The time was 11:23 pm. I sat wondering if it was time to sleep yet. We had completed two days of lockdown. Boredom had not struck us yet. Each of us were busy with our own activities. Through the day, the television informed us about the Corona virus pandemic in English, Tamil and Malayalam. The chaos in the world continued to increase and miracles remained elusive. The lockdown caused hardships for many. But it was especially hard for people living in poverty. Many were daily wage workers staying away from their families. They could not survive without work while they were away from their family and home and wanted to go home. They were even ready to walk hundreds of kilometres to reach the safety of their homes and family. The intent of the lockdown was to keep people away from each other but the Governments did not think about the poor and their hardships. Since the advent of civilization, the poor had no choice but to live through misery. Thanks to the development of the 20th century, their misery has become a spectacle for others. The plight of the poor due to the lockdown was shown by all the news channel and soon memes started appearing too. They showed the Indians living abroad being brought back in planes while the poor in India walked barefoot on highways carrying their less than humble possessions on their heads. The poor continued to face the brunt of the problems, not just in India but around the world. The virus itself has been fairer to the poor till now and has mostly focused on affecting the affluent. But I am not sure if the situation will remain the same.
The demand for news took us different channels. At some point, we reached Sky News and then Al Jazeera. The latter turned out to be one of the few channels that covered the events in Spain and Italy. The coverage on Italy pointed out that the spread of the virus was primarily in the North of Italy, which is the affluent part of Italy. The lockdown has affected the availability of work, money and food all over the country but it affected people in the south more and they started rioting. Once again it seemed to me that the virus chose to affect the people staying in comfort. Of course, this is at best an armchair analysis but look at the list of the top fifteen countries affected by the Novel Corona virus as of 3 April 2020. Except for Iran and maybe Turkey the remaining countries are considered to be developed nations.
The demand for news took us different channels. At some point, we reached Sky News and then Al Jazeera. The latter turned out to be one of the few channels that covered the events in Spain and Italy. The coverage on Italy pointed out that the spread of the virus was primarily in the North of Italy, which is the affluent part of Italy. The lockdown has affected the availability of work, money and food all over the country but it affected people in the south more and they started rioting. Once again it seemed to me that the virus chose to affect the people staying in comfort. Of course, this is at best an armchair analysis but look at the list of the top fifteen countries affected by the Novel Corona virus as of 3 April 2020. Except for Iran and maybe Turkey the remaining countries are considered to be developed nations.
The news bulletins were annoyingly interspersed by advertisements. They interrupted the flow of the news and made us lose interest in it. Sometimes, I felt lazy to change the channel or walk away. At those times, I ended up watching the advertisements. As a result, I came to the conclusion that most of the advertisements in the English news channels are related to insurance. I found these advertisements reassuring. I especially liked the one where a man ensures that his wife's pallu does not get stuck between escalator steps. He then takes her handbag from her and moves ahead. She taps his shoulders while smiling at him lovingly. In the next scene, an insurance person talks to them very calmly about the importance of insurance. At the end of the talk, the man looks at his wife who gives her approval with the same loving smile. I felt calm wash over me as I watched the advertisement. It was after watching this advertisement for the fourth time in two hours that I realized that the most of the advertisements shown on the channel were related to insurance.
The phrase "social distancing" has been mentioned a number of times during the past few weeks. It is turning out to be the most common phrase of the year and possibly of the decade. We are educated on the intricacies of social distancing by many on social media and television. We have accepted the term and resorted to waving of hands and folding them into namastes instead of shaking hands to ensure social distancing. But the fourteen year old in our house had an issue with the term and questioned it. "Why do they call it social distancing? Should it not be physical distancing?" He had a point! The primary intent of social distancing is to avoid contact, which implies physical distancing. In these tough times, physical distancing should actually result in loneliness. Towards this end, we should maintain social interaction with our friends and family. Now more than ever we should be there for each other. The increased traffic on social media is a proof for our insatiable desire to interact with one other. We will find it tough to survive if we are not connected. So it seems to me that we are talking about physical distancing rather than social distancing. But there should be a reason for it to be called social distancing and not physical distancing!
Messages and discussions continued to flood my WhatsApp and Facebook accounts. I followed some with interest. Information of all sorts came in from every direction. I was unable to determine the veracity of most messages and claims. One of the group on WhatsApp had many smart people discussing about the pandemic from different angles. As is usually the case in such situations, I kept quiet and followed every message. I guess my own anxiety to get information about this pandemic made these discussions seem interesting. They shared studies and papers related to the virus and the pandemic. One of the papers described the possible impact of the BCG vaccine on the virus. According to the paper, Japan did not care about social distancing and yet the pandemic is far from alarming in that country. Apparently, BCG vaccination is mandatory there. On the other hand, people in countries like Italy and US do not take BCG vaccination and the number of deaths have been high in these countries. Iran started the vaccination in 1984. So in Iran only people younger than 36 have been vaccinated and as a result the number of deaths has been high in Iran too. The paper does not talk about India but one of the persons in the group wondered if the impact India is also low as BCG vaccination has been mandatory in India for many years. This probably is the reason for crowded areas like Dharavi not being affected by this pandemic yet (this was before the first case from Dharavi came to light).
Meanwhile the situation of the poor continued to worsen. Their livelihood had turned grave due to lack of job, money and food. Many did not even have a place to stay. To some it seemed that they were going through pain to save the rich. Some messages on WhatsApp mentioned that the rich could stuff their homes with food, water and entertainment and stay comfortably for many weeks while the poor did not even have a home and if they did, they were either miles away from it or had very little food in it. Yet, the rich cried about the hardships they faced while living through lockdown. By rich, I mean all who are not poor and not just the Ambanis or Mallyas.
The constant bickering between the various Governments in the country and the Governments and its citizens is raising a problem for the country. Earlier, almost everyone criticized the Government at the centre and at least this resulted in everyone focusing on the issue at hand. Today, a section of people worship the Government and the remaining loath them. As soon as the Government announces or does something, the worshipers shower praises on the Government and the loathers criticize the Government vehemently. The actual issue is the argument between the two sides. This is happening during this pandemic too. When thousands started walking hundreds of kilometres to their home town from the capital, the media made a lot of noise about it. As a result, the Government of Delhi reacted. A thousand buses attempted to transport the people on the road to various places. It is not clear for me where they were transported to and how far these places were from their respective home towns. But this reaction resulted in people congregating to one location to board the buses. The news channels showed long lines of people waiting for the buses. Physical distancing is a pre-requisite for social distancing and in this case, the no concept of distancing was upheld. If anyone in the crowd was infected by the virus, he/she would have transmitted it to many. Thus the people reaching their homes in different parts of the country would end up aiding the spread of the virus. Who is responsible for this? Many point at the Prime Minister and his Government. Others point to the Delhi Government. But are we not all part of a single country ? Isn't this every Government's problem? It has been obvious for many years that depending of the ruling party in the different states and the country, the different Governments end up hating each other and refuse to work with each other. The democratic process that India has chosen requires people from different places and parties to work with each other. This country cannot survive with Governments shirking their responsibilities and pointing fingers at each other when problems arise.
Who suffers? Not me, I am sitting comfortably with a full stomach in my living room. Actually I am not sitting comfortably; the fan is not right above my head and the breeze that usually blows through the window has not been blowing today. As a result, I feel a few beads of sweat on my forehead. This is the extent of discomfort that many of us face. But Ranveer Singh has a discomfort in his heart and it simply stopped beating on a highway 200 kilometres from Delhi and a 100 kilometres from his home. Why could Ranveer Singh have not stayed in Delhi? Why did he decide to go on this arduous journey? Is this his mistake? Why did he not have the confidence that his Government will take care of him? Maybe he had many reasons to believe that his Government will not take care of him. The questions continue! Why did the Governments not take care of him? Delhi has two Governments associated with it. At least one of them could have taken care of him. While we focus on keeping Novel Corona off our map, should we not take care of the many Ranveer Singhs who might end up dead in their attempt to live? The worst is that the people walking back to their villages are called migrants. They are living in their country and yet they are referred to as migrants.
Its dark outside and inside. The virus has already brought down our spirits and the actions of the people did not brighten our feelings. I looked at white dots spread across the dark night from my balcony. The roads were quiet. The quietness of the roads made us realize the regular flow of traffic that existed earlier. I stared into the darkness for a few moments thinking about the future. How will this outbreak end? I being a slave of the Internet decided to check if there was an answer in the Internet. I asked Google to tell me something about the future of the world with Novel Corona virus. It provided me with an article from BBC as response. The article was titled Covid-19: The history of pandemics and as is expected from articles like this, was scary. It started off with the line "Throughout history, nothing has killed more human beings than infectious disease. Covid-19 shows how vulnerable we remain – and how we can avoid similar pandemics in the future". The scientific and technological developments have made humans arrogant and made us feel invincible - Few more centuries and we will conquer the whole universe. After that the sun can gobble up the earth anytime it wants to. But we forget out past and hence don't realize our vulnerability. As the author says "... today epidemics are rarely discussed in history classes, while in the not so distant past, they were simply a terrible fact of life. There are few memorials to the victims of disease".
The small shop in our apartment complex is run by an old man who loves to talk. He speaks to me in Malayalam. I usually call out "Chetta" as I walk into the shop and he responds with a "Parayu chetta!". He is our daily connection with the outside world these days. During the first three or four days of lockdown, I went to the shop to buy something or the other. Every day I asked him the same question "how is the situation outside?" and every time he responded with a painful expression. "It is very tough. None of the shops are open. There are no vehicles on the road. At the junction, the cops either shout abuses at people or start beating them up. Women and older men are receive verbal abused whereas younger men are beaten up". I cut him short to clarify "so I guess, I will hear some abuses, right?" He responded "You will receive abuses but this person here would receive some beatings" he said pointing at a person who was standing beside him. The person was taken aback for he was not paying attention to our conversation. In confusion, he asked "what?". The shopkeeper explained "We were talking about the police beating up younger people if they are seen on the roads. So if you are on the road, the police will beat you up." The person was baffled and could not say anything. He stared at the shopkeeper and me for a few seconds before walking out of the shop. The shopkeeper's frustration increased as the lockdown proceeded. He did not get many products for the shop and even if he did, it came after going through a great amount of difficulty. He painted a bleak picture of the situation outside.
The news channels reflected the shop keeper's words. The police had taken the lockdown seriously. They chased everyone on the roads back to their houses. They used a variety of mechanisms to achieve their ends. The most popular being the time tested policy of thrashing the wanderer's bottoms. At times, the police used their imagination and made the law breakers do sit ups (thoppu karanam). To bring variety to their routine a few of them made the guilty leap frog away. From the first day of the lockdown, videos surfaced on social media about these incidents. Most of the videos claimed that the persons were delivering essential goods or attempting to purchase them when the incident took place. The issue did not emerge in black and white. Our people being our people refuse to do what they are asked to do. On an working day, they would want to stay at home but ask them to stay at home and they would want to be everywhere else. Some would have a dire need to go to the bank, while others would feel an uncontrollable wish to visit their uncle or aunt. A few would have the irrepressible urge to have vazha thandu for lunch while others would simply feel the desire to drive along the empty roads of their over-crowded city. Thus the locked down country's roads end up not being empty enough and the police have no choice but to express their frustration.
Five days into the lockdown, we had to replenish a part of our stock. I called the nearest More Supermarket and asked if it was open. The person on the other side said yes. I asked if there were stocks. He responded yes. I asked one if the shop was crowded. He said no. So I decided to visit the supermarket. As I walked out of the door, I covered the bottom part of my face with a surgical mask. In the car, I attempted to steel my resolve by running through the list of Tamil swear words in my vocabulary. As the junction approached, I felt I was ready to face the policemen and their abuses. I did not see any policemen at junction. I expected one to jump onto the road at any time but none did. I turned left and proceeded to the supermarket. I was utterly disappointed for I had prepared myself to receive a few abuses and had actually hoped to learn two or three new words in the process.
The Supermarket was not crowded. As in other parts of the country, a series of circles one metre apart were drawn on the ground outside its entrance. I stood inside the fourth circle. There were eight persons inside the super market. Most people in the line wore masks. The man in the third circle had brought his teenaged son along. The son wore a surgical mask but the father preferred to use his hand kerchief as a mask. In a few minutes, a tall man wearing shorts, t-shirt and mask and talking into a mobile phone tried to walk through the entrance of the shop. The security person stopped him and asked him to go to the end of the line. The man was taken aback by this and stared at the security person for a few seconds before turning around to look at the people standing in the line. All of us stared at him. He slowly walked towards the back of the line. In a few minutes, I was the first in the line.
I walked up to the security person. He sprayed a few droplets of hand sanitizer on my palms. I applied it on my palms using a compressed version of 20 second the hand wash routine (I said "Happy birthday to you" instead of singing the 20 second long "Haaaappy beeeerthday toooo yooooouuu"). He pointed his temperature gun (or whatever it is called) at my forehead and looked intently at something on the other side of gun. I felt a thrill pass through my insides. I have only seen these devices in television and cinema screens. For the first time someone was pointing the device at me. He moved the device away and asked me go in. I had passed the temperature test and got the permission to enter the supermarket. I felt like a black-robed graduate walking down from the stage with his graduation certificate in his hands. I had run through the list of essential items we required while standing in the one metre apart line. But as soon as I entered the shop, my mind went blank. I wanted to go to the right but changed my mind and went left. I stopped and went into one of the alleys, which contained many empty racks. The remaining contained biscuits, chocolates and other snacks. To clear the confusion off my mind, I picked three large packets of Parle G, two large packets of Marie and one large packet of Haldiram's Aloo Bhujia. The sight of food in the cart cleared my mind and I went around the different alleys picking the required items. As I walked towards the billing counter, I had a feeling I missed picking something important and was tempted go around the shop once more but I resisted the temptation.
On reaching home, I washed my hands using soap for twenty seconds. This pandemic has brought a lot of focus on washing hands. By the time we are through with this pandemic I would have washed my hands for more time than all the washing of hands I have done in my life prior to the start of the pandemic. Also, it has changed my style of washing hands. Earlier, it was wet my palms, apply the soap on my palms, rub the palms this way and that for a few second and wash away the soap in water. Even today, the process remains the same but the third step has expanded into six sub-steps. I did not understand the steps well till a video on WhatsApp explained it clearly. It showed a pair gloved hands applying black paint on their palms. The video clearly showed that one required six steps to ensure that the paint/soap reaches all parts of the palm. From now till end of life washing of my palms will proceed through steps 1, 2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 4, 5, and 6. Another new aspect of washing is the entry of the liquid called hand sanitizer. I have seen this liquid at a number of places before but have never trusted it. Being a staunch Indian, I don't trust a cleaning process if it does not involve water. But now I readily spread my hand for a few drops of this solution. I have a small bottle of this solution in my car and use it every time I get into the car. I find its fragrance reassuring . The quantity of alcohol present in the hand sanitizers worry me though. The one at the supermarket's billing counter had so much alcohol in it that when I got back home I had to sleep for an hour.
I have never ever typed anything in my whole life with such clean hands.
India was chugging along the Corona season with only a few cases per day when someone discovered the Nizamuddin meeting and all hell broke loose, literally. Tamilnadu reported a hundred cases one day due to the discovery of participants from this meeting who tested positive. Almost instantly many channels and people got into the Hindu - Muslim debate. This is a problem with the Government. A meeting was held with 2000 people attending it and some of the participants were foreigners. Yet the Government did not have information about this meeting for nearly ten days from the declaration of lockdown. Sadly, the meeting came to the authorities' notice due to the deaths of a few participants of this meeting in Telangana. This has turned out to be a big lapse in the government's strategy to identify potential virus carriers. I don't think we can blame the people for taking part in the meeting. The meeting commenced before the virus was considered a threat in many parts of the world. The Government should have taken care of identifying this congregation as soon as the virus became a serious threat. By Government, I mean the Delhi and Central Governments. These two Governments are not doing their jobs. They have been pointing fingers at each other and the public have suffered for many years now. The responsibility of taking care of Delhi should either be with the state or the central Government. This sharing of responsibility does not work. I think the result of the lapse will weigh heavily on the nation.
After reading the article from BBC, I sat quietly for some time. Everyone had slept and the house was quiet. This quietness did not extend to my mind. Many thoughts and worries ran around my head. At the beginning of the article the author mentions "The simulation predicted that 586,000 people would die in the US alone. If the most pessimistic estimates about Covid-19 come true, the far better named “Crimson Contagion” will seem like a day in the park". Half a million people dying in the US! Every day the worry got bigger. As I sat within the confines of my house, I felt safe but I was not really sure if this feeling of safety was like a placebo effect. The thought of dying is a complicated one. Personally, I don't think I am anxious about dying. Sooner or later, I will die. Also, I find the question "what happens after dying?" exciting. But there are others!
Meanwhile the situation of the poor continued to worsen. Their livelihood had turned grave due to lack of job, money and food. Many did not even have a place to stay. To some it seemed that they were going through pain to save the rich. Some messages on WhatsApp mentioned that the rich could stuff their homes with food, water and entertainment and stay comfortably for many weeks while the poor did not even have a home and if they did, they were either miles away from it or had very little food in it. Yet, the rich cried about the hardships they faced while living through lockdown. By rich, I mean all who are not poor and not just the Ambanis or Mallyas.
The constant bickering between the various Governments in the country and the Governments and its citizens is raising a problem for the country. Earlier, almost everyone criticized the Government at the centre and at least this resulted in everyone focusing on the issue at hand. Today, a section of people worship the Government and the remaining loath them. As soon as the Government announces or does something, the worshipers shower praises on the Government and the loathers criticize the Government vehemently. The actual issue is the argument between the two sides. This is happening during this pandemic too. When thousands started walking hundreds of kilometres to their home town from the capital, the media made a lot of noise about it. As a result, the Government of Delhi reacted. A thousand buses attempted to transport the people on the road to various places. It is not clear for me where they were transported to and how far these places were from their respective home towns. But this reaction resulted in people congregating to one location to board the buses. The news channels showed long lines of people waiting for the buses. Physical distancing is a pre-requisite for social distancing and in this case, the no concept of distancing was upheld. If anyone in the crowd was infected by the virus, he/she would have transmitted it to many. Thus the people reaching their homes in different parts of the country would end up aiding the spread of the virus. Who is responsible for this? Many point at the Prime Minister and his Government. Others point to the Delhi Government. But are we not all part of a single country ? Isn't this every Government's problem? It has been obvious for many years that depending of the ruling party in the different states and the country, the different Governments end up hating each other and refuse to work with each other. The democratic process that India has chosen requires people from different places and parties to work with each other. This country cannot survive with Governments shirking their responsibilities and pointing fingers at each other when problems arise.
Who suffers? Not me, I am sitting comfortably with a full stomach in my living room. Actually I am not sitting comfortably; the fan is not right above my head and the breeze that usually blows through the window has not been blowing today. As a result, I feel a few beads of sweat on my forehead. This is the extent of discomfort that many of us face. But Ranveer Singh has a discomfort in his heart and it simply stopped beating on a highway 200 kilometres from Delhi and a 100 kilometres from his home. Why could Ranveer Singh have not stayed in Delhi? Why did he decide to go on this arduous journey? Is this his mistake? Why did he not have the confidence that his Government will take care of him? Maybe he had many reasons to believe that his Government will not take care of him. The questions continue! Why did the Governments not take care of him? Delhi has two Governments associated with it. At least one of them could have taken care of him. While we focus on keeping Novel Corona off our map, should we not take care of the many Ranveer Singhs who might end up dead in their attempt to live? The worst is that the people walking back to their villages are called migrants. They are living in their country and yet they are referred to as migrants.
Its dark outside and inside. The virus has already brought down our spirits and the actions of the people did not brighten our feelings. I looked at white dots spread across the dark night from my balcony. The roads were quiet. The quietness of the roads made us realize the regular flow of traffic that existed earlier. I stared into the darkness for a few moments thinking about the future. How will this outbreak end? I being a slave of the Internet decided to check if there was an answer in the Internet. I asked Google to tell me something about the future of the world with Novel Corona virus. It provided me with an article from BBC as response. The article was titled Covid-19: The history of pandemics and as is expected from articles like this, was scary. It started off with the line "Throughout history, nothing has killed more human beings than infectious disease. Covid-19 shows how vulnerable we remain – and how we can avoid similar pandemics in the future". The scientific and technological developments have made humans arrogant and made us feel invincible - Few more centuries and we will conquer the whole universe. After that the sun can gobble up the earth anytime it wants to. But we forget out past and hence don't realize our vulnerability. As the author says "... today epidemics are rarely discussed in history classes, while in the not so distant past, they were simply a terrible fact of life. There are few memorials to the victims of disease".
The small shop in our apartment complex is run by an old man who loves to talk. He speaks to me in Malayalam. I usually call out "Chetta" as I walk into the shop and he responds with a "Parayu chetta!". He is our daily connection with the outside world these days. During the first three or four days of lockdown, I went to the shop to buy something or the other. Every day I asked him the same question "how is the situation outside?" and every time he responded with a painful expression. "It is very tough. None of the shops are open. There are no vehicles on the road. At the junction, the cops either shout abuses at people or start beating them up. Women and older men are receive verbal abused whereas younger men are beaten up". I cut him short to clarify "so I guess, I will hear some abuses, right?" He responded "You will receive abuses but this person here would receive some beatings" he said pointing at a person who was standing beside him. The person was taken aback for he was not paying attention to our conversation. In confusion, he asked "what?". The shopkeeper explained "We were talking about the police beating up younger people if they are seen on the roads. So if you are on the road, the police will beat you up." The person was baffled and could not say anything. He stared at the shopkeeper and me for a few seconds before walking out of the shop. The shopkeeper's frustration increased as the lockdown proceeded. He did not get many products for the shop and even if he did, it came after going through a great amount of difficulty. He painted a bleak picture of the situation outside.
The news channels reflected the shop keeper's words. The police had taken the lockdown seriously. They chased everyone on the roads back to their houses. They used a variety of mechanisms to achieve their ends. The most popular being the time tested policy of thrashing the wanderer's bottoms. At times, the police used their imagination and made the law breakers do sit ups (thoppu karanam). To bring variety to their routine a few of them made the guilty leap frog away. From the first day of the lockdown, videos surfaced on social media about these incidents. Most of the videos claimed that the persons were delivering essential goods or attempting to purchase them when the incident took place. The issue did not emerge in black and white. Our people being our people refuse to do what they are asked to do. On an working day, they would want to stay at home but ask them to stay at home and they would want to be everywhere else. Some would have a dire need to go to the bank, while others would feel an uncontrollable wish to visit their uncle or aunt. A few would have the irrepressible urge to have vazha thandu for lunch while others would simply feel the desire to drive along the empty roads of their over-crowded city. Thus the locked down country's roads end up not being empty enough and the police have no choice but to express their frustration.
Five days into the lockdown, we had to replenish a part of our stock. I called the nearest More Supermarket and asked if it was open. The person on the other side said yes. I asked if there were stocks. He responded yes. I asked one if the shop was crowded. He said no. So I decided to visit the supermarket. As I walked out of the door, I covered the bottom part of my face with a surgical mask. In the car, I attempted to steel my resolve by running through the list of Tamil swear words in my vocabulary. As the junction approached, I felt I was ready to face the policemen and their abuses. I did not see any policemen at junction. I expected one to jump onto the road at any time but none did. I turned left and proceeded to the supermarket. I was utterly disappointed for I had prepared myself to receive a few abuses and had actually hoped to learn two or three new words in the process.
The Supermarket was not crowded. As in other parts of the country, a series of circles one metre apart were drawn on the ground outside its entrance. I stood inside the fourth circle. There were eight persons inside the super market. Most people in the line wore masks. The man in the third circle had brought his teenaged son along. The son wore a surgical mask but the father preferred to use his hand kerchief as a mask. In a few minutes, a tall man wearing shorts, t-shirt and mask and talking into a mobile phone tried to walk through the entrance of the shop. The security person stopped him and asked him to go to the end of the line. The man was taken aback by this and stared at the security person for a few seconds before turning around to look at the people standing in the line. All of us stared at him. He slowly walked towards the back of the line. In a few minutes, I was the first in the line.
I walked up to the security person. He sprayed a few droplets of hand sanitizer on my palms. I applied it on my palms using a compressed version of 20 second the hand wash routine (I said "Happy birthday to you" instead of singing the 20 second long "Haaaappy beeeerthday toooo yooooouuu"). He pointed his temperature gun (or whatever it is called) at my forehead and looked intently at something on the other side of gun. I felt a thrill pass through my insides. I have only seen these devices in television and cinema screens. For the first time someone was pointing the device at me. He moved the device away and asked me go in. I had passed the temperature test and got the permission to enter the supermarket. I felt like a black-robed graduate walking down from the stage with his graduation certificate in his hands. I had run through the list of essential items we required while standing in the one metre apart line. But as soon as I entered the shop, my mind went blank. I wanted to go to the right but changed my mind and went left. I stopped and went into one of the alleys, which contained many empty racks. The remaining contained biscuits, chocolates and other snacks. To clear the confusion off my mind, I picked three large packets of Parle G, two large packets of Marie and one large packet of Haldiram's Aloo Bhujia. The sight of food in the cart cleared my mind and I went around the different alleys picking the required items. As I walked towards the billing counter, I had a feeling I missed picking something important and was tempted go around the shop once more but I resisted the temptation.
On reaching home, I washed my hands using soap for twenty seconds. This pandemic has brought a lot of focus on washing hands. By the time we are through with this pandemic I would have washed my hands for more time than all the washing of hands I have done in my life prior to the start of the pandemic. Also, it has changed my style of washing hands. Earlier, it was wet my palms, apply the soap on my palms, rub the palms this way and that for a few second and wash away the soap in water. Even today, the process remains the same but the third step has expanded into six sub-steps. I did not understand the steps well till a video on WhatsApp explained it clearly. It showed a pair gloved hands applying black paint on their palms. The video clearly showed that one required six steps to ensure that the paint/soap reaches all parts of the palm. From now till end of life washing of my palms will proceed through steps 1, 2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 4, 5, and 6. Another new aspect of washing is the entry of the liquid called hand sanitizer. I have seen this liquid at a number of places before but have never trusted it. Being a staunch Indian, I don't trust a cleaning process if it does not involve water. But now I readily spread my hand for a few drops of this solution. I have a small bottle of this solution in my car and use it every time I get into the car. I find its fragrance reassuring . The quantity of alcohol present in the hand sanitizers worry me though. The one at the supermarket's billing counter had so much alcohol in it that when I got back home I had to sleep for an hour.
I have never ever typed anything in my whole life with such clean hands.
India was chugging along the Corona season with only a few cases per day when someone discovered the Nizamuddin meeting and all hell broke loose, literally. Tamilnadu reported a hundred cases one day due to the discovery of participants from this meeting who tested positive. Almost instantly many channels and people got into the Hindu - Muslim debate. This is a problem with the Government. A meeting was held with 2000 people attending it and some of the participants were foreigners. Yet the Government did not have information about this meeting for nearly ten days from the declaration of lockdown. Sadly, the meeting came to the authorities' notice due to the deaths of a few participants of this meeting in Telangana. This has turned out to be a big lapse in the government's strategy to identify potential virus carriers. I don't think we can blame the people for taking part in the meeting. The meeting commenced before the virus was considered a threat in many parts of the world. The Government should have taken care of identifying this congregation as soon as the virus became a serious threat. By Government, I mean the Delhi and Central Governments. These two Governments are not doing their jobs. They have been pointing fingers at each other and the public have suffered for many years now. The responsibility of taking care of Delhi should either be with the state or the central Government. This sharing of responsibility does not work. I think the result of the lapse will weigh heavily on the nation.
After reading the article from BBC, I sat quietly for some time. Everyone had slept and the house was quiet. This quietness did not extend to my mind. Many thoughts and worries ran around my head. At the beginning of the article the author mentions "The simulation predicted that 586,000 people would die in the US alone. If the most pessimistic estimates about Covid-19 come true, the far better named “Crimson Contagion” will seem like a day in the park". Half a million people dying in the US! Every day the worry got bigger. As I sat within the confines of my house, I felt safe but I was not really sure if this feeling of safety was like a placebo effect. The thought of dying is a complicated one. Personally, I don't think I am anxious about dying. Sooner or later, I will die. Also, I find the question "what happens after dying?" exciting. But there are others!
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