The Corona Isolation Diary – Day 13

Mahamayatala, Garia, at 6pm. Usually this intersection has about 200 cars, plus autos, rickshaes, two-wheelers, and a few hundred pedestrians.

There is so much to think about in this forced isolation … too much. There is the all-day droning of TV channels with “Corona Updates” that rehash the same numbers and same drama over and over again. There are the unwanted updates that are sprung on you after others have been googling or whatsApping, there’s the horror of one kind or another brought to you by your own social media activity. Every word, every image, every new nugget is guaranteed to make you more anxious and frankly terrified, as the world seems to be going to hell on a hand basket, aided by morons insisting on spreading the contagion far and wide, and soon to be followed by much worse times globally – in terms of economy, hunger, and more.

These are the generalized worries – the larger picture everyone is dealing with. And then there is the more specific. I cannot imagine the state of mind and health of people living in abusive homes. I cannot imagine how horrible this must be for most of my LGBT+ people, whose primary sites of violence and oppression are so often their homes. I am lucky enough not to be in either situation. I also cannot fathom how difficult this must be for people, especially women, in out patriarchal, arranged marriage based, women do the housework, sort of families. Having the menfolk and the kids home all day everyday means so much extra work for them, so much angst, and so much thankless and supportless exhaustion. I am lucky not to be in that situation either.

Most families in this country are also a forced cohabitation of people who can barely stand each other and have no such thing as communication. Parents don’t really like or know each other, or have any kind of a social interaction history with each other. Kids are like they are from another planet altogether. I am lucky to be part of a family, both natal and my own unit, where we actually like each other! We get along famously! Our interactions are fun, social, and pal-like. Even in the best of circumstances, we spend hours together playing games, giggling, laughing, making weird jokes, and so much more! So that’s another pressure I am not feeling.

In spite of this, I am seriously restless now, reeling under cabin fever, and seeing everyone’s nerves fraying, and feeling my own sizzling away to almost nothing. All the “help” I have from everyone seems not enough or wrong or misdirected, every word every tone is magnified and capable of causing huge irritation nor pain, I have to keep reminding myself that I like these people. That I love them. I do not think I could last through six months of this (The UK just warned its citizens that the London lockdown could easily last six months, I warned a friend last week that this was likely,…. Not just there, but everywhere).

                                                               

There are also fears. It is not complete isolation after all. Fellow has been venturing out, every 2-3 days, in the morning, to see what is available, top up supplies, and find whatever fresh vegetables etc can be found. What this means is repeated exposure on his part, with an immune system presumably weakened by diabetes and hypertension. This also means a better than zero chance that he is bringing the bug home. No matter how much he bathes as soon as he comes in, handling the stuff, the money, all of it carries risk, for him, and for the monkey. I am trying not to think about it too much, and just do as much as I can. Then again there is the mater, who has asked her domestic worker to start coming in again, and has been getting stuff almost every day via the watchman at her building. She is a high risk 75 year old. On top of this, while meds continue, for obvious (or not so obvious) reasons, the morning walk has been indefinitely suspended in the case of the fellow. As a diabetic, apart from the meds, the one thing keeping him fit and fine was the 10 km he walked every morning. Long term suspension of the ONLY physical activity he has is likely to have dire consequences for health – both long term and short term.

And then there are the terrors I am not quite looking in the eye… that fellow and I are sort of jokingly referring to, but not really thinking too deeply about or discussing seriously yet… because we will lose our minds if we do. We are both freelancers. What this means is that the work we do this month, pays for the expenses next month. We have no paychecks, we have no salary, and we have no provident fund or pension. This was a great idea at the time we made the change… went rogue.. and it’s worked more or less satisfactorily for the last 3 years or so. But now… already, this month, 4 or 5 things have been cancelled, which were to pay for the basic expenses next month (which include a payment of 40,000 for monkey’s school). I am working on the last of three projects right now – which will, in total, net me 20,000 early next month. So – short term – how I am going to meet the payments for next month, I haven’t a clue.

But the worse nightmare is the long term one. If the lockdown extends – and it is almost certain that it will – I am basically looking at losing all livelihood for the duration, and for however long afterwards that it takes for things to get back to normal. I won’t begin to starve until the end of another month or so, I have that many essentials in store, but after that I will have neither the groceries nor the means to pay for them until the crisis ends, plus one month (we get paid 30-45 days AFTER the work is done.) My fellow’s work is all people related, in large groups, and face to face… one can hardly do the kind of corporate training sessions we do – Online. Even if some part of it can be done using tools like Zoom, companies in India are reluctant to reimagine their training that way, and would rather just postpone the entire thing “until things settle down”. As for my work, my clients, primarily, are NGOs and other social organisations whose work in turn is people related, in large groups, and face to face. These, obviously, are not happening. And unless they happen, what am I to document, report, or write about?

I am in the unique position of being a demographic no one can see. I am not the middle class employed, working from home Indian. I am, in essence, in the same category as the unorganized, daily wager. The difference is – of course – that I have a buffer of about 2 full months before I join them in their plight. If this lasts 6 months, let alone a year, I will lose my home (mortgage payments will not be met), I have already lost health and life cover (unable to pay premiums), so if any of us falls ill now or in the near future – while this lasts – we are screwed. Considering that one of us is a hypertensive diabetic… hope is the only thing that keeps us from gibbering with sheer terror. Of course, we may not have to worry too much about losing our home 6 months from now, because if we cannot work next month, we do not eat the month after that. Soon after that, we cannot buy gas, fill petrol, pay school fees, pay credit card bills.

We shall be crashing right along with the global economic crash that this entire shebang is bringing. And I am too terrified to even think about it properly, let alone talk about it.

The Corona Isolation Diary – day 11

I’ve been thinking for a while about maintaining some kind of a record of these times… fellow wordsmith friends agree that we must write about this… have some kind of a running reckoner of what went on, how we felt, what we did. I suppose it makes sense, especially since we have no idea how long this will be or how far this will go. Is it possible that this will be a world changing, era ending, history making, and apocalyptic sort of thing? From what I see so far, quite likely it will. So, some of these narratives we leave behind, assuming the worst, will probably end up being some kind of a future “Diary of Ann Frank” sort of deal (not mine, presumably, but some).

For my little unit, this is day 11 of self-isolating, day 6 of the official countrywide lockdown. For about n5 days before the announcement, we had already been isolating, only going out for essentials. We’d been watching the progress of the virus on the news for a while, and had started to reduce unnecessary social interaction before either the statewide or nationwide lockdowns were announced. The only people engaging in regular outings… were the offspring – forced because school was open, and the mater, because gallivanting (Oh! It’s all hyped, we Indians have super immunities, etc, etc). When schools finally closed on the 18^th, we were officially self-isolating, and constantly telling the mater to do the same.

A couple of days before the announcement of the nationwide lockdown measures, I had a rude awakening when my neighbourhood grocer told me he had run out of basics. Luckily, the stores in my mother’s area still had supplies so I stocked up on the essentials enough for about 20-25 days. It took much more of an effort to convince both my fellow and my mother of the needc to stock up … because state head as well as our dear PM had said “essentials will continue to be available”. Many friends have still not got a decent stock of basic dal-chal-atta and are happy in the thought that 21 days is not that long. Others have taken a walk around their area in the mornings and are happy and assured that shops are all open.  

It’s not that simple. Given the way casual and unorganized labour is just gone… the way trucks are not being able to ply because police have no idea of what essential goods are… the way perishable food is sitting in mandis, rotting… the way vegetables and fruits are rotting in fields because there is no one to either harvest or pack or haul, and no way to sell or transport… supply chains are as good as gone. This can only mean one thing. Shortages are only a matter of time. Basic staples, meds, gas, menstrual hygiene products… we need a decent stock of these… how much is decent? I am working on a base of 30 days’ worth, and top up as we consume. I have a child at home, so I must also think of snackfoods etc. I know this may be an indefinite situation (most likely to be much longer than the 21 days announced so far), and I know I can’t really do anything about impending shortages as they happen, but I hope to have at least enough to survive on for some time.

I see so many friends on social media who are using lockdown as a time for culinary extravagance and baking sprees. While I understand the impulse to get creative, experiment, and jazz up food in the absence of much else to do, I think it is short sighted to be using up groceries in more than usual quantities. On the contrary, we should probably be thinking of rationing. At home we are limiting food to a hearty but not extravagant breakfast, lunch and dinner comprising of 2 dishes only (unlike the 4-5 of average Bengali households), and a really small something in the evening, usually just biscuits. I don’t know how long lockdown will extend, and how bad things will get soon, in terms of availability – already today there was no packaged water, eggs have been absent from the market for weeks, and vegetables are beginning to dwindle. I fear, I dread, things will get far, far worse. And soon.

The fellow finally realized where things are headed, after this morning’s hunting expedition, and has now decided to stock up on meds this evening. Given that he is a hypertensive diabetic, these are essential meds, and – in my opinion – should have been acquired last week. I fear it might already be too late. My meds, mater’s meds, and essential basics – fever, cold, stomach upset – I have already stocked up enough for more than a month. Will top up as long as available.

It may seem like a lot of gloom and doom predictions… but that’s what the situation is showing me.

Here are a few things to consider.

farmers-left-stranded-with-fruit-and-veggies-rotting-in-the-fields

Trucks stranded

Punjab farmers dumping veggies they are unable to sell due to curfew

no supplies, and food rots in mandis

“Oh! But its only 21 days na”, a good friend shrugged off my advice. IS it? Even without the special circumstances of India, places like Italy and Spain, and the US, are clearly showing us that 21 days is just not going to cut it. How are we so unimaginative that we cannot conceive how enormous this is and how bad it can get for a country as crowded as ours with systems as lax as ours?!

Look at the math. Final predicted numbers are something 60% of the population being infected. Imagine that number... Just for a minute. For a country with 134 crore people, 60% of the population is more than 80 crore people. Even if corona has the much touted and hence flouted "low fatality rate" of 3%, that's still upwards of 2.4 crore people likely to die! Let that sink in.... 2.4 CRORE. Not to mention the people who will recover but need hospitalization and ventilation for that recovery. Imagine how fast it is likely to spread, especially with the morons doing everything they can to infect the largest possible number of people, and now the migrant labour situation taking the virus to every nook and cranny of the country…

India grapples with migrant worker exodus

Thousands of migrant workers at Anand Vihar bus terminus

With us being a country of slums and the slums being perfect grounds for infecting millions at a time…

Dharavi is sitting on a time bomb

Corona has spread to Mumbai slums

The way I see it, we have barely scratched the surface. Before these first 21 days are close to over, we will start seeing cases in thousands. Not long after that, in lakhs. Given our subpar health care systems, absolute lack of facilities, and shockingly few numbers of testing centers, isolation beds, and ventilators, many more people will die than necessary, because they will not have access to life saving care or meds. The sheer pressure on the existing system is likely to also crash the entire medical system, making care and emergency treatment difficult – if not impossible – for people with other medical issues. I hope no one I know catches dengue, or has a heart attack or stroke in the next 6 or so months. What the pandemic will do to the economy, to livelihoods, to supply chains, and more, globally and much more so in India, … well, that’s the stuff of my worst nightmares and fodder for dystopian literature. I am sure looting and food riots are not very far off… neither are curfews and army on the streets.

What this will mean for me and my little unit… I don’t know, but I am very, very afraid. Best case scenario… we survive, and when this is finally over, we start from scratch, trying to adjust to a world that is very different from what it is today.