J.J. Hospital

J.J. Hospital, the sprawling public hospital in Mumbai, functions in this book not merely as a medical institution but as a recurring site of death, disclosure, and institutional reckoning. It is the place where the consequences of the city's underworld violence and state-sanctioned killings are delivered, where bodies are brought to be declared dead and where the living are forced to confront the brutal facts of their loss. The hospital appears as a threshold between the public narrative of crime and the private grief of the women left behind, a place where the official story of an 'encounter' meets the anguished disbelief of a widow.

A Morgue of Encounters

The most harrowing association of J.J. Hospital is with the police 'encounter' killings that punctuate the book. When Mehmood Khan is shot dead at Santa Cruz airport, his wife Ashraf Khan is first sent to Cooper Hospital, where the staff claim no gunshot patient has been admitted. It is only after a desperate search from station to station that a policeman directs her to J.J. Hospital. There, her worst fears are realized: she is told that a man named Mehmood Khan, a wanted gangster, has been shot dead in an encounter. The hospital is where the official lie of the encounter is first presented to her, and where she is led to the morgue to identify the body. She enters the dimly-lit room and trembles at the sight of the wrapped bodies, her legs shaking in nervousness, wishing she did not have to witness this all alone. A pitying nurse holds her hand firmly and takes her to a body. It is him, the same man who had smiled at her before disappearing into a crowd. The hospital is thus the stage for the revelation of her premonition, the place where the vague anxiety that had haunted her earlier in the day finally reveals itself as the fact of her husband's death. The next day, the hospital staff tell her that her husband had been declared dead on admission, with a report stating he had died of four bullets in an encounter after he fired at the cops. It is also at the hospital that she learns the name of the officer who led the encounter, police inspector Emanuel Amolik, a name she memorizes as she thinks about the man who killed her husband.

The Final Destination of Gangland Violence

J.J. Hospital is also the final destination for victims of gangland violence. When Hussain Ustara is ambushed by eight men outside a building, he is rushed to J.J. Hospital where he is declared dead on admission. The hospital is the endpoint of a meticulously planned assassination, where the sheer volume of violence—over twenty rounds mowing him down—is reduced to a clinical declaration of death. Similarly, the hospital is where the consequences of the mafia's brutal enforcement of its power are delivered. The hospital's morgue becomes the repository for the bodies of those who dared to challenge the underworld's authority, a silent testament to the necropolitical power that decides who lives and who dies in Mumbai.

A Site of Institutional Violence and Neglect

The hospital also appears as a site where institutional violence and neglect intersect with personal trauma. It is the place where Madhu, a sixteen-year-old girl sold into a brothel, is taken after being brutally raped and beaten by Jaggan seth. The hospital is not a place of healing for her but a place where her physical and psychological wounds are catalogued. She is described as having become a stone, as good as dead, refusing to eat or drink and not acknowledging the presence of people around her. The hospital, in this context, is a place where the violence of the brothel is momentarily contained but not addressed, where the girl's trauma is left to fester without any meaningful intervention. The hospital's role here is not to save but to process, to mark the body as damaged before it is returned to the cycle of exploitation.

A Place of Confinement and Reflection

The hospital's significance extends beyond its physical walls, as it becomes a symbol of the broader system of confinement that the book's women endure. For Monica Bedi, the years of imprisonment in Lisbon are described as emotionally and mentally draining, with not a single day of peaceful sleep. The isolation takes a toll on her, and she seeks a crutch, finding solace in the teachings of the Bible. While this occurs in a Lisbon prison, the pattern of institutional confinement and the search for meaning within it resonates with the experiences of women who pass through J.J. Hospital. The hospital, like the prison, is a place where women are stripped of their agency and forced to confront the consequences of choices made by men. It is a place where the state's power over the body is made manifest, whether through the declaration of death or the neglect of the living.

A Geography of Death and Memory

The hospital is embedded in a geography of death that the book maps across Mumbai. It is located in the same urban landscape as Bada Qabrastan, the sprawling 7.5-acre cemetery near Marine Lines station, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old reminder of man's mortality. The hospital, like the cemetery, is a place where the dead are processed and remembered. The book's narrative is punctuated by such sites—the graveyards where gangsters are buried, the hospitals where they are declared dead, and the slums where they lived. J.J. Hospital is a key node in this geography, a place where the city's violence is made visible and where the women left behind must confront the physical reality of their loss. It is a place where the official narrative of crime and punishment meets the private grief of those who loved the dead, a place where the city's underworld and its institutions of control converge in a single, grim location.