Lockdown journal: 22.04.20

Once upon a time, for me, a mask meant a green paper-made monster face I got free with a children's book in an exhibition. It had horns and holes in place of the eyes.

Later, as I grew older, the mention of a mask brought to the mind the image of a traditional tribal dance accessory, such as the life-like Chhau masks of Purulia in WB, depicting gods and demons and animals.

Now, a mask only means a life-saving face shield that may become a permanent part of our lives. Everyone is wearing one, of a different variety. The grocery-buyers are feeling breathless in 10 minutes and wondering how health professionals are sweating it wearing them for 10 hours at a stretch. Online video sharing sites and magazines are full of do-it-yourself mask-making instructions. Some business enterprises are even developing designer or customized masks.

If everyone is wearing a mask, will they all look the same? How will you talk to a person if you don't know if he or she is smiling or gritting his/her teeth? Will the lipstick-wearers or moustache-sporters change their style for ever? Will the fabric and price of the masks will be a new marker to know your socio-economic status? It will be an odd world, surely.

In pic: a mask and a pair of gloves, on a housing society washing line in Delhi.

Lockdown journal-20.04.2020

Lockdown is among the most commonly used words now, along with “quarantine”. Here’s a look at the words and some stories and histories attached with them.

As per Macmillan dictionary, its origin is of the old English words, “loc” (which refers to fastening something), and “doun”. But the word lockdown itself is being used only since 19th century. However, the instances of quarantine can be found as early as in 14th and 15th century, during the Black Death plague in Europe.

The word quarantine comes from Italian words "quaranta giorni" which mean "forty days". Under this practice, ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to stay in anchor for 40 days before touching the shore. A similar method, of 30-day isolation, was introduced earlier by Adriatic port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik). The practice continued to be followed in other parts of Europe and the US in various forms.

During the bubonic plague outbreak of 1665, the inhabitants of Eyam village in Derbyshire, England, self-quarantined themselves after a few residents got infected from a bale of clothes sent from London to a tailor. Their heroic act prevented the spread of the plague to other neighbourhoods, though the village lost 250 of its residents in 14 months. One of the villagers, Elizabeth Hancock, buried her husband and six of her seven children over a period of eight days in August 1666. The gravesite is now a British national trust monument.

Another curious quarantine story relates to Mary Mallon, a cook in New York in early 20th century. The first person in the US to be identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the bacteria that caused typhoid, Mary was believed to have caused 51 cases and 3 deaths, but never had the disease herself. “Typhoid Mary" was quarantined in North Brother island for 23 years, till her death at the age of 69 due to pneumonia.

(Information taken from the Guardian, sciencealert.com, CDC, history.com).

Lockdown journal-16.04.2020: A tale of two thieves

It is being reported that novel coronavirus outbreak and lockdown have brought the crime graph down across the world, including in Delhi. A friend, however, came to know of an incident of alleged theft in a locality in the capital yesterday. The guy apparently decamped with a bedsheet, a matress and some amount of atta.

"May be a homeless man who needed food and a bed, not a professional thief," my friend said, setting my train of thought back to one afternoon years ago when a thief struck at my home.

I was working in the desk of the news agency I was employed with at that time when my then landlady, who could never pronounce my name and preferred to address me by the name of my ex-roommate, called on my mobile, "beta Sheelpa, aapke ghar abhi chor ghus aya tha, jaldi aajao, dekh lo kya kya gaya". Being naturally over-reactive, I started shaking and sweating and ran to one of the bosses. He said, "but how can you can go home now, there are so many stories!" My heart was saying "your stories can go to hell", but the head did a bit of pleading and I rushed to my flat with the help of a kind car-owning colleague.

Everything was in place, except the locks and my wristwatch which I had forgotten to wear to office that day. "How come he didn't take anything else?" I was surprised. My gold earrings were lying untouched in my table drawer. "Maybe he was a drug addict and in a hurry," the colleague said.

We went to the local thana to lodge a complaint. After hearing my story, the duty officer said, "oh, it must be the same man who was caught stealing a little while ago at a house in the same area. Some people have beaten him up badly and left him here, just a few minutes back."

He took us to another room to show us a badly battered body lying on the floor. I don't remember anything else, just that at that moment I lost all desire to lodge an FIR over a wristwatch. I went home.

A few years after that, at another rented house, I returned after office one day to find the latch broken and every one of my hundreds of books spread all around, lying like the dead in the epic battle of Kurukshetra. It appeared that the guy spent at least an hour inside looking for cash, but couldn't find any money. Even my chequebook was in office. This time I had lodged a complaint, over theft of a pair of sneakers and a wristwatch (again!).

In short, the tales of thieves who broke into my homes did not have happy endings for them. Maybe, next time they will strike  "gold"! Of course, for that I will have to purchase it first.

Lockdown journal: 14.04.2020

In the season of new years and harvest festivals in various states of India, remembering my childhood visits in the day of Bangla Nabo Barsho to a few shops to which my mom was a regular customer. The shopkeepers will open their new cash-books in the new year (some will prefer to do it on Akshay Tritiya, though). They will offer a box of sweets and a rolled up Bengali calendar to all visitors. As soon as we return home, I will unroll the calendar, bearing images of gods and goddesses, and auspicious symbols, and go through the pages printed in blue letters with orange borders (these colours were used, traditionally) to look for holidays, especially Durga Puja dates.

This year, such traders are going through a phase of uncertainty. (So are people in many professions and jobs, even in media). It is not a "shubho nabo barsho" as such.

Only hoping that everyone remains safe and comes out mostly unscathed on the other side of this.

Lockdown journal: 07.04 2020

* Lockdown, at least for me, is not actually a leisure period, because I take a hell lot of time to complete housework. I don't know how my maid didi managed them in one-and-a- half hours. And hats off to those women (and men, where it applies) who are managing families stuck at home. Some of them also doing work- from-home assignments. Mujhse toh apna kaam hi bada mushkil se ho raha hai.

* When you think of it, you realise that actually so few things are "essential" items! Provided you have electricity and running water, you need nothing else except food, drinking water, cooking gas (and stove/oven of any kind), cleaning  materials, medical supplies, and a few clothes. Rest are dispensable.

Oh, and I forgot phone and internet connection!

* But friends and family are absolutely indispensable. And despite social/physical distancing, I have connected more than ever to my friends in the last few days. Many of them called or pinged, some after months, to check on me. I did so too. We are making regular video calls to keep in touch. Some friends are keeping a tab on my mental health as they know I am anxiety-prone. I don't own a vehicle, and more than one person have offered to drop groceries to my house. My friends, you know who you are! I am lucky to have you in my life.

Lockdown journal : 02.04.2020

[Some snippets of (non) happenings in my society, which I jotted down to divert my mind from news headlines about the terrible trail of death across the world]

* I don't know about other places, but in my area, there are even fewer people on roads. The morning milk buyers have also disappeared, mostly. And all talk of nature reclaiming itself notwithstanding, I am missing humans. I am missing the hustle and bustle and even the incessant honking which otherwise irritates me so much. I hardly interact with them, but I want to see the aloo tikki seller with his too-large-to -bring-in-a -crowded-market tawa, the crisp brown patties soaked in cheap oil, "Gupta jee" ka 10 rupaye ka burger in a glass box, the fruit-juice guy with his never-cleaned machine, the children from Madrasi Basti (sorry, it is called by that name) playing in the park in front of the temple, the solitary madman in a tattered shirt, the elderly Tamil lady frying vadas in a cart placed in close proximity to the garbage dump - where have they gone? In their homes, or some of them were part of that long march back to their villages?

I don't know, but next time I see them, I will try to know more about them.

* The first week of lockdown was a smooth affair for neighbours. I could hear them laughing and gossiping with each other across the isle. But now, they seem to be a bit anxious, especially after the markaz cluster outbreak. The teenager next door who used to listen to "Lamborghini Chalayi Jaane Oo" in top volume, were yesterday unleashing a long angry rant directed at her mother. I can understand Punjabi only if one speaks slowly (therein lies the catch!). What I could gather was that she was upset about her mom going out to buy something. The other side's responses were unusually low and defensive.

* While SDMC vehicles, using water jets to clean roads and buildings, visited the locality twice last week, our RWA guys sprayed disinfectant on stairs and doors yesterday. I rushed to close the narrow gap under the door with newspapers as I felt the crawling insects will come inside. My nameplate and the tricolour I pasted on the door also got soaked in phenyl. I can think of some symbolism there, but mere paas utna bhi khali time nahi hai.