It happens only in Bengaluru

My wife had been complaining about backache for a long time. Finally we decided to visit Manipal hospital in Bengaluru. We took an appointment for the coming Saturday. The appointment was at 4:00 PM. With quite a lot of difficulty, managed to pull my wife out of the house and reach Manipal hospital by 3:45 PM. We went and spoke to the receptionist. She told us that the doc has gone for an emergency and they are not sure when he would be back. They asked us to wait for a while until they made some enquires. The receptionist came back saying that the doc will be in office in an hour. We decided to wait. I had a couple of coffees and my wife ate cup noodles. We went out for a walk in the hospital lawns. It was around 5:30 PM and decided to head back to the doc’s office. Once there, we had to wait another 5-10 minutes and they let us in to see the doc. Doc examined my wife and told us that we need to get an X-Ray done. We had to go to the radiology section. We made the payment for the X-Ray and when our turn came, we were called into the Radiology room. Here we met a person who was supposed to do the X-Rays. We exchanged greetings. He told us that he will explain in brief the procedure to be followed. We agreed. The next question he posed was – “Sir, which language are you comfortable in?”. I was delighted to know that Manipal was offering such great services to its patients. There might be people from varying backgrounds who could get admitted to the hospital. Being able to service the patient in his own language is a definite ++, it would help them feel at home and help them feel secure. Before we could tell him which language, he started – “Sir, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi…”. My mind was working fast to pick one of those choices but it was not able to. For a split second I couldn’t realize what was happening. I looked at my wife, she had the same blank expression on her face. She had started out to pick one of the choices but couldn’t do so. After 2-3 seconds I realized he had missed out Kannada. I told him – “Naavu Kannadane” (We speak Kannada only).. Now it was the radiologist’s turn to look dumbfounded. Slowly his expressions changed to a sheepish grin and while scratching his head he blurted out – “Sirrr.. um.. Engglishhh ok…?"