, but I wasn’t there with him, making this my first such experience.

My memories of first seeing an Ambulance dates back to the late 1980’s when I did not even know which vehicle it was, and why it had to make such a huge noise. After knowing about its purpose, I use to tell my dad that the hospital people didn’t even know how to paste the sticker, as the word “ambulance” appeared in a reversed way. ..!

I never had the opportunity to read “ambulance” on my “bicycle” rear mirror, as I hardly used main roads those days. Even while driving a “two-wheeler”, I did not get the opportunity, as by the time I hear that sound, I only look for a way to get to either side of the road.  I also observed that some of my fellow bikers adopted a trick where they pretend like giving way to the Ambulance and nicely jump the signal following the ambulance. Street Smart..!! (but they fail to understand one thing – behind every bush / tree on Bangalore roads, there is a traffic cop hiding to catch you - fact, fact, fact, fact).

 For the first time, early this year, I read the word on my rear mirror while driving a car in South Africa and felt relieved that something I learnt in childhood came to use.!!

There was yet another occasion where I would have boarded an Ambulance, for my wife, when she had some complications during her pregnancy. The Ambulance service guy politely told me that it will take a minimum of 1 ½ hours to get one for us. You can relate this to the comedy from the movie “3 idiots / Nanban” where they say that Pizza comes in 30 minutes but not ambulance”.!

But this time when I saw the Ambulance in Vee Care hospital, the first thing that came to my mind was the famous dialogue by comedy actor Vivek in the movie “Shivaji: The boss”, where Shriya Saran serves red chillies to Rajnikanth, and Vivek says “aaha, this is kumbibaagam.. shivaji, please call an ambulance now only.. oh my god, our people will not give way to ambulance in this traffic…”.

I really wondered how this driver is going to drive that vehicle.  We chose to leave the hospital by around 3 pm so that we don’t mess up the traffic a lot.

Koyambedu – Ambattur was some distance, that takes one hour for a bus journey and easily 30 minutes and above for a biker. This guy reached our home in about 20 minutes, which I thought was a great drive, as he had to slow down at several places due to poor roads.

It was important that I maintained a serious face expression, as all the by-passers in the road were trying to peak into the ambulance to see what was happening inside. My father was on a stretcher locked on the floor of the ambulance & wasn’t visible to most people. If they had seen me with a smiling face browsing my iphone, we wouldn’t have got the co-operation that we managed to get. !

It is also an interesting thing to observe the people on the road, and see how they behave when they know that an Ambulance is behind them.

There were still some lazy cartoon characters on the road, who do racing along with the Ambulance.  And some people are busy overtaking other vehicles when an Ambulance is behind them. The task of overtaking heavy vehicles was cut out because of the metro work going on in Chennai. With 60% of the roads consumed for metro work, only 30% was available after discounting the street vendors.

While going back to the hospital after a couple of days, for dressing the wounds, the driver took the one-way road (near Anna Nagar – Thirumangalam junction) which saved us a good 20 minutes.

It was a bigger version of the ambulance (not the Maruti Omni converted Ambulance), so there was space for 3 people to be seated inside, along with seatbelts. Air condition, first aid boxes, a wash basin, an IV stand, and several other compartments with some medical names labelled - செத்தாலும் புரியாது (direct translation - dead also no understand.!).

Overall, it was different kind of experience, where we are seated inside a vehicle, and the entire city move to either sides of the road and give us way to proceed. (I felt tempted to ask the driver to come on a sunday to vist T.Nagar Rangathan street. !! நோட் பண்ணாதே , நோட் பண்ணாதே ) The only other similar situation will be when you are some minister or police commissioner. But in most of the former cases, people will not be in a relaxed state to observe all those moments.

I really hope that neither you nor your loved ones will get a need to travel in an Ambulance. But if you get a chance to assist or accompany someone (hopefully not critical) in an ambulance, then do help them and experience it. (சாரி பாஸ், இத வேற எப்பிடி எழுதறதுன்னு தெர்ல)

“கருத்து கந்தசாமி” Corner also called as “Message corner”:

Our house in Vivekananda Nagar , Ambattur was big enough, but the roads weren’t. Most of the houses on the way did not have parking space, which meant that plenty of cars and bikes had to be parked on the roadside, making it tough for the Ambulance to reach our home. We had to honk for the public to come out and remove their vehicles and give way. What if those houses  were locked ?

You might be living in a 60*50 Villa, but you cannot expect the Ambulance to pick up the patient from the bus stop. Whether you are in a rented house or own house, make sure you have at least one good wide road from your door to the nearby main road, such that an Ambulance or a Fire brigade can reach you on time.