Since the whole world is doing a review of 2021 and reading / watching best of 2021, I thought it is in opportune moment to review the biggest thing in our life right now, no, not our beer belly but the Pandemic. I use the words ‘so far’ as the Pandemic is far from over and we are still very much in it. Till when is anybody’s guess right now.
It is December 2019 and the pandemic started as every Sci-fi disaster movie starts, rumours of something strange happening in the Orient. There is some news of a strange illness spreading in China which is leading to massive hospitalizations. I hear the news and dismiss it as I am on vacation in Mauritius and Dubai. The beaches in Mauritius and the streets in Dubai are packed, people are pushing each other to see the shitty fountain show in the Dubai mall and I am totally oblivious to the fact that the world is about to be upended. By the time I am taking a return flight to Madrid, I begin to see masks at the airport for the first time and this time it is not just the South East Asian people wearing them.
I am back in office in January 2020 and my colleagues start to religiously track the cases, initially every day and then every hour sitting in the office. The cruise liner Diamond Princess is in the news a lot for being a virus hotspot, while things in China are becoming more hush-hush every day. The scientists have termed this the Novel Coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2. Having seen the mad panic about Ebola, SARS and Nippah virus in India and then amounting to little, I dismiss it offhand and make fun of the people who are panicking. I fall sick in late February, the good old Flu virus is the cause, I ask the doctor if I this could be the new sickness but he asks about my travel history and symptoms and this says it cannot be Covid. At this time there are no tests in Spain and nobody understands the symptoms well, or even the fact that the symptoms are so varied.
It is March
2020; by now everyone has their appetite ruined by seeing that bat soup photo
from China which supposedly caused all this. My colleagues are panicking more
and more every day here in Spain. They keep wondering what will happen work
wise as well about the disease spreading. I keep making fun of them for
worrying so much, the joke is going to be on me soon though. My wife is saying
there is going to be a lockdown tomorrow, she keeps saying this for 3
continuous days and I keep dismissing this as a rumour. It is 12th
March, at lunch time one of my colleague gets a call from his wife, she says
shelves are emptying out fast from the supermarket near their house. Another
guy hears this and calls his wife to run to the supermarket and grab as many
things as she can. This starts a chain reaction and all 4 of my colleagues from
Infy run to their homes at lunch. One guy calls back saying there is a Pharmacy
which is having masks, one for 10 Euro and should he buy one for me. I say no
and message my wife saying these people are overreacting. At this time the
official advice is not to wear a mask because of the shortage and leave them
for the medical personnel. My wife upon hearing this begs me to go to the
supermarket and get at least a few things. I sigh and say fine I will go. I go
up to talk to my Spanish boss, he joins me in making fun of the panicking
people, he says Madrid is a city of 6 million and 600 people are sick, the
chances of meeting a sick person is 1 in 10,000, might as well play the lottery
then. We should have. That evening upon entering my apartment building I see a
woman carrying two shopping bags full of toilet paper. I hold the door open for
her and it takes a few seconds for the sinking feeling to start. I throw my
laptop bag and run to the supermarket, but it is already too late, the shelves
are empty; toilet paper, vegetables, frozen food, rice, pasta, eggs, meat,
beer, everything is gone. I try 3 different supermarkets and the situation is
the same in all of them. Everywhere on the street I see people carrying
shopping bags running helter-skelter. The lockdown is announced next day and my
boss calls me saying this was totally out of the blue and it is only for a few
weeks so no need to worry. So I don’t. Madrid used to be always full of hustle
bustle, even at 2 AM in Winter, but now it looks like a ghost town.
It is April
2020; the lockdown is extended again for another 2 weeks. Military has blocked
Madrid’s exit roads and helicopters are flying overhead to spot any traffic.
Police are on the roads to ensure you are not more than 1 Km away from your
house and are only going to buy food and medicine (alcohol and cigarettes are
considered one of these two I assume). My parents are very anxious as news of
cases of Italy and Spain flood the TVs everywhere. There are horror stories of
hospitals overwhelmed, doctors crying, nurses having breakdowns, entire old age
homes abandoned with all old people in it dead. Suddenly it does not feel so
funny anymore to me.
India also goes under lockdown and thali peeto and people dancing on the streets has happened. Back there everyone is treating it as a vacation. There are so many videos of people getting beaten up by police being circulated as comedy gold and Whatsapp is flooded with so many people trying to get back in touch. It is new Whatsapp groups and Zoom calls galore. My parents are also under lockdown in Mauritius but unlike in Spain everything is closed. By everything I mean everything, and they have run out of vegetables and some food essentials. We frantically try to search something online for them but it is only government approved ration kits which are available, nothing else. They are not going to starve but they are having a tough time with no local friends and no access to any official news.
Everyone
keeps talking about breaking the infection chain, identifying the sources, the
Korea model, the Bangalore model, Modi’s masterstroke with the lockdown,
Community transmission etc.. I have hope that once the infection spread chain
is broken then life will get back to normal. Utterly, utterly laughable in
retrospect. People everywhere have turned expert Epidemiologists, Virologists
and Immunologists all-in-one, similar to how they would turn into expert
cricketer, manager and bookie all in one at the time of IPL.
Talking of
Embassies and evacuation. I watch the movie Airlift around this time since I
have too much free time and all the possible streaming subscriptions at this
time (except Apple TV, because fuck Apple). Now, I have never been really
patriotic and there is a reason I don’t live in India and I will talk about in
a subsequent blog post, but this time and that movie made me realize the
importance of your nation. Doesn’t matter how Spanish I try to get and how many
people I try to convince that despite the high number of cases it is better to
be right now in Spain and I don’t want to go home, since I am home but I really
needed India to help me if things got worse. I guess India really did help a
lot of their stranded people by bringing them home and so did Infosys, with its
chartered flights and what not. Though India did shit the bed later but let’s
talk about it when the time comes.
It is the summer of 2020; life is slowly getting back to normal. Sorry scratch that, to the new normal. We take a small trip to the Canary Islands, but Spain isn’t what it used to be in Summer, bars are closed, beaches are deserted and many things are blocked from access. Though we really needed that vacation, my wife was working crazy hours and I was having difficulty sleeping with the all the stress, negativity, and the feeling of being cooped up in our small one-bedroom apartment. So many crazy things keep happening in the next few months: people get on their balconies every day at 8 PM to clap, doctors dance one in a hospital near our house, Police plays music on their car sirens one day, Baba Ramdev release the Corona cure Coronil #NeverForget, people start hailing India Vishwa Guru once more, there are talks of vaccines and herd immunity and how Sweden didn’t have a lockdown and nothing happened (something did happen, Google it if you like), my brother has to keep his bar closed for months and he is haemorrhaging money. My client stops working because no one is buying cars right now. One guy in Infy Spain gets his contract terminated due to a Force Majeure clause. My colleagues frantically call me asking if there are going to be firings, since we cannot work and we cannot go back to India. I assure them that is not going to be the case, though I am not sure myself. My anxiety increases and so does my weight due to all the eating and drinking. I pick up a video game after 10 years – Age of Empires II, I play it with my friends online.
It is
Autumn 2020, there is second wave of Covid in Spain and things close down
again, by this time I have stopped reading the news and seeing the latest rules
for Corona. I am locked down in my house and I don’t and can’t care anymore.
There were mass firings in my wife’s office and one of her very good friend
lost her job and left Madrid. Another couple that we know also moves out of
Madrid, my Infosys colleagues leave too. There are hardly any people we know in
the city anymore.
It is
Winter 2020, and the 2nd wave continues going up and down. My
project in Spain is over and I need to leave, my boss asks me to get the visa
for Germany. I start getting the paperwork done for my visa. I swear that every
time a third world county tries to get a visa for Europe or America a
rainforest disappears from Earth in photocopies and forms. I have spent 5 years
in Spain and I can get a PR but something seems to have disappeared from Madrid
or maybe from me. Looks like the soul has gone, from one of us. That year there
is heavy snow in Madrid, the most in a century, normally it does not snow in
Madrid. And this isn’t the only freak weather occurrences of 2020, there were
heat waves, forest fires with everyone saying it seems 2020 is the end of time.
Trump was the only saving grace for that year. His antics kept me entertained
and several hundred thousand dead due to Covid-19. As a parting note for the
year, I fell sick and got a Corona test and it was negative.
It is the
beginning of 2021, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel, the
vaccines are here, and it is all going to be over soon. I will get to travel
again. I can go to India, I can see my family, I can eat Chole Bhature. The
wish list at this time was endless. Remarkably, to stay alive was not on top of
this list, which events in India soon showed me, that it should have been.
There was so many talks in Spain to save Christmas, to control the infections,
to ease the lockdowns, to let people see their families, but I guess no one
told that to UK variant (now dubbed Alpha variant). I got my visa for Germany
and started to discuss but never conclude the topic of when to go to Germany
with my wife.
It is 14th
March 2021, that fateful day when I kissed Madid adios and moved to Stuttgart.
It was cold, grey and it snowed that night. I was under home quarantine, in a
new country with knowing no German. I had shit loads of work, had to find a new
house and get a lot of paper work done in the new place. Germany was under the
third wave and the strictest of lockdown. Nothing except emergency services and
essentials were open. You could not go out to buy a pen or take a print.
However, all my problems seem small in front of what is about come next in India.
It is April
2021, it is business more than usual in India, people are playing Holi and
holidaying in Goa and I am jealous of them, just as I was jealous of people
parting on NYE 2020. Kumbh mela is organized and widely televised along with
the state-of-the-art safety measures which are put in place. I think it cannot
be a good idea in the pandemic, but I am termed anti-national, deshdrohi
and my apprehensions are quickly discarded by my friends which ask what
Pandemic? While I am in very in midst of a Pandemic, people in India have
already declared it over. Due to our natural immunity, due to our diet, due to
our genes, due to our weather, due to Gau Mutra, I mean everyone has a theory.
Even the bloody Europeans are amazed that how did we totally bypass this
pandemic. You cannot blame one person for what happens next, everyone screwed
the pooch, or as Vipul Goyal more beautifully said “Sabne haga hai isme”.
It was like
watching a horror movie in Instgram stories, Facebook posts and Whatsapp
messages. People are asking for oxygen, people are updating Ambulance phone
numbers in Instagram posts. People are ready to pay for Lakhs for Platelets on
Facebook. People are messaging about cases and deaths in every group of
Whatsapp. There is no one who does not someone personally who died. Infosys
nearly grinds to halt, nearly a quarter of the 2 Lakh workforce cannot work
because either they are sick and someone in their immediate family is sick. As
my manager said “We are struggling just to keep the lights on”. Everyone who in
non-Indian and sees me in a meeting asks about my family in India and offers
condolences. I guess I was very lucky that way that no one in the immediate
family got sick. I see something positive in all this, so many people come
together and volunteer their time to find hospitals, oxygen cylinders,
ambulances for others. Even my friends who are as lazy and useless as me, try
to help. In fact, someone, whom in my opinion is worse than them, also springs
to action, the HR, they are useful for once in their life. This should have
been the government’s job though, but we Indians have been doing the
government’s job for decades: hiring our own security guards, filtering our own
water, getting inverters and generators and water tankers, buying air
purifiers, augmenting government employees’ salaries with bribes. The
Government cannot be blamed at all, we
wanted the government to build the mandir, and sponsor Hajj, and to
throw out Rohingyas and give free electricity and we vote for caste, religion, a
quarter and biryani. No one wants hospitals, ambulances, an emergency response
team, and other such boring things to stay alive. To top it all, the media was busy with a dead moderately successful movie star.
It is not
that the other countries didn’t have deaths, or their governments didn’t bungle
up the Covid response, almost all the Developed countries did, USA most of all.
But nowhere did I see or hear such a breakdown of healthcare infrastructure.
And anyone who believes the official death count, please see me, I want to sell
you some magic seeds, for 1 million Euro you will get a Tree that will grow
money. Additionally, I am sure that you believe all the money that went to PM
Cares fund, which was created on top of an existing PM Emergency fund is also
put into Covid-19 response. I donated money to that fund and I would like to
see at least a report of how my money was spent. I will #NeverForget that.
Regrettably, something else is rolling out faster than the vaccine, it is fake news or rather the correct word is – Misinformation. Everyone keeps posting about on Facebook of some far flung corner where people died because of the vaccine or how it contains a micro chip that Bill Gates wants to put in our brain, or a Whatsapp message how sarson ka tel , tulsi ke saath is better than the vaccine. The Westerners, including Germans who cannot legally ride a cycle without a helmet on, or take their baby home from the hospital without a baby seat in the car or do not let a pet in without a list of vaccinations and a pet passport; are now complaining about freedom of choice and their control what they put in their bodies. And every other Wellness Coach and Influencer is sharing this on their Instagram stories. I guess the Brexit vote, Capitol riots weren’t enough for social media companies that they also had to add vaccine hesitancy to their feather in the cap. Talking about the misinformation on social media, please please please, talk to your parents, your cousin and your Mamajee who keep on forwarding unsubstantiated news on Whatsapp with taglines like “Forwarded as received” or “Kya ye sach hai?”. This is no longer harmless nonsense, it now actually kills people. Delhi riots and the violence at the Farmer protests are recent examples very close to home. More reading here - https://www.dw.com/en/india-fake-news-problem-fueled-by-digital-illiteracy/a-56746776 (yes it is a German site, not because it is the best but it is first in my Google search list)
It is June
2021, I got my 2nd dose, both my wife were sick as a dog for a few
days after the 2nd dose. However, that does not dull my enthusiasm,
we are now complete vaccinated, we are now ready to re-join the world, ready to
travel, ready to get back to our lives. The pandemic is over for us and it will
soon be over for other people as well, as soon their country achieves 100%
vaccination. We will have, in the great words of William Wallace:
“Freeeeeedoooom!”
As I write
this post on 31st December 2021, having just returned from India, which I was
finally able to see after 3 years. Germany is the middle of the 4th
Wave, which is worse than all three previous ones combined, in number of cases.
Christmas markets are all cancelled. Omicron is now everywhere. Booster doses
are being rolled out and the European Parliament now says that you are not
considered fully vaccinated if your last dose in more than 9 months old. Pfizer
CEO says that we should definitely plan for a 4th shot, or jab as
the cool kids now call it. Meanwhile in India, people are partying in Goa,
having huge NYE gatherings, Weddings (I attended two), bank employees are all wearing
their masks below their noses, DJs who were asking for sympathy, support, and donations
a few months ago are now posting photos of packed nightclubs, I met three
passengers on my Jodhpur flight who were wearing handkerchiefs tied on their
noses as masks. To paraphrase Vir Das, there is a joke somewhere on me here, I
am just too petrified to laugh on it. 2022, here we come!
