Lockdown Chronicles #3

As I sit down to write this, outside my window is a white curtain of rain. Every now and then, when the wind picks up, it flutters like a real curtain. Today, June 4, is the first day of what in Maharashtra has been officially dubbed Mission Begin Again (it is not known if this is because someone in the Maharashtra government is a huge fan of Mark Ruffalo). This, if the Maharashtra government is to be believed, should be my last lockdown chronicle.

Mission Begin Again is the first step towards ‘unlocking’ the lockdown. It was supposed to have started yesterday and I thought of its timing when I opened my door at around 4pm and found the day’s newspaper. One instead of the three that I subscribe to, but still, it was an actual newspaper. It’s been two months since newspapers were delivered in my part of Mumbai and as I brought the flimsy, thin roll of newsprint into the house, I realised I’ve already lost the morning habit of newspaper and tea.

At 4.15pm, on Wednesday, I sat down with a cup of tea and opened up the newspaper to read the news that I already knew. 

If the cyclone hadn’t disrupted the state’s programming, I would have opened the newspaper on Wednesday morning to learn that on day one of Mission Begin Again, Mumbai’s doubling rate had slowed down (from 11-12 days to 19 days) and for the first time since Covid-19 reached Indian shores, the infection’s growth rate in Maharashtra had been below the national average for three consecutive days. Without cyclone warnings to splash across the front page, this would have been big news. It would have been just the kind of news a state would want to share with the public as it crossed its fingers and started lifting restrictions imposed to curb the spread of Covid-19.

This is the kind of scepticism that has become normal for us in the age of disguised propaganda and obviously-malicious misinformation.

On Wednesday, Maharashtra reported 122 deaths, the highest in a day so far.

Going through my journal of random Covid statistics, I note that since May 5, I’ve jotted down “highest daily spike in cases ” six times. The last time was on May 31, when there were 8,392 cases in India. On three days, I’ve written “highest number of deaths”. Today, Thursday, June 4, there are additions to both those categories as Maharashtra and India have reported new highs: 2,933 new cases in Maharashtra and 9,304 in India; and the number of deaths keeps rising (“123 deaths in Maha — highest in a day but health dept says 30 are from last two days and the rest, April 30-June 1. Confusing.”).

My notes are not comprehensive. This notebook isn’t even a journal technically. It’s a planner that has since been repurposed because planning seems particularly ridiculous when nothing in our everyday life seems to change even though in the world beyond the boundaries of the home, cosmic spanners seem to be thrown at regular intervals.

There are only a few bright spots (“Mackerel clouds!” on May 15; “Douglas — Myself worshipping at the altar of Hannah Gadsby. What a goddess.” on May 27). The last 30 days have been hard, with two cyclones and too many lay-offs adding to the general problem of living through a pandemic. In America — which is so far away and yet feels so close because it’s compressed into internet clips that bring the sights, sounds, horrors, heartbreak and strength of a distant nation into our homes — the lights of the White House were turned off and masked, armed soldiers ensured protesters didn’t gather at Lincoln Memorial. Most of us in India may not know where Minneapolis is, but many of us have watched George Floyd being killed by a (white) Minneapolis policeman. The protest videos from America are powerful because they show the kind of strength we would all like to imbibe. Instead of the numb horror that we have internalised as normal, we would like to rage like the Americans have when subjected to a police car deliberately driving into a cluster of civilians; when we’re being told to calm down by the very authorities that are denying us our rights. Increasingly, I’m convinced that heads of state from the rest of the world (particularly the autocratic, dictator types) have funded Trump’s presidential campaign. He makes everyone else look so good. Watch the American president at work, and you can only feel relief that he’s not your leader. Our leader(s) in India may be mismanaging the things in the country, but at least their response to a police crackdown on protesters isn’t a tweet that reads “LAW & ORDER!”, as though he’s taking part in a quiz about TV shows from the 1990s.

Then again, at least he writes his own tweets and comes out to face reporters regularly — only to make an exhibition of his idiotic arrogance, yes, but at least there are press conferences and at least some journalist at press conferences ask good, tough questions. Here in India, we only see our leader through televised addresses, which I at least will never again watch without turning on the closed-caption button.

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Next to America’s hyper-documented present is the lenticular print that is India. I wish there was a more pleasant-sounding term for lenticular prints. These are layered images that create an illusion — the top image flickers to reveal more or completely transform the image when you see it from a different angle. Look straight at India and it looks like we’re doing fine — a strict lockdown; a low fatality rate; helplines for those who need to be admitted to hospitals; government spokespersons reiterating there is no community transmission of Covid-19 in the country. (Sure, the economy is tanking, but which country’s isn’t, courtesy this pandemic? And yes we’re in seventh position in WHO’s ranking of countries most affected by Covid-19, but surely that’s because we have a large population?)

Tilt this (somewhat) reassuring tableau, and you see the millions of Indians who are beating their heads against the wall of apathy, ineptitude, prejudice and callousness whose every brick has been cemented by this pandemic.  There are those who have been frustrated by unhelpful helplines as they try to get tested or get family members admitted to Covid-19 hospitals. People have waited as long as 24 hours for civic authorities to find them a bed with a ventilator. It’s becoming harder and harder to get tested — whether this is because of a shortage of tests, or because laboratories are overwhelmed, or because civic authorities are tweaking the guidelines so that fewer tests are conducted, we don’t know.

Wiggle that picture-perfect postcard of Incredible India, and you’ll see how our government has used the pandemic to carry out its conservative, hateful agenda. Activists who protested peacefully have been arrested while politicians who actually delivered hate speech remain footloose and fancy free. Activist-lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj (whose family was last able to contact her on March 14) remains in jail as do 81-year-old activist-poet Varavara Rao, despite reporting “giddiness and other health issues”, and the wheelchair-bound GN Saibaba. Courts are denying bail to those falsely accused of making inflammatory speeches, stating grounds like “when you choose to play with embers, you cannot blame the wind for carrying the spark”. Multiple states have diluted and dismissed labour laws to create what Centre of Indian Trade Unions has described as “conditions of slavery” for workers.

Then there are the migrant labourers and daily-wagers, who stayed on in the cities they’ve helped build, expenses gnawing into their meagre savings and starvation slipping a little deeper under their skin with every hopeless day. After more than a month of keeping migrant workers in relief camps (many of which sounded like prison with less food), the Centre started running special trains to take workers back to their home states on May 1. By end-May, a little more than five million workers had won the lottery of a seat on these trains, which seems pretty good until you realise that between May 9 and May 20, 80 people have died on board these trains. Mohan Lal Sharma was reduced to a crumpled, decomposing body in a train loo; Arveena Khatoon’s child tried to wake her up, not knowing the 23-year-old mother had died, possibly of thirst, hunger and heat. Usually, even the shortest train trip is a punctuated by meals (tea + biscuits; juice + snack; soup + meal + ice cream), but Arveena had travelled for two days without any food. Going through the stories that PARI has done during the lockdown, you get a glimpse of what’s hidden under our Covid-19 statistics.

We may not have video evidence of this, but there is a knee on India’s neck. Some of us can’t breathe. Some are standing aside, like the three officers who ensured no one interrupted Derek Chauvin as he choked the life out of George Floyd. The rest of us are horrified witnesses, barely capable of comprehending what is being done in our name and dealing with our survivors’ guilt by manically seeking out distractions.

Flipping through my planner-turned-Covid-chronicle, I can see I made a concerted effort to fill the pages. Since May 5, there are seven days for which I’ve written down “blank” in big, neat letters (rather than just leaving the page blank). On one of those days, I remember getting the news that one of the nicest people in my office had been asked to leave. On another, my menstrual cramps had plunged me in such agony that despite the humid May heat, the only comfort was to stand under the shower and have viciously-hot water beat down on my lower back (there is just one line written on this day’s page: “Let menopause come. PLEASE.”). Most pages have Covid-related news — “16 migrants run over by cargo train”; “India crosses 1 lakh cases”; “Maha regularly reporting more than 2,000 cases daily”; “New BMC guidelines for testing and tracing”; “Lockdown extended to June 30” – and the number of cases and deaths recorded in Maharashtra and Mumbai.

I notice that there few mentions of an improving recovery rate and nothing about the days when the lowest number of cases were recorded. This is not because I’m seeking to steep myself in depressing news, but because surrounded as I am by illusions and performances, I need this journal to be real.

Since the middle of May, there are more cars and people on the road in Bandra. It’s almost as people believe they can will Covid-19 to disappear if they’re belligerent enough while pretending the pandemic is not real. Cars, driven by owners, shriek as they race through otherwise empty streets, breaking driving rules that the drivers either don’t know or can’t be bothered to follow. At shops, crowds masquerade as lines and there are more sunglasses than masks on display. More and more domestic help have been asked to resume work, but in a way that keeps their employers’ conscience shiny (eg. Overheard at Carter Road bandstand: “My maid called me and said, ‘Didi, please. I’m so bored at home’ so I said, ok come. I wouldn’t DREAM of asking her to come but if she wants to, it’s not fair to not let her, na? Who knows, maybe her husband beats her and work is her escape?”).

Meanwhile the streets of Bandra are lined with desperately-poor people, particularly women and children, who have come to this affluent part of the city in the hope that it will be charitable. Most of us try to be, but we also do our best to not make eye contact with them, refusing these people the simple courtesy of being acknowledged, mostly because we’re grappling with the guilt of knowing that what should be a basic right is a privilege in this country. A privilege that we, with our masks and sunglasses and gloves, have and hoard.

The police are sick of chasing morning and evening walkers off the bandstands. “You think I like doing this?” said the policeman who caught me smuggling a sunset and politely asked me to get off Carter Road bandstand. He was on a white scooter. “It’s driving all of us mad. Just stay home for a few more days. We keep telling people but still they keep coming. You can take all the sunset photos you want, go anywhere you want, but after May 31. For now, do us a favour and stay home. Anyway, these summer sunsets are boring. You want a good picture? Wait for the proper monsoon clouds,” he advised, unaware that this was very much a case of preaching to the choir. I almost opened up my Instagram to show him my cloud photos from last year.  

[image error]The cop is right about monsoon clouds, but this is not half bad.

While walking back, a woman stopped me to ask if the police are around. Standing on Carter Road, with the occasional four-wheel drive roaring past us, we chatted about policing and a civilian’s right to sunsets. Our tones are so warm and full of laughter that bystanders must think we’re old friends. We’ve never met before. All we have in common is a burning desire to get out of the house and an intention to upload sunset photos on Instagram.

As we talk, our gestures are exaggerated. She pulls her mask down briefly and then pulls it back up, as though the nose, lips, chin and cheeks she just flashed me are a secret sign. I keep laughing audibly in an effort to communicate sociability through the mask under which I’m sweating, partly because it’s hot and partly because small talk makes me nervous. She keeps looking at the sun and that’s when I realise she’s chosen me to (a) kill time until the sun’s at the perfect level for the photo she wants to take, (b) be her wingman if the cop shows up in his white scooter. Lurking in this is a reversal of the idea of the prince on the white charger, which the feminist cultural critic in me appreciates even while the introvert in me wants to walk away from this conversation with a stranger right. now.

 “It’s hard to convince yourself that there’s real need to worry,” said my non-friend while keeping an eye on the setting sun. “After all, how many people do you know who have Covid-19?” It’s meant to be a rhetorical question, but I have an answer. “Eight,” I reply. Even with her mask covering most of her face, I can see she’s taken aback. In fact, she actually takes a step back. The conversation ends abruptly after that.

In the last month, from my little circle of friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances in India, one person has died of Covid-19; two were asymptomatic positives (one spent 25 days in quarantine, repeatedly testing positive, but without showing any symptoms); five have symptoms that are considered mild and are in home quarantine; one is in ICU.

There’s a video I saw of a cat hunting a bird. The bird stood around, preening, drinking water from a little puddle. The cat sat, watching and moving almost imperceptibly closer to the bird every now and then. Almost two minutes later, when it pounced on the bird, it came as a shock to both the bird and me that the cat had actually come as close as it had. Covid-19, to me, feels like that apex predator. It’s moving slowly, imperceptibly closer, every few days. To the woman I was talking to, however, it’s a distant, blurry outline of threat that she can ignore if she moves away from people like me and those who are considered high-risk. 

At some point in the last 30 days, Covid-19 changed — not as an infection, but as a social construct. From a rich man’s disease, afflicting those who can afford international travel, it became something that affects the poor. When it was a disease carried to India by those with international frequent flier miles, the privileged locked themselves up, bought sanitisers, and wore masks. Two months in, the face of Covid-19 is no longer of a person with holiday photos in Florence or New York City. Instead, it’s associated with migrant workers and the urban poor, especially after slums areas like Dharavi started reporting spikes in the number of cases and deaths. Covid-19 became something that the rich think they no longer need to worry about. It affects and infects ‘them’, not ‘us’.

Disease is not the great leveller. It does, however, expose the fault lines in our society. The way it moves through a population shows the inequalities and skewed priorities. The way we tackle it shows the biases we are unwilling to let go. Each time I go to the market, I see more people wearing surgical gloves. Some put the change they get from a vendor into a separate bag. I’ve been forwarded instructions to sanitise fruits and vegetables bought from street vendors. We’re trying to slow down a disease that spreads through contact, so there is some sense in doing all this. Yet I can’t shake off the feeling that there are more people willing to wear gloves than masks, because untouchability and maintaining a physical distance from those we consider beneath us, is something we’ve imbibed as natural.

Perhaps the most telling sign of this being the end of days is that ultimately, Mumbai found beauty and relief in, of all things, a cyclone.

India has weathered two cyclones in the past fortnight. Cyclone Amphan made landfall near Sagar Island on May 20 and even after Bonbibi’s Sunderbans had absorbed the worst of the storm, it savaged stretches of southern Bengal.

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Wind raged through Kolkata at more than 120kmph, uprooting 5,000-odd trees and ripping the city’s infrastructure apart. Many parts of the city and the state lost power as electricity poles came crashing down. Crops were destroyed, people’s homes were devastated and 72 were killed. Amid these horrors were fragments of terrifying beauty — a tree is so brilliantly aflame that even columns of rain couldn’t douse it; the thick sweet smell of ripe mangoes filling the air after the precious fruit was thrown to the ground by vicious wind; a neighbourhood in darkness, lit up briefly by the firework of an exploding transformer box; the swirling thickness of grey-blue clouds gathering over different parts of the city, turning the tallest skyscrapers puny and against whose darkness, the white dome of Victoria Memorial, with her angel, stood out.

A little more than a week after Amphan, there was news of a cyclonic storm developing in the Arabian Sea. The cyclone was named Nisarga and projections suggested it would make landfall north of Mumbai. For a city that’s teeming with people and tottering, flimsy shacks, this is worrying. For a city like that which is also a Covid-19 hotspot, has been in lockdown and whose streets are currently lined with the poor and homeless, this is disastrous.

Mumbai is used to rain caused by cyclones going past it, but thanks to steering winds and the subtropical ridge, it’s never been directly hit. That track record remains intact. Nisarga first shifted course so that the landfall site changed from north of Mumbai (near Dahanu) to south of Mumbai. When Nisarga finally made landfall, it was in Raigad. Mumbai saw some wind and rain, and some stunning clouds in the evening as the satellite images showed Nisarga had moved inland.

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And so it was that the city lived up to the old name given to it by the Portuguese — Bom Bahia or “good bay” — as the winds that have protected the city for centuries, did their thing.

Then, because this city likes keeping everyone on their toes and the IMD is reliably unreliable, the day after the cyclone, the rain came down hard. Thunder rolled every few seconds, the sun disappeared, the wind picked up and sheets of almost opaque rain crashed down on the city.

Since I started writing this post in the morning, there’s been one weak moment of sunshine in the whole day and that lasted just a few minutes. It’s 1am now, and the storm is rattling my windows. It sounds like it’s laughing as it rushes past mostly-dark buildings and through headbanging trees. Despite everything, I find myself smiling. This rain, even as it drowns parts of the city and fills the lakes that supply us with water through the year, is not a disaster. It’s a familiar.

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