The poor, the rich: In a sick India, all are on their own

Outside the hospital entrance, Prateek found dozens of people begging staff to admit sick family members. Some were openly offering bribes to cut the line, others slumped on the floor breathing from oxygen bottles. Worried families were waiting under a nearby canopy for news - any news - about loved ones inside. Some hadn’t seen their relatives in weeks. “You know nothing,” one person told him. The army doctors running the facility, who were refusing the bribes, were working frantically. They had little time for patient comfort, let alone worried relatives. Prateek was stunned at the scene: “My body trembled.” Beneath the canopy, he met a sobbing young man whose father had died and been taken away for cremation. But in the chaos, ID numbers attached to some corpses had been mixed up, and the wrong body was carted off for cremation. His father’s body was now lost inside the complex, where death had become mundane.