Kalyani ran a free outreach clinic three kilometres from the main hospital — one of those philanthropic gestures that hospitals like Kalyani made because they were good for the brand and useful for government relations. Priya had signed up for a Saturday slot in her first week, because free clinics were where she had started and she had not wanted to lose that.
The clinic served the workers who lived in the dense, semi-permanent settlement between the highway and the industrial corridor — construction workers, garment workers, waste-pickers, day labourers. The specific population of people who kept Mumbai functioning.
She had been coming every Saturday for three months and she had noticed, in the way a diagnostician notices things without initially classifying them, that the patient population had a particular characteristic. It was healthy. Not just by the standards of a settlement population — healthy by any standard. The waste-pickers had blood pressure readings that belonged in a wellness brochure. The construction workers had less joint damage than expected. The children were well-nourished.
She had attributed this, initially, to Kalyani's outreach programme. She thought: this is what medicine can do when it's applied correctly. She thought differently now.
This Saturday she talked to the clinic coordinator — a woman named Sunita, forty, brisk, who had grown up three streets away and ran the clinic with the efficient authority of someone who had been the most competent person in every room she had ever been in.
"I've been noticing the health outcomes here are quite good," Priya said during a quiet stretch between patients.
"Kalyani's programme works," Sunita said. She was filling in a form and did not look up.
"The nutrition levels especially. People in this community are in better condition than comparable populations in most of the city. Do you know why?"
Sunita looked up then. Something moved in her expression — not suspicion, not fear. Something more considered. "The Kalyani Wellness Scheme. They enrolled two hundred and forty families three years ago. Dietary supplements, regular monitoring, the clinic."
"Two hundred and forty families. That's a very specific number."
"Kalyani limits its outreach budget. They say." She looked at Priya for a moment. "Doctor, why are you asking this?"
