On one hand,
Navaratri, and on the other, the match. Didn’t you get any other day for
operation?” Nina, the nurse-intern asks the woman on the hospital bed as she
gives her a local anaesthetic. The woman is here for a tubectomy.This is the “recovery
ward” of Badshah Khan hospital, Haryana’s Faridabad district’s biggest
government facility. All the district’s family welfare programmes are conducted
here. The ward is full, half are women who want a tubectomy and the rest their