Sunanda K Datta Ray: But friendship hollers

WHERE MONEY TALKS

Susan and Colin Shaw turned up at London's Cromwell Hospital as soon as they heard I had suddenly been stricken with acute septicaemia and cholecystitis, offering to break a £10,000 trust for their children for my treatment. They spared no thought for lost interest. "Oh no!" I replied airily. "I am insured!"

The Shaws knew the Cromwell as one of Britain's most expensive hospitals. Having spent her childhood in Delhi, Susan also knew that few visiting Indians are flush of funds. Even so, it's a rare soul who would so readily squander family savings and her offspring's inheritance "" nearly Rs 9 lakh "" for a friend.

I remember Susan as a little girl in Rattenden Road (now Amrita Sher Gill Marg) when her father, Philip Crosland, was the last British journalist in India.

There were gaps in his editorship while he chased and speared jackals with the Meerut Hunt to blood-curdling yells of "Tally ho!" describing his adventures afterwards under the by-line, Horse and Hounds Correspondent.

There was an even longer break during World War II when he battled disease and death in a POW camp in Sumatra, having gallantly exchanged his typewriter for a rifle to defend the empire on which the sun never set against Japan's Rising Sun.

Fed up with the paper's lunchroom's indifferent English cuisine "" watery mulligatawny soup, tough roast chicken and lumpy custard "" Philip once sent for the bawarchi and demanded "dum aloo". The bawarchi had no idea how to cook it.

"What the bloody hell do you eat at home?" Philip bawled, seizing the man's shirtfront, "Roast beef and Yorkshire pudd?" Unmoved, the bawarchi replied he didn't cook at home, his wife did.

Philip also had a reputation for parsimony. His photographer once returned the few annas Philip gave him to share a tonga for an assignment in Old Delhi, saying he would take a taxi at his own expense.

But Susan brought magazines for me and bedding so that my wife was less uncomfortable at night. The Cromwell would happily have provided a fully made up bed but at a cost. Everything reeked of money, making me wonder about the hospital's ownership.

The boy wheeling me into a red carpeted lift looked surprised. "Sheikh Zayed" he replied, leaving me none the wiser. Gradually, the picture fell in place.

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahayan, emir of Abu Dhabi, since deceased, was founder-president of the United Arab Emirates. Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at $20 billion. Abu Dhabi was the largest depositor, borrower and shareholder of the ill-fated BCCI which started the Cromwell.

Innocent of all this, my wife took me there when crisis struck because it was so near where we were staying. Lurking somewhere in the back of her mind may have been the thought that we had paid overseas medical insurance premium for years without return. We should be helped in an emergency.

Soon she realised that the complexities and obfuscation of Indian bureaucracy are not confined to the public sector and do not end at India's shores. Our Indian insurance company's listed European agent had silently dropped out.

Its successor's address and fax and telephone numbers led nowhere. Another number was found but the answering voice said they handled only vehicle insurance. For health, we would have to contact the branch in a European continental city.

Thus began a saga almost as painful as my illness. Letters produced no response. Neither did e-mails. My wife and son would rush out of the hospital in between tests, consultations and other medical procedures to telephone "" calls from my comfortably furnished room cost the earth "" but the insurance people knew nothing. Some did not speak English.

We were worried about the Cromwell's spiralling charges "" it waived advance payment but refused to bill the insurance company of which it had never heard.

I had to wait for surgery. Return to India was impossible because no airline would accept me without medical clearance and a trained attendant.

At our wits' end, we eventually applied to the Indian embassy. It worked. Our diplomatic missions are often accused of heartlessness. In this case, an embassy call did the trick. Glory be, I was given a file number. I existed. I was no longer a non-person.

My wife sat in grubby Internet cafes, getting every detailed medical report and bill, dozens and dozens of closely typed pages, scanned and e-mailed, as the insurance company demanded.

My son posted the originals when the company changed its mind and demanded them too. Days went by without acknowledgement though Royal Mail assured him the papers had been delivered.

I shall spare you the agony of weeks of e-mails and telephone calls, rude rebuffs, mounting panic and further appeals to the embassy. A euro cheque for only part of what we had spent arrived nearly eleven weeks after my admission, a month and a half after the laparoscopy.

My son says that encashment three weeks later "" we were back in India "" substantially reduced the amount. We are still waiting for full settlement.

Hope might have withered without ambassadorial intervention. A second debt of gratitude is to credit cards. I have deplored cards in this column but they delayed the day of reckoning until resources could be mobilised.

Finally, Susan. Other itinerant Indians may have access to embassies; undoubtedly, they use credit cards. But how many have friends like Philip Crosland's daughter?

Money talks but friendship talks louder.