“I’m 81 years old and am the youngest in the whole building,” affirms my hard-of-hearing second floor neighbor in Rustom Baug as she plods on her fluorescent green walker after having nursed a cracked hip for a month in bed. The maid insists that she sit down and talk but she is hell bent on getting me jam tarts she baked this morning– her first act of independence after being bed-ridden for so long. While ensuring I’m well-taken care off she anxiously removes her X-rays from a neatly arranged encyclopedia of her medical records and tells me lovingly whilst catching her breath ‘Aai muaa doctor ay mane addhar suvari nakhi. Is there anything wrong with me?’she asks almost rhetorically in the Queens English, having fully convinced me that you simply cannot make an asymptomatic patient better. She then plugs a dusty stethoscope into my big ears and instructs me to examine her chest. ‘Big breaths’ I yell while innocently doing my duty and exasperatingly she replies, “They once were!”
