Noise free zone

A couple of days ago, I was at the Agadi Hospital in Bangalore to assist a near and dear in an OPD case. I was waiting outside the Operation Theatre waiting for the results of the diagnosis. One of the outer doors of the Operation Theatre was removed to be worked on. This almost allowed a free passage for noises and any sound outside to be transmitted without any hindrance to the patient and the diagnostic table on the other side of the inner door. It was not sound proof as I could easily percieve from the wooden door with it's own creeks as the sides.

When I was waiting outside for about 30 mins, I could see the facility people coming up and repairing the door. Atleast they should have had the consideration to move the door down, get the bolts and nuts fixed, basically get it assembled fully, in order to fix it with a move onto the hinges on the fixture. But, they almost spent quite sometime trying to show their muscle prowess in driving the nails and screwing the bolts down the wooden door. A few times, the assistant in the operation theatre also came to check out what was happening. But inspite of this, even with the specialist inside the diagnostic centre, the sound was still on with the guys trying to show their presence in fixing the door.

The other half, the working half, of the operation door ironically had a "This is a noise free zone" sticker. But, like all Indian posters/boards/banners, it didn't make any sense. On the other side of the walkway was the ICU and even that should have been affected by the noise.

During my waiting period, there was also a funny incident where two nice looking -English-fluent- Bangalore babes came to see someone in the ICU. The ICU had a notice board outside specifying that the shoes/any footwear be removed while going inside. But, inspite of the suggestion and a few footwear lying outside, the girls went in and came after a sweet 15 mins. Like what they say in Tamil - "you do a Surya namaskar after you become blind", the girls started to talk, adding to the already existing noise, that they should have left the footwear outside before they had to move in.

I'm not certain why people do all th havoc and then start to repent. Well, English has a nice word for this - "Sorry" - Why don't you think "Prevention is better than cure" - after all if you can say sorry and talk/write big apologies, why don't you try to prevent the bad thing first rather than bringing all the nicities later?