Sainath Hospital

This part of Bopal has changed a lot since I started working at Sainath Hospital on the Bopal Ghuma Road. We are right near Baleshwar Bungalow, which is a good landmark for people who can't find us. The road outside is much busier than it used to be. Every morning I walk in and see the same waiting room. It’s got that specific hospital smell, a mix of cleaning supplies and old paper. I spend my day checking in people who come from the nearby neighborhoods. Some walk, some come in cars. The sun hits the front windows really hard in the summer, making it quite hot near the entrance. We have a small staff and we all know each other's habits. My desk is a bit cluttered with pens that don't always work and stacks of forms. It’s a plain building, nothing too special to look at from the outside. Inside, we just focus on the tasks at hand. I see a lot of worried faces, so I try to just be regular and calm. Sometimes we run out of chairs when it gets really crowded in the afternoon. You can hear the traffic from the road all day long. It becomes a kind of background noise that you don't even notice after a few hours. We just stay busy until it's time to lock up and go home. It’s a steady kind of life here in Bopal.