COVID19 DAY 6 (30.3.2020)

COVID19 DAY 6 (30.3.2020)

By day six people are becoming used to the lockdown though as the days go by and news comes in from all parts of the world the risks of COVID19 virus flu are becoming clearer to the people. The festive air that had followed the first one-day curfew last Sunday seems to have evaporated at least in urban areas. The importance of social or physical distancing seems to have sunk in.

But the same seriousness does not seem to have percolated down to the countryside. Vishal, a student who has returned to his village from Delhi due to the lockdown, says that people in his village, a few kilometres from the town of Sonipat on the Grand Trunk Road, are taking things lightly. But Vishal himself has moved to the village from his house at Sonipat since the town has reported cases of Covid19. Gurgaon though is the town in Haryana that has reported the highest number of cases.

Vishal reports that though the menace of this deadly flu is yet to enter the rural areas, the lockdown is already posing problems as there is no labour available to cut the wheat crop which is ready. 

Only vendors are allowed at the main vegetable market which is open from five in the morning. Since ordinary people are not allowed into the market, the vendors have formed a cartel and sell vegetables at higher prices than the people are used to. The administration has also stopped construction work leaving the labour to idle with no wages and no means to take them to their homes. Locals however are doing some screening and are distributing sanitisers.

COVID19 DAY 5 (29.3.2020)

People queue up for food at New Kondli, East Delhi (photo: NISHI SHARMA)

As the lockdown entered its fifth day, I began to notice some positives though the worldwide infected figures has is well above the half-million mark. India, luckily has just over 1100 cases. An old lady in Hyderabad is of the opinion that the Americans and Europeans and Americans have been hit harder by the virus than Indians as the latter are a hardier people. But I am not very sure.

 The Prime Minister had exhorted the people to be kind to animals. His advice has been taken seriously and I saw a few young women on the main road feeding the numerous stray dogs. The dogs of course showed their great appreciation of the thoughtfulness by vigorously wagging their tails. They also seemed to be smiling in welcome.

The government too has become wiser than before in treating the citizens. They distributed food packets to the people in the village across the road to people who had been unable to stock up. We were told that the distribution took place in the morning, afternoon and evening.

Nishi Sharma from New Kondli in East Delhi bordering Noida reports that the lockdown is being enforced strictly, with only medicine shops being allowed to open. Other shops can open from seven to ten in the morning and from six to nine in the evening. The Delhi government has made food available for daily wagers and poor people twice a day at a government school. The most to suffer from the lockdown are autorickshaw drivers, vendors, rickshaw pullers and domestic servants.

The big need of the hour seems to be protective equipment for those treating COVID19 patients. The requirement of personal protective equipment (PPE), those space suit like things that we see doctors and health workers wearing (in India only in Kerala) which prevent the transmission of this deadly disease, is estimated to be in lakhs. Millions of masks are also needed but not seen. Not that this is the situation only in India. The United States is also suffering from these shortages. But to add, this kind of protective equipment is required by workers at medical stores as well as municipal workers who collect garbage most urgently as they are equally at risk. Protective clothing is also essential for delivery boys and courier services. Let us learn from China and not the United States!!

This brings me to the ‘China’ angle of the pandemic. Many people are now busy trying to find out whether China is hiding cases of COVID19. Some want to immediately expel China from the United Nations Security Council for its misdemeanours. But I am at a loss to understand how the answer to this question will check the rampage of the disease in Europe or America and now even Asia and Africa.

Sakshi Srivastava reports from Dehra Dun that the lockdown is being implemented pretty strictly in the town. Some construction labour who had wanted to walk back to their homes in the terai district of Lakhimpur Kheri has been persuaded by the police to stay back on the promise that they would be provided with the necessary food. They are now back at the construction site in Prem Nagar.

COVOD19 DAY 4 (28.3.2020)

Time seemed to be hanging heavy on my hands as the lockdown entered its fourth day. So, what does it mean for everyone? Stay in the limited space at home with your entire family, be it large or small. There is no rush in the morning to finish the breakfast as you want to be in time for office and avoid a possible brush-in with your boss or a teacher who latches the door from the inside so that you can’t enter if you are late or even those who have that interview to face. Idleness not only brings an emptiness but also a great deal of tension and irritability.

Many years ago I read in a self-help book that the most difficult thing to do in the world is structuring time. For most of us somebody else does the structuring for us. Working hours at the office, usually nine-to-five makes it easy. Get up early, reach office by nine, lunch at around one p.m. and by four-thirty we are already preparing to go home. If you live at a reasonable distance from the office, you get home between six and six-thirty. A spot of tea and then the usual television shows and news, maybe a sundowner and then dinner and bed. The routine is followed daily except the weekends. But by the time one is out of the office mood it is already black Monday. The same goes for school or college or any other profession. Perhaps the most unstructured among professions is the media in which there is no fixed time to go to or leave office.

Some people can work from home online but then imagine the person who worked in the Maruti factory that has been shut. He can’t manufacture cars from home!! So for most people its just idling. The Health Ministry, I find has come up with some suggestions in the form of a one-minute film in which psychiatrists give advice. So, the first advice is to have a routine and stay positive. More sane advice follows – minimise watching news channels and play indoor games like carrom or chess or watch films or read that storybook that you have always been meaning to but never found the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuKhtSehp24&list=PL1a9DHjZmejE-Ep2PAu2OR8HBfLP0BLIk&index=9&t=0s

Lots of people on the road with bags strapped to their shoulders making their way to their villages. One of the cleaning staff in my apartments lives belongs to Badaun but is not going back as it is too far. He lives with his wife and four children live in Noida. But he says many of his neighbours have already left. Of course, there were the videos of at the Anand Vihar bus station in Delhi. But I find that the police are now using a humane approach and were not really bothering them.

The government activity has increased on COVID19 is clear from a sharp spurt in press releases after 20^th March.

COVID19 LOCKDOWN DAY3 (27.3.2020)

Social distancing means that we all must avoid contact with others as far as possible. That has meant that people should stay at home and only go out to buy essential food and medicines only.

Like many other people, the moment the Prime Minister’s announcement of a three-week lockdown came on Tuesday night, my son and daughter rushed to the markets to buy stuff to stock up. Of course, we have stocked up enough to last out a couple of months. But what about those who are on daily wages? We saw the plight of many of them on television as many men queued up for food and many others were stopped at the border as they tried to get home.

Often, I look at the houses in the village across the road and wonder how much residents have been able to stock up. On old gentleman I called up told me that they did not have vegetables but were prepared to hole up for a couple of months surviving on whatever rice and dal they had at home. Besides, he and his wife have halved their intakes to stretch things out longer.

Last night the Health Minister came on TV and gave details of steps taken by his ministry to combat the COVID19 outbreak. I was not surprised to hear that he had moved very quickly after the first case had been identified in China and formed a group of experts as early as January 8 to make recommendations on how to minimise the impact. I had seen Dr. Harsh Vardhan in action when he was the Delhi health minister tackling the 1994 pneumonic plague and wiping out polio through pulse polio. The first case (in Kerala) was identified on January 30, according to a government release. A month later by the first week of March the number of positive cases had risen to 29, according to a statement in the Rajya Sabha by the Health Minister. But for the past few days we are being told that there is severe shortage of test kits, personal protective equipment (PPE) and even ventilators.

US President Donald Trump has to take the cake. It was only some weeks back that he had declared the COVID19 pandemic as a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats to make him lose this year’s presidential election. He even snidely called the virus the “Chinese” virus triggering off prejudice against Americans of Chinese origin. Now he has to eat humble pie as the United States seeks Chinese help as the number of cases in the US has exceeded that in China. He is more respectful of the Chinese and these days desists from calling COVID19 as the “Chinese virus”.

COVID19 LOCKDOWN DAY 2 (26.3.2020)

We are getting used to the lockdown – staying confined to our homes, not going out and stocking up and rationing food. Some shops are still open. But it could be risky visiting markets too often. People in the urban village across the street are getting restive. Some of them are playing football while others while the time on the terraces. Policemen, it seems, are taking a more human approach now following widespread complaints on the first day. Did not see a single police patrol vehicle throughout the day.

But the remarkable thing that the virus has done to humans, apart from making them sick and killing them, is to force them to bring their lives to a halt. The downside is obvious but it is not without its positives. The air for example has become much cleaner and the real colour of the sky (blue) is visible. Visibility too has improved and I can see buildings that are at least eight to 10 kilometres away. I have become more aware of birds and animals and their sounds.

One of my acquaintances, Benoy Behl, says that it is easy to understand the responsibility of human beings in destroying the habitats of bats and other animals and keeping them in conditions of “extreme stress and misery.” Animals that are used to running around or flying free are in terrible circumstances sometimes in cages one of top of another. Chicken are kept awake all the time so that they eat more and fatten quicker for our tables and are kept in crowded conditions. Their resistance to disease therefore naturally is impaired as circumstances for them are terrible and terrifying for them. They could easily become the breeding grounds for deadly viruses that we are seeing with increasing regularity in recent years.

Mr. Behl, who photographs and documents Indian art and architecture, feels that Indian philosophy holds out a positive message for the world at this juncture as we all try to figure out and tackle the calamity that seems to be overtaking us. in Indian philosophy, he says regarded all the living beings of the world as deeply united. “There is no separate compartment for animals or birds. They are all ‘jeeva’, living beings. We are helped to understand this by the concepts of our own past births in the form of different animals. Even the Buddha is seen in previous births as a buffalo, as a monkey, a boar, an elephant and so many other animals. 

“We are indeed taught to respect the dignity and emotions of all the animals and birds around us.  

I am putting a photograph of the Mahisha Jataka, in a 5^th century painting taken by Mr. Behl. Gautama Buddha is seen in a previous birth as a buffalo. The pesky monkey troubles him but the kindly bodhisattva does not mind. In fact, you will see a smile on the face of the Mahisha (buffalo).

“If we are daily guided by love in all that we do, all will be fine in this world and there will be no terrible epidemic after this one.”

Very useful advice as we are forced to rethink the way we organised our lives. In fact, it echoes the thoughts of the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi, much reviled and little understood by contemporary Indians.

COVID19 LOCKDOWN DAY 1 (25.5.2020)

Having heard of lockdowns from all over the world from Kashmir to Spain, we had the first experience of it on 25^th March though with one difference – the internet had not been shut. Streets were largely deserted though unlike on earlier occasion, no one came out to bang pots and pans. Policemen on motorbikes and cars patrolled the streets threatening to beat people with sticks unless they kept indoors.

In the village next door, many people spent their curfew hours on their terraces. Long lines of clothes washing show that they have taken the advice to stay clean seriously. The guard who is at our gates lives in that village and said that many grocers’ shops were open and vegetables were also available. But most of the shops visible from our apartments were closed. A few cars, buses, trucks passed by while some of the more adventurous rode on bicycles. It was a field day for the dogs who set up a clamour at regular intervals.

In the USA meanwhile, Mr. Trump jumped from indiscretion to indiscretion as he appeared to be more interested in getting the economy started rather than in controlling the fast spreading virus that has already claimed nearly a thousand lives. One American called him a moron who is more interested in furthering his own political career than to act in a national emergency.

The dance of death marches on in Italy while matters are not much better in neighbouring Spain. Iran, France, Britain and Germany too have been hit.

CORONA HAS STRUCK!!!

A couple of weeks back I was explaining the importance of communication for development and referred to the corona pandemic. One of the students was of the opinion that it was being overhyped. I am sure he has changed his mind by now as the number of those infected by this deadly virus – Covid19 in India has crossed 600. Two weeks back Delhi and NCR were reporting its first cases. This figure has already multiplied several times.

I am touching 65 years and have never experienced anything like it in my lifetime. I was born seven years after independence and by the time I reached school deaths in large numbers were to be encountered only in history books. The most recent at that time used to be about the Bengal famine and the violent clashes that accompanied partition of India.

Of course, there were still some killer infectious diseases around like  small pox  and cholera with typhoid thrown into the mixture. School children were administered vaccines for small pox – the liquid vaccine would be put on the soft inside part of our forearms and the skin lacerated with the help of pins embedded in a small disc at the end of a steel shaft. They were usually not very painful though some people did react somewhat adversely with swollen arms and fever. The painful one was a vaccine known as TABC that was injected in the biceps.

Personally speaking, I never came across anyone suffering from any of the above infections though one could see some people with deep small pox scars. ‘Pockmark’ was the epithet used by sailors, no doubt for those of their colleagues who thad been victims of this usually deadly disease. But by the time I was heading out of school, small pox vaccinations were discontinued and we were told that the scourge had been wiped out of India.

Those had been days of the victory of the medical world over microbe and someone had even thoughtfully compiled the biographies of doctors who had developed anti-dotes for some killer pathogens. I have forgotten the name of the author but the title of the book was ‘The Microbe Hunters’ and contained the names of such pioneers and Robert Koch, Ronald Ross, Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur.

But the situation now is just a reverse of it and a microbe is threatening to overwhelm man with all his technology and ego. What perhaps is the most shocking is that its victims as of now are mostly in the world’s most industrialised countries. Usually it is the fate of poor Asians and Africans to bear the brunt of disease and death. Who ever could imagine that a country like Italy or Britain or the United States could face the wrath of the deadly pandemic with a confused response from their leaderships. If this could happen to them, what lies in store for us, is the question on the minds of many Indians.