Batting

I had known batting as a child. It was something everyone wanted to do when the group played cricket. The procedure was not as in the conventional game, in which all players in the team to bat first batted, and all in the second team batted only if the initial variable number did not cross the opposite team's score. When we played the older children and bullies batted, those good at bowling bowled, and all others fielded. If the bat belonged to one of the others, he batted too, the pleasure of batting was for a select few.

Now batting can be done by anyone in daily life. It is figurative. If anyone wants anything from you and you don't want to oblige, you bat. A classical example is seen in a government office. You go there to ask for, say, information on how to pay a particular tax. The person at the 'Enquiry' counter sends you to the 3rd floor, 2nd office on the right, A clerk there wisely says that section is on me 5th floor, near the canteen. In all the offices near the canteen, and finally in all the remaining offices on me 5th floor, the sad piece of information is not available. Finally a peon tells you to ask a particular person on the 1st floor. That fellow is at that moment in the canteen. You wait patiently. When he comes back, he tells you to go to the head-office that is 5 blocks away. You rush to the head office in the heavy traffic. After being sent to two different floors by different clerks, the PRO tells you that the office 5 blocks away deals with this issue. You tell him you had been sent to the head office from that office . The PRO tells you to go back, and ask in the room behind the enquiry counter, where all forms and stationery are available. You rush back, but alas, you cannot make it before me lunch break. that room is closed. A leisurely 45 minutes later, it opens, and you find the tax challan and information you were looking for. This is modern batting, where every person whom you asked for information (except the PRO in the head-office) batted, and you were the ball.

You need not be a government office employee to be able to enjoy batting. The other day I had gone for some function, and on the way back decided to take a train. It was an unknown area, and I needed directions. The streets at 10 00 A.M. were deserted due to unexpected rains. I came to a junction and could not make up my mind whether to go right or left. A vegetable vendor was sitting there, waiting for customers. I asked him politely the direction to the railway station, and he told me to take the right turn. I walked on that road for 7 minutes and reached a dead end. There was no way I could have climbed over the 20 feet wall at the end of the road, even if the railway station were just beyond. There wasn't any gap in the wall to go through. I asked someone nearby for directions, who guided me to take the direction I came from, and take a right turn at the end of me road. The vendor had batted me in opposite direction, quite deliberately.

The psychology of the batter varies from situation to situation. In the government office, people bat just to send you away, so that they can continue to do whatever they are doing (or not doing). They know that if they admit ignorance, you will not go away easily. The vendor and his types send you on a wild goose chase knowingly. They are probably frustrated with life, and want another person to join their ranks (of frustrated people) or want to take it out on people who seem to be successful in life. No matter what the underlying mechanism, the result is spreading dissatisfaction, with little or no satisfaction for the batter. Batting is never justified, but may be bearable (by the ball) if the ‘ball’ is in a physically and mentally sound state. What troubles me most is finding batting in medical college hospitals, where the balls are the sick patients and their relatives, The very sick ones are usually admitted in one of the words and cannot be batted. But me others can be and often are.

          The batters are the doctors in training who have too many patients to see and not enough time. If the patient has complaints that can be due to a variety of causes, and the doctor cannot make a diagnosis, he refers the patient to another specialty. If that specialty doctor cannot make a diagnosis either, he does likewise. Every doctor is likely to advise different tests, which may not be necessary to reach a diagnosis. The patient keeps doing rounds of the hospital until he gets cured by the grace of God, gets tired and leaves me hospital for good, or unfortunately dies. This type of batting is like that seen in a government office, stemming out of ignorance. Another type of batting is seen with serious nature of disorders, the treatment of which involves a lot of work for the trainee doctor. He then sends the patient very cleverly to another doctor of the same specialty. If the unsuspecting recipient takes the patient under his wings, the batting is successful. One trick is to write nothing on the case paper of a patient who presents in the evening hours in the emergency room, and call him to the outpatient clinic the next day, where another doctor will be in charge. Another trick is to see a referral of an indoor patient admitted in a ward of another specialty, and ask him to attend the outpatient clinic of your specialty after discharge from the hospital, forgetting to mention the day of the week on which he should attend the clinic. Then he will hopefully attend on a day other than your day. A dirtier trick is to discretely remove your case paper from the patient's file.     When there is no case paper of your specialty, the patient is obliged to make a new case paper which hopefully will be of another doctor. Another dirty trick is to refuse to take an emergency patient on pretext of lack of this or that in your hospital, and sand him to a higher level hospital with just verbal instructions. Than the patient is forced to find his own transport, rather than go in an ambulance. You don't have to accompany the patient in the ambulance. There is no accountability. All this is quite serious. It needs to be stopped. Unfortunately the strict discipline required to prevent this batting is lacking miserably, and an improvement in the mindset of the batters seems to be impossible.