Aarti Nair
This is our question every time we fall sick. As if there’s ever a better time to fall sick. There isn’t. That’s what I realised when I was recently unwell.
I found myself in debilitating back pain. Not the ordinary kind that makes you uncomfortable — I couldn’t sit for a whole minute, I couldn’t stand either. I could lie down, but never pain-free. I couldn’t sleep on my back, so I’d try sleeping on my side, but the right side hurt more than the left. And if I lay mostly on the left, that too would start hurting.
Living in London, one of my biggest fears wasn’t racism, but falling sick and needing help from the NHS. I’d heard horror stories — people waiting months for diagnosis, or hours in extreme emergencies. While I didn’t want to judge based on these (abundant) stories, I also couldn’t imagine going through them myself. I couldn’t sit, stand, or walk — how was I going to see a doctor?
When I opened the NHS website to book an appointment, I found my back pain wasn’t classified as an emergency. Back pain, they said, is normal, and you should only see a doctor if it continues after two or three weeks of rest. It becomes an emergency only if you can’t breathe, use the toilet or sleep. Fortunately or unfortunately, while painfully, I could do all of those. I considered private healthcare, but fearing the high costs, I decided to wait it out.
One blessing was that my office allowed me to work from home, and my manager was kind enough to let me take it easy. I took calls standing and often worked while lying on the bed. By the end of each day, I was exhausted of the back pain and also leg pain because of the standing.
After four days of struggling, I called a friend in India — a spine specialist. On a video call, he asked me to try bending, lifting my leg, and other movements, only to confirm that this was likely a slipped disc. He advised immediate five-day bed rest.
There are several discs in the spine, and sometimes, due to trauma, one can slip out of position. In 95% of cases, it heals with rest and rehabilitation, but it can take around 10 weeks. He warned that if I felt tingling in my spine, buttocks, or feet, I should call an ambulance. Was I feeling tingling? I wasn’t sure. I worried I might need an MRI, and that not getting it could make things worse.
In India, if you can afford it, getting an MRI is as simple as going out for dinner — no cumbersome process. Here, I first needed a GP appointment. As I had never taken an appointment before, I texted my naive one of my neighbours, a kind British lady in her early 60s. She was happy to help and guided me to fill out a form on the NHS app and while expressing her sympathies, asked me to also explore alternative options. She was right, the earliest date: 14 days later. The alternative she recommended was seein an osteopath her husband saw often for his back pain.
I immediately googled what exactly an Osteopath was. An osteopath isn’t a doctor or physiotherapist — more like a college-educated, degree-holding hadvaid whose job is literally “moving, twisting, and turning joints” to heal pain. I had experienced going to a hadvaid in India and despite my pride in our ancient Indian wisdom, I did not trust the uncertified, unregulated practice. Here, it was different but I still parked it as my last alternative.
Meanwhile, I was still in pain despite popping four pills in a day. My doctor admitted that it wouldn’t help — I needed a stronger medicine, which here required a prescription I couldn’t get for the next two weeks. My husband could have queued outside the clinic at 7am for a walk-in appointment, but I couldn’t even get to the clinic. Sitting in a cab wasn’t an option. To my sheer luck,, I came to know that a friend was visiting from India that very day. I got my doctor to send the medicines to my friend and I got them in 24 hours.
I was told that the medicines would really take a week to show signs of improvement. Meanwhile, feeling slightly better, I booked the osteopath my neighbour recommended. I thought, how bad could it be? Worse case, I will ignore everything he says. Best case, I will get someone to physically check me and assure me that I was going to get better.
The osteopath was a polite and positive French man. He did a 30-min question answer round with me where he asked me about my life, lifestyle, any accidents in the past, my history of back pain, etc. I told him that the first time I had felt back pain was in form of a muscular spasm in 2016. It was not too extreme but I was in a lot of pain and had to rest for two weeks. At that time, it was a result of my working hours, the lifestyle I had cultivated as a young entrepreneur.
Over the years, I had realised that my back pain was my body’s thermometer. Every time I was in any kind of physical or mental stress, back pain came to the forray, almost like reminder for me to slow down.
But this time, it was different. I believed I was in my fittest best phase, I had a good lifestyle, eating home-cooked meals every day, walking more than 10K steps a day (not exercise, just overall living in London needs one to work more), and other active lifestyle habits like cycling.
He asked me to do a couple of body movements like bending, lifting my legs and soon he too suspected a slipped disc. I was too stiff for any twisting or turning so he instead recommended an exercise plan for me to slowly increase my activity, not only for my back/body but also for my mind. I agreed, being on complete bed rest for a week had really affected me negatively.
Then he asked me what medicines I was taking to relieve the pain. He was shocked to learn about the medicines — apparently, they were very strong and potentially addictive medicines. I ignored him. I trusted my doctor in India, and honestly I needed more hope and relief from pain was giving me some hope.
If the physical pain was awful, the isolation was worse. Even with my lovely husband and mother-in-law taking care of me — keeping the house in order, trying to engage me with board games and cooking delicious food — I longed for more. Humans need community. Indians especially do.
Friends here often texted to check on me, wishing a speedy recovery, and saying I should let them know if I needed anything. I didn’t “need” anything — my husband could manage that — but I truly craved to have around me. For weeks, I waited. Eventually, I accepted that no one was coming. Maybe it’s just not part of the culture here.
For the first time in my 2.5 years in London, I found myself questioning why I had come here, so far from my family and friends. In India, being sick is almost like a festival — not a joyful one, but a shared occasion. People come to visit, talk to you, and make you feel better. Healing isn’t just about rest; your community feels a sense of responsibility for you. We may overdo it, but right then, I’d have preferred that over this cold, lonely version.
For weeks, whenever I thought about my friends here not visiting, I reminded myself: it’s not their culture. In a place where everyone’s on their own, you think giving someone space is kindness. You don’t intrude, you don’t risk embarrassing them. But I think humans need more than space — they need love and care. They want to be wanted.
A month in, I decided to be vulnerable. I told a friend I’d love for her to visit. She replied warmly, saying she’d come the next morning — a Saturday. I was so excited that despite the pain, I cleaned my room slowly and carefully. My husband and mother-in-law were also excited. My husband even offered to bake something. I laughed and declined, ‘They are coming to meet a sick person, everyone please relax!’
We Indians may speak hundreds of languages and live very differently from north to south to east to west, but one thing we share is that when we host, we overdo it. Even with a slipped disc, I made my bed, washed my hair and cleaned the bathroom. I had parked my pain aside and focused on the potential joy of seeing her.
By 10:30 am, when I didn’t heard from her, I texted to ask if she’d have lunch; she replied late, saying she was going for a swim and would be late. No mention of lunch. By 12:30, she messaged again — she was going for drinks and wasn’t sure she’d make it. She never came, never apologised. And I realised: in her world, this wasn’t an important thing, not a priority.
How do you make someone care for you in a way they don’t understand? How can someone give what they’ve never received? Is it okay to expect them to be sorry for something they don’t see as a big deal? Can one ask for such things?
I missed India even more, in ways I didn’t anticipate. The people, yes. The warmth, certainly. But more than that, I missed the small kindnesses — the instinctive ways people look out for each other.
That ache stayed with me while I was sick. I remembered how, just six years ago in 2020, when we were a newly married couple moving into a flat in Mumbai, our neighbours — a couple in their early sixties — stepped in like parents after finding out we had COVID. They called us every day to check in, and they would leave food outside our door, even desserts.
Craving that warmth and care, I called my close friends back in India. They were stunned — at how fragile the healthcare system here felt, and at how lonely I was. But their concern reminded me that I wasn’t forgotten, that I still had people who cared. When I spoke to my Indian friends living abroad, they didn’t brush my feelings aside. Instead, they nodded in recognition. They had all known this strange ache of isolation. Their validation was unexpectedly cathartic.
In this country, people are polite but mostly as a formality. They may not genuinely mean things and they are not always warm. No one notices if you haven’t eaten, or if you look unwell. No one rushes to help before you ask — and sometimes you don’t want to have to ask. I realised I was craving something this country was incapable to give me and it ached me greatly.
With my people, kindness always arrived uninvited; here, I had to learn to create it for myself. And since I was a child, I somehow always thought being sick was a punishment — that the universe or my body was trying to punish me. In all fairness, this was the longest I’d ever been unwell, more than 2.5 months. In a way, I was upset with my body doing this to me.
I started meditating once a day. Some days were hard, but the routine provided some relief.
And then I realised I was wrong. My body wasn’t punishing me. In fact, it was literally trying to heal itself, day and night. My body was on my side, and now I had to be on its side. It struck me that what my neighbours once gave me in India — that gentle, watchful care — I now had to give myself.
The best part of this illness is that I began noticing the little victories: my first sitting lunch, my first 10-minute walk, my first day back at the office. I hope this gratitude lasts longer because I am genuinely amazed at how good it feels.
For now, I’m living a little more gently with myself — letting go of the need to fill every weekend with plans, learning to say no without guilt, making space for joy without planning it. I’m not trying to match the pace I had before; I’m choosing a better one.
I’m still taking it slow, but I’ve gained perspective. I know who my real friends are. I know what to expect — and what not to. And I’m proud to be from a warm part of the world, in every sense of the word. I know where I belong, and where I eventually want to return — but I’m also grateful that this illness has taught me to find home within myself..
e.mail : rtnair91@gmail.com
