The head of neurology spoke to me for nearly an hour about what was going on in my mother’s comatose brain. The spine surgeon sounded heartbroken when he told me my mother was no longer moving her fingers. I’d politely ambush people walking down the corridor with stethoscopes around their necks to explain a medical point to me, which they always did with great patience. And I saw these brilliant, top-notch doctors at one of India’s leading hospitals extend empathy to everyone alike without discrimination — I had never before encountered empathy as an institutional culture.