Driver Karamjit Singh and Narinder Singh (in white) check the 108 ambulance at Sector 26 dispensary in Chandigarh. (Express photo by Sahil Walia) Driver Karamjit Singh and Narinder Singh (in white) check the 108 ambulance at Sector 26 dispensary in Chandigarh. (Express photo by Sahil Walia) The Force Broadway Traveller van is smelling of incense. Agarbattis, their tips a burning orange, are stuck in the AC vents in the front cabin. Over the driver’s seat is a photograph of a goddess. There are agarbattis at the back too, where patients and their families will travel. “After unlocking the vehicle, the first thing I do is to light these agarbattis and pray to the Mata that we should be able to drop off all the patients we ferry today safely to hospital,” says Karamjit Singh, the 35-year-old driver of a 108 ambulance vehicle deployed at the Sector 26 dispensary. “I clean out the agarbattis from the back before we begin picking up patients,” Karamjit adds. While Karamjit cleans the ambulance, his partner, 25-year-old Narender Singh Karayat, a paramedic, checks the oxygen cylinder and other first aid items in the vehicle. The air-conditioned ambulance has four stretchers, two fixed, and two more, one of which is made of light plastic for rescues. It is also equipped with a splint for one patient with a fracture, a suction machine, and an ambu bag for respiration. There are also blankets, first aid betadine and cotton. Next Narender has to send the previous day’s logbook details to data operators sitting at the 108 control room in the UT Administration building in Sector 9, Chandigarh. “We have a shift of six hours which can be a day or night duty,” says Karamjit, as they wait for the first call from the control room. “Sometimes, we wait for hours, and by the time the shift ends, it may be only a couple of trips. But at times, we make several trips in these six hours. It requires a lot of patience to deal with patients and their family members,” says Karamjit. The first call comes at 9.30 am. The control room operator tells Narender that a person has received burn injuries at Industrial Area. Karamjit turns the ignition, switches on the siren. Narender jumps in the back, and off they go. But it gets stuck almost immediately, as the dispensary is next to the Sector 26 grain where big trucks are blocking the way, unloading their consignments. It takes three minutes of continuous honking and the wailing of the siren that the driver of the truck arrives and moves his vehicle aside. As Karmajit makes a turn on to Madhya Marg, the ambulance ploughs through the morning rush hour traffic, until coming to a halt behind a mass of vehicles at Sector 26 Transport light point. Though the siren is wailing, drivers of other vehicles seem to be ignoring the ambulance and the sound it is making, not making any effort to give way. Though traffic policemen deployed at the light point rushed to the ambulance to find a way out, it was only after the signal turned green that the traffic moved and so did the ambulance. “The ambulance is mostly ignored by other drivers. They do not give way to it, and neither the traffic policemen who are most responsible for it intervene on the road to clear the way. The only thing going for us is that we have the right to break the red light and drive on the wrong way, otherwise we don’t know how we would pick up and drop patients on time,” says Karamjit, as he turns right and races along on Purv Marg towards Industrial Area. Karamjit, an arts graduate, got this job after a driving test. He has been an ambulance driver for the past four years. “I underwent training for dealing with patients in an emergency but we have not been given any special driving training. There is no speed restrictions, we are just directed to drop the patient safely on time at the hospital,” he says. In case of an accident or any other mishap that incapacitates the driver, the paramedic is not supposed to take over the driving, says Narender. Instead, he must call the control room immediately and another ambulance will be sent. “We have been told by the authorities not to become a ‘hero’ in such emergencies, and call the control room quickly,” says Narender, who has a diploma in pharmacy. He is a science graduate and has been with the 108 ambulance service for three years. Narender says he and Karamjit have managed to drop off alive at the hospital every critical patient they had ever picked up. “We don’t know what happens to them later in hospital. Chandigarh is a small city with hospitals nearby, so till now there has not been a case when we have lost a patient on the way to the hospital,” he says. Narender recalls a case from earlier this year. “A 24-year-old girl got a cardiac attack while jogging at Sukhna Lake. People gathered around her and her relatives had also arrived. She was unconscious, I gave her CPR immediately and then gave her oxygen in the ambulance. She regained consciousness and we were able to drop her to the hospital at GMSH -16,” he says. By now, the ambulance has reached the Industrial Area. The man with the burn injuries is 35-year-old Bal Chand. He has got burns all over his upper body and on his lower legs from an acid that fell on him at his workplace. His colleagues and friends took him home. Narender takes out one of the stretchers, and Bal Chand’s friends and family help him on to it. Bal Chand does not appear to be in too much pain, and protests that he does not want to go to a hospital. But his family insists. With help from the others, Narender lifts the stretcher with Bal Chand into the ambulance. Two friends and two family members get into the ambulance at the back. Narender gets in last and closes the back door of the van behind him. “Until there is an emergency, we do not apply or give any medication to the patient and our first duty is to take him to the hospital where doctors will take care of him”, says Narender. There’s a window between the front and the back through which Narender and Karamjit can speak to each other. The ambulance starts back, taking the route through Madhya Marg, with Karamjit pressing the pedal towards Sector 16 Government Multi-Specialty Hospital (GMSH). The needle on the speedometer is touching 60 km per hour. The traffic is light, it’s all on the other side, going towards Panchkula. But at the Sector 8-9 light point, Karamjit has to bring the ambulance to a virtual halt as he tries to find a way out of the line of vehicles that have stopped at the red light. He rued not taking the slip road instead. “I don’t get it why we do not have separate lanes for ambulance here, and even if not, why the police cannot see that an ambulance is trapped in traffic and it needs an immediate way to move with the patient crying here,” says driver Karamjit, annoyed over the three-minute delay. After the signals turned green, it takes the ambulance another five minutes to reach the hospital. At the hospital, Narender opened the door at the back and signalled to Bal Chand’s friends to bring a stretcher with wheels from among the lot parked at the entrance to the hospital. The friends put the stretcher close to the ambulance door, and lifted Bal Chand from the ambulance to the stretcher, and rolled it away inside. Karmajit and Narender have no further role with Bal Chand. He is out of their hands. Their next task is to call the control room to inform that the patient has been dropped to hospital. This trip has taken slightly over 15 minutes, from start to finish, but without the delays, it could have been faster. “I think it is Karamjit’s expert driving skills and God’s blessings, that even after so many obstacles, we manage to keep good time even in peak traffic hours, 8 am to 10 am, 12 noon to 2.30 pm, and 7 pm to 9 pm,” adds Narender. Before leaving the hospital, Narender cleans the stretcher in the ambulance with spirit and cotton. He and Karamjit then take the vehicle back to Sector 26. The time is now 10 am, and the wait had begun all over again. There are three more calls, but these are not emergencies. One call gets cancelled. In the second, he and Narendar drop off a pregnant woman from Sector 26 dispensary to Manimajra hospital. Her husband had brought her on his motorcycle for a check to the dispensary, but on being asked to take her to the hospital, he requests an ambulance ride for his wife. The last one is again a trip from Sector 26 hospital to Manimajra hospital with a woman who has had a miscarriage. There are no more calls till the shift ends at 2 pm, after which Karamjit and Narender hand over the keys of the ambulance to another driver and paramedic. “What we do is just serve the people. While we are waiting for calls, we have to sit in the ambulance, irrespective of whether it’s too hot or too cold. There is no waiting room, and no place even to charge our phones or a place to eat our food. Even if the departments concerned don’t do anything for us, we know that in some way we are doing something for people. That gives us a sense of satisfaction,” says Narender, and Karamjit agrees. For all the latest Chandigarh News, download Indian Express App

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