Sharmishta Mukherjee was in the ICU a couple of months ago on account of anxiety. The cause was not anything to do with her own affairs. The doctors told her sternly to stay away from social work during the Pujas as she needed some peace. Mukherjee, a resident of DB Block, is assistant secretary of the NGO, Amnesty India Foundation, and works mainly for women’s empowerment.
People, like Mukherjee, who help others in distress in their professional lives, have to deal with an emotional burden, which, despite being at one remove, can affect them mentally and, sometimes, even physically.
Mukherjee’s cases are often so intense that she herself needs medication to stay calm. “Once, a woman called me howling, saying her in-laws were trying to hurt her. They snatched her phone away mid-conversation and poured boiling water on her. The woman died within 10 minutes, and they sent me pictures of her scalded body. Can anyone get sleep after seeing such images? Can anyone get sleep knowing the woman could not be saved?” Mukherjee asks.
During the pandemic, two girls were kidnapped from Duttabad and trafficked to Jaipur. “We managed to bring them back, and even had clues to the kingpin of the racket. But the case was so dangerous that my mother, scared for my safety, made me swear not to take up trafficking cases again,” Mukherjee says.
Another lady Mukherjee was working with died under mysterious circumstances, but the body was hurriedly cremated before an autopsy could be done. “I can still hear her voice in my head, as if seeking justice,” Mukherjee says. “There is so much to do in this field. Lorte gele maar khete hobe, and I’m prepared for that. But I need to be fit for it myself.”
In line of fire
Another arduous and often thankless service is rendered by firemen. In the line of fire, literally and sometimes figuratively, of irate mobs, they often get trapped in life-threatening situations. Such is the profession that a single call may turn a normal day into a brush with death.
Sanjib Chakraborty, station officer at the local fire station, recalls one such day. “It was my day off but when a call came about a fire in a Madhyamgram factory, since I stay close by in Dum Dum, I was asked to get onto the fire tender, in which my uniform, gumboot and helmet were sent from office. On reaching, my seniors warned about there being too much smoke at a spot but while firefighting I realised that the fire could not be controlled unless that part was arrested. So I tied a handkerchief around my mouth and went in crawling. But at one stage, I realised I needed to back out as the smoke was too toxic. I was under the impression that other colleagues were behind me but in that darkness I hadn’t realised that they had retreated earlier. So it was with difficulty that I locked the hosepipe to a point and made my way out to a spot where help was at hand. I had inhaled so much carbon monoxide that I was suffering from oxygen deficiency. At such times, drinking any dark cola is useful as we try to cough out the soot. The sputum was jet black. My colleagues wanted to hospitalise me but I refused. It was a shock for my family to see me being carried in with a blackened face and uniform.”
The smallest mistake by a team member can turn out to be risky in high-pressure situations. “The hose pipe that we operate sprays water with such force that the water pressure has to be turned up slowly. Otherwise, it can jerk off full-grown men and lash wildly with enough force to break the skull if someone’s head is in the way, such is the power of the metal nozzle. Once a palm tree was hit by a fire cracker and had caught fire in a congested alley in Rajarhat. I found a three-storeyed house whose roof would allow us a shot at the treetop. Though an elderly colleague down inside the fire tender was jacking up the pressure, the water was still not reaching us. I realized he had forgotten to switch gear from the road to the pump setting in the power take-off box to allow the engine to pump out water. But when he was asked to make the switch, he erred in doing so without reducing the pressure. The two boys who were holding the hose on the roof were thrown off balance at the impact, seeing which I dived over their prostrate bodies and pinned the hosepipe to the ground. The high water pressure could also have been fatal had I not spotted in advance a high tension wire running not far from the tree. We had to steer clear of it while targeting the hose to avoid electrocution.”
A policeman and a civic volunteer enact an imagined situation of the police taking care of a pedestrian after an accident at a workshop by Monoshij for police personnel . Picture by Sudeshna Banerjee
Deaths of colleagues in the line of duty — as had occurred in a blaze in the Eastern Railway headquarters in 2021 — also dampen the morale of the force, he admitted.
Bedside duty
A nurse who works at a hospital near Ultadanga says that death and disease are part and parcel of their lives, but even then they get affected if, say, small children succumb. “Our job is literally a matter of life and death, and at times, we are overcome by regret that maybe a patient could have survived if we had noticed something sooner. But then we force ourselves to overcome it all and return to our work the next day,” she says.
The stress builds up when dealing with patients and their impatient families. “They have no idea how much we slog. We do rounds with doctors for four to five hours, after which the doctor leaves, but our work only begins,” says the nurse with nearly 20 years of experience. “We give 1,200 tablets and 350 injections a day, carefully keeping records of it all. During the pandemic, we had to wear suffocating PPEs for 12 hours at a stretch without eating, drinking, or taking a washroom break. Despite such back-breaking work when patients abuse us and accuse us of being lazy, it makes my blood boil!”
Her hospital had once organised stress management sessions but she found it laughable. “They asked us to shut our eyes and imagine a happy, peaceful world, but when I shut my eyes, I could only see the mountain of work that I should have been finishing instead. The sessions were useless. If they really wanted to help us, they’d hire more nurses and reduce our workload,” she says.
Another nurse, who lives near Mahisbathan, has insomnia and is dependent on sleeping pills. “I’m working for 24 years in this field and have to do 12-hour-long night shifts every now and then.
“Every time I have night duty, I am unable to sleep for two days afterwards. My meal timings get irregular, and I get indigestion all the time. Worst of all, I find myself going home and needlessly yelling at my kids and husband when it’s really work stress I’m trying to vent out,” she says. “I’m so frustrated I often think of quitting.”
The root of her problem is overwork. “We sometimes have nurse-to-patient ratios of 1:80, although my friends at some government hospitals have even had to single-handedly manage 150 to 200 patients at times. We are entitled to leave but can hardly claim any due to staff shortage. My little son doesn’t understand why his mother can’t join him for his birthday party, and this creates tension with my in-laws too,” she says.
Agony of attachment
Debjyoti Chakraborty works for Tribeca Care. This is a professional agency where he and his colleagues provide all kinds of help to senior citizens. “We escort them to banks, hospitals, or simply chat with them over a cup of tea,” says the Purbachal Cluster X resident. “These are people I meet two or three times a week sometimes, and we come to love them like our parents or grandparents.”
And then one day, one such “grandparent” suddenly develops breathing problem. “I rushed him to the hospital, he’s put on the BiPAP machine, and in an hour, he’s no more. I’ve seen at least 10 such deaths in my four years of work here, and it takes a toll. At first, we go into shock and then feel bad. Plus, there’s the physical stress of being on call 24 hours a day.”
Prateep Sen, the founder and co-CEO of Tribeca Care, has seen some care managers (as Debjyoti and his colleagues are called) howl in grief at the death of their “mashimas”.
“Our managers have very high emotional quotient – that’s one of the demands of this job. But if we sense a burnout, fatigue, or outburst in them, we ask them to take a few days off and then gently encourage them to meet our counsellors, may be at periodical group therapy sessions. We tell them that they can only do this job well if they themselves are well from within.”
The burnout issue is perhaps most severe and sustained in those looking after ageing or chronically ill family members. “With the joint family system, there used to be many to chip in at home, but nowadays youths are leaving town. And if they are in town, the burden of care usually falls on women—daughters or daughters-in-law,” says Sen, whose own mother is a dementia patient living in Jal Vayu Vihar, and is a member of Tribeca.
“In such cases, once the patient’s health starts going downhill, there is usually no recovery. The caregiver puts pressure on herself and is gripped by a combination of guilt at not being able to do more as well as a feeling of being trapped, as she has to sacrifice career advancements, time with her children, and even her night’s sleep. There is a lot of discussion about the ailing, but the role of caregivers is usually overlooked.”
Care for cops
This thought has prompted the Techno India Group to extend the services of Monoshij, its platform for psychological assessment and psycho-therapeutic counselling to the police force. Other than the students in the group’s educational institutions, it serves the elderly at Snehodiya. Recently, a workshop was organised by the outfit for some members of the Bidhannagar commissionerate.
“We started Monoshij in Covid times when our students were falling prey to depression, stuck within the four walls. In those uncertain times, it was the medical fraternity and the police which kept us going with their tireless work. This is our bid to give back to the force. They deal with the worst kinds of situations — from accidents to violence — and go home carrying their stress and anxiety. We want to help them stay mentally strong and focused,” said Manoshi Roychowdhury, co-chairperson of the group.
Assistant commissioner of police, Bidhannagar (south) Ishan Sinha, who was present for the opening of the workshop, recalled hearing senior colleagues saying that they could not hug their children for months for fear of spreading the virus as they were being regularly exposed to Covid patients themselves. “There is not a single citizen who did not praise the police for their service during the pandemic,” said the young officer, who spent his first Kali puja after joining the force doing whole-night duty in Barasat.
People, he said, did not realise the stress that the police were under. “Our thana inspectors say they get calls at 1.30 or 2pm on their mobile, with complaints of a lost torch or mobile phone. Of course, the police is supposed to serve people round the clock but there needs to be some consideration for individuals too. As it is, the United Nations recommends a benchmark of 222 police personnel per 100,000 citizens. I don’t think the strength of the police force is close to that anywhere in India,” Sinha said, referring to manpower shortage that is a concern of the fire brigade also.