Mating Millipedes and Creeping Corona

Monsoon has painted it green. Grass, trees, plants and flowers, everything is hurtling towards the maximization of their blooming, luxuriant potential. Mildew in the pickle jars, garden millipedes mating in the grass, mold playing musty truant, red milkweed beetles scurrying around as the dandy of the insect world, creepers taking a passionate grip of buxom foliages. Monsoon has stamped its signature pretty diligently. The non-human part of the world is as normal and busy as any other time, unconcerned about the Covid stats creeping like the deadliest vine that has eaten as much into our minds as it has done to the body.   

By the end of the first week of August, total cases world over stand at 20 million (more than 700000 dead) with the US topping the chart like front ranker should at 5 million (1.7 million deaths). India with 2 million cases (43000 deaths) is promisingly moving in the race to topple Brazil (3 million cases, 100000 deaths) and occupy second position. The rise in number of cases has turned normal now with India scoring in excess of 50000 cases daily. The hysteria has subsided a bit as we limp back to our old normal, the skewed set of choice that actually pushed us into the catastrophe.

Have we learnt something concrete to force us to redefine life and living on the planet? Certainly not! With our liberties maimed and freedom curtailed, we are waging the same war from our protective bio-bubbles. It’s like donning fire suits to walk through the fire with much agony instead of taking a detour after reflecting over the choices we have made. Our set of deeds necessitated a chain of unsustainable practices that has left us on the brink where natural imbalances will strike one way or the other. The best option would have been a systematic overhaul of all that we have been doing accidentally. We could have chosen to live by a rebranded, refurbished collective choice that would allow us bypass walking through the fire. Unfortunately, like a stubborn herd of sheep hurtling down and over the precipice we aren’t willing to change course. We are just being carried by the momentum of past mistakes. We are more comfortable with being pushed around instead of charting a new course.  

What inroads Corona has made into our lives! On January 30 India got its first case in Kerala. At that time it appeared as distant as death that preys upon others leaving us alive. Then it crept around viciously. The crisis is critically multi-dimensional. It has transformed the way we think, act and dream. Public healthcare system exposed to the seams, companies have crashed and economy almost torn apart. The labor class bears an unseen and unacknowledged tale of a humanitarian tragedy, the rising middle professional class forced to revision future, customs like marriage and social traditions stretched to bearing limits, children are sitting at home and the current education year severely jeopardized on the verge of going as a blank year in academics with exams postponed and suspended. The single-pointed focus on the bio-security measures have encroached into the façade of life like termites in wood. Will being in a bio-bubble turn a norm in future? Probably yes! All the parameters of social, cultural, personal, professional and political life have been dented for the time being. Weddings, study classes, political gatherings, preaching, religious ceremonies, in fact almost everything went online. Is this an indication of the deeply individualized society in the coming times? Internet is the God of course. We will lose human touch because we will be lesser of humans and more of something else, some new species may be.

Democracies have been forced to take undemocratic measures—like the dictatorial regime of the land that sired the virus—to contain the pandemic. Pre-pandemic India looks as much different from the post-pandemic India like AC is from BC in the chronology of years. Well, AC may be termed now as After Corona and BC as Before Corona. Corona for Christ. The name has acquired divinity itself—with negative shades though.

Although the pandemic is infecting more and more people, it’s killing lesser people now. May be people are better prepared at the mental level now. Only one in seven infected are being hospitalized and among those hospitalized only one in six patients need ICU treatment. Mind over matter. Of course, as per the laws of growth, evolution and dissolution it has to lose its steam. Possibly the disease is getting less virulent. For some time the flu virus overran all its territories and started affecting lungs, liver, heart, kidney and brain. It still is fatal for particular systems that are susceptible to its encroachment but the majority of people are safe against it as herd immunity build up. As far as treatment is concerned, the scientists are still paddling around. For the time being, Remdesivir appears to work with patients having mild or moderate symptoms. Dexamethasone works on people with severe infections. Brazilian president says HCQ has helped him a lot. He was sure earlier that his athletic past was enough to make him immune to this mere influenza. After getting infected, however, he is supposed to draw some lessons not only as an individual but primarily as a leader of a nation that is fighting the pandemic. As they guess about the effect of existing drugs on Covid-19, the easily available and low-cost steroid, Dexamethasone, is shown to cut down death by two thirds among those patients needing oxygen treatment.

Earlier, during the months of June and July, as the hysteria built up, expecting the worst the government let loose the planning machinery full throttle. Train coaches as makeshift Covid Care wards to posh hotels as Covid facilities government explored all avenues to cater to the patients of all classes.

Jails are being eased of their burden fearing Corona spread among the inmates. So illegality gets a bit freer hand by allowing more and more fish to escape the net. To ease the burden on courts and jail premises, the Railways is doing away with provisions for imprisonment for tiny mischief such as ticketless travel, pulling the alarm chain without reason, unauthorized travel, trespassing in reserved coaches, hawking, committing nuisance, altering or defacing ticket/pass, littering, trespassing into ladies compartment, smoking in the passenger area and begging on platforms and footboard joyrides. Laws are melting and turning lenient to accommodate a bit of human mischief.   

Social media puts up newer challenges for democracy. Print is losing readership, TV news are going downhill with barely audible remark of sanity among the cackling panelists, and among all this social media with its lies and fabricated facts and figures rises the curve to take possession of mass opinion making process. Earlier there were selected and recognizable channels for opinion making to help the political parties. Presently, there are infinite channels for any fact and figure to be twisted beyond recognition and create alternate realities. These realities then clash, leaving many friction points in societies and among nations, making it a more chaotic world.   

WhatsApp and Facebook do not require one to quote any source, no wonder it lets loose a long trail of blatant lies that outshine truth almost instantly. False alarms, fake news, rumors, photo-shopped pictures on Facebook pages and WhatsApp forwards circulating bogus information have created heartburns to murderous riots. These are potent weapons to stoke and inflame sentiments and emotions. Emotions once roused and triggered generate fear and indignation. On top of this, the already cornered newspaper gets condemned as a pariah as people stand assured that paper spreads Covid despite many reports to the contrary. No wonder, newspaper subscription has plummeted down.

The legal immunity and protection enjoyed by players like Google, Facebook and Twitter, protecting them from any legal fallouts born of the users’ posts, need to be relooked to turn them responsible actors. The unfettered content on the Internet has turned it far more unsafe and suspicious world than ever. There has to be a fact-checking machinery in operation.     

Bollywood is indeed a very lonely place. Bollywood nepotism versus outsiders debate is building up to raise serious issues. How lonely the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput felt can be easily assessed from the statement he made while promoting his movie: “If you don’t watch it, they’d throw me out of Bollywood. I have no Godfather. I’ve made you (all) my Gods and Fathers. Watch it if you want to see me suvive me in Bollywood.”

Kangna Ranaut has taken a vitriolic jibe at nepotism by pointing out filmmaker Karan Johar as the “flag-bearer of nepotism” managing the careers of star-kid-brigade, where people from outside the filmi families are systematically made to feel outsiders. The “self-appointed gatekeepers of Bollywood” also includes a “mean girl gang” that has the power to replace unwelcome actors from big banner movies. A criminal case has been filed against well established Bollywoodians for their alleged role in abetting Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide. In the complaint, it has been alleged that the late actor was removed from seven films and some of his films were facing problems in release.

Amid all the distrust and fear, a desert flower shines in the oasis in the dusty barren swathes of Balochistan. It’s a depilated mud wall protecting an age-old battered wooden plain door still padlocked. A Hindu had taken a tiny shop on rent from his Muslim neighbor in Balochistan. The partition time blood and gore forced the Hindu to leave for India. Before leaving his birthplace, the distraught Hindu locked the door and told the owner that he would be returning some day. The landlord waited and on his deathbed asked his children not to open the lock and wait for the Hindu. The lock awaits the key-keeper even after 73 years. Goodness in one heart possesses the prospect of removing darkness from a thousand mean-hearted people around.  

The doctors are trained and paid to save lives. The government rules like a King with all the powers to manage people. There are benefits to push them on the path of their duties. I would pick out the ambulance man of India who has selflessly chosen to serve. Himanshu Kalia (41) and his wife Twinkle have been on a mission during the horrid times when mass panic has turned us full throttle on the path of self preservation. They ferry patients to hospitals and take bodies to crematoriums. They do it for free. Their rewards are in another currency which is intangible to commercial eyes. He has a lot of errands awaiting him from arranging plasma donors to funeral services to find out vacant ICU beds. To highlight the extent of his help, we can mention that many ambulance operators charged up to 10000 rupees for just 5 Kms.

Tennis grandslams cancelled, Olympics postponed indefinitely and football played in empty stadiums with only some PPE clad health workers applauding with gentle demeanor and restraint, the sports sector like others is on its knees. There is a bad news for swing bowlers in cricket. They cannot use saliva to make the ball shinier and get swing. Swing bowlers without their swing are like eagles without their claws. They turn easy ducks for easy prey by merciless bowlers. Many Pakistani cricketers preparing for the UK tour have been tested Corona positive. Pakistan hardly gets opportunity to play abroad these days. So fans back home must be seething with anger for their cricketers falling to Corona googlie. Even falling to an Indian bowler must appear digestible not Corona. In the depressive sports scenario when most of the players world over fretted and fumed at home, tennis great Novak Djokovic tried to boost spirits by hosting a charity even in the Balkans. Spectators flouted social distancing norms and thronged the courts; players freely mingled with players, hugged and partied. The world number one along with his wife and many others were tested positive. He has apologized for his sporty transgression. Well, you cannot toss Corona around like the tennis ball even if you are world number one player. The microscopic ball spins and swings with unreturnable fury.  

During the lockdown there has been a noticeworthy decrease in patients visiting hospitals with strokes and heart attacks. Are most of our diseases in minds only? Or at least the operational charts of our mind play a great role in defining a lot many physical ailments. Possibly slowing down of life helps also. Or people are more aware about health as they get more time about themselves. Of course the air is cleaner as well. Nature is healing around. It will hand over a portion of its healing back to us. Just that we have to make a habit to recognize these healthy returns and not simply overlook them like we have done for centuries.  

Look at the Corona onslaught! Even cancer care gets sidelined. About 70% of cancer patients faced unbreakable hurdles in their treatment. In fact the fear of Corona infection seems to keep many cancer patients away from hospitals. Isn’t everything relative? As of now, people would prefer many of the usual time otherwise fatal diseases to Corona.    

Garbage waste seems to comprise only discarded gloves, masks and PPE kits. Cities are struggling to dispose it. These are the wrecks as Corona ambushed our ship. The garbage sorters and rag pickers have left cities and gone into the countryside with their tale of woes. They themselves were left like garbage heap as administrations ran to salvage what could be saved for the front rankers, the people who mattered relatively more. So the garbaged humanity crept like ant trails to their countryside holes. They will of course creep out as hungry bellies seldom allow rest and repose.    

Swami Ramdev almost did a coup against Corona through his press conference announcing the remedy against the devilish virus. Coronil can kill the virus he claimed and at just 545 rupees per month it let loose a wave of triumph among millions of Indians who actually want to believe him. In the absence of any scientific verification, the government had to politely stop the Baba from advertising his latest ayurvedic concoction. Monsoons arrived a week in advance so people welcomed this opportunity to celebrate ij addition to the Baba’s miracle cure. But then to dampen their spirits, diesel stood costlier than patrol. Almost a flummoxing situation.

Corona must be playing too much in our minds. The PIA flight that crashed in June killing around 100 people has a Corona connection. Now it emerges that the pilots were stressed up as they discussed the Corona issues in their families. This pandemic preoccupation meant that they failed to land in the first attempt. The aircraft is supposed to be 100% flight-worthy, just that the pilots lost focus. Corona dominated their mind. They were so much worried about the Corona situation at home that many alerts and warnings about over-speed, ground proximity and problems with landing gear were ignored. They tried landing without the landing gear open and the plane engines touched the tarmac.

Corona has claimed prized most wickets. The hurtling Indian economy has lost steam. The IMF projects that the Indian economy of 2020 will be almost like that of 2022. Means two lost years. Hope the economists will be able to digest this.

Fair and Lovely decides to drop ‘Fair’ from its name. The brand sold the fair dreams to darkish Indians for four decades to become India’s largest face care brand. Now it wants to be more inclusive and break social stereotypes and change the age-old norms of beauty. Let’s be ‘Fair’ in our deeds, if not provocatively ‘Fair’ in skin only.

Till the scientists tell us that this is the vaccine, we can say masks, gloves and precautions is the only medicine. If not more, it will raise our awareness levels. We will learn to keep a watch over our careless ways. Or say, all of us are turning more meditative whether we believe it or not. Elsewhere things seem to be going topsy turvy. There are heat waves, storms, earthquakes and temperatures in Siberia reaching 32 degrees. Now locusts arrive as the dark angels of nature trying to break our ill footed confidence. A massive locust swarm flew over the Delhi NCR as residents ran to shut down windows, banged utensils and played loud music to scare away the pests. The menacing crop-chucking pests, the scary columns of desert locusts, fly during the daytime and settle down to eat away crops and plants at night. They flatten entire fields overnight. They started from the Horn of Africa like Homo sapiens did thousands of years back. They can fly hundreds of kilometers in a day and one km long swarm can chuck out crop food enough to feed 35000 people in a single night. India had sent an advance guard party to stall their progress towards its territory by supplying 20000 liters of malathion to Iran to curb their breeding there and move onto India. Aren’t most of the modern day problems global in nature? So why this infighting?  

Nationalism is getting a boost and multilateralism suffers. Globalization has retreated for the time being. And China is thumping its chest like the super Gorilla to be recognized as a super power.

With hardly any sporting action going on, punters have started putting bets on what else, the most popular ‘Corona’. The illicit betting rings find Corona quite gamey and place wagers on the statistical harvest churned out by Corona. Legal betting is restricted to horse racing only, and race courses hardly have the capacity to adjust the Himalayan enthusiasm of the punters. Great are the ways of illicit gambling games. Syndicates manage illicit satta markets. There is plenty of stuff to speculate upon like lockdown dates, death toll, infection rate, infection and death count in various cities. It hardly augurs well. It shows we humans will stick to our old ways come whatever may.      

You can imagine how horrible is the situation in Covid care wards. After a valiant struggle with their meager resources, both doctors and administrations seem to have given in. People are now just left to fight for themselves. In Hyderabad, a 26-year-old man actually shot his goodbye video moments before death. He is seen gasping for breath and tells that doctors have removed ventilator support. “They have removed ventilator and have not been responding to my plea for the last three hours to provide oxygen support. My heart has stopped and only lungs are working,” he is heart telling his father. Moments later he died. From the Covid care facilities in Delhi horrible pictures have emerged like a patient dying unattended in the bathroom and his 14 year old daughter, also a patient, crying for help. Videos have shown half dead people lying half on the floor and half on the bed senselessly. Doctors pay scanty visits and medicines are handed over from a distance. Dead bodies are not taken out for many hours from the ward.

All those who have been pushed to the fringes have my full sympathy. Myself being one of them only. So I take my intellectual solace and try to feel it at the experiential level also. The one who has been systematically put last in the queue will stand first in the higher dimensions. Here systematization stands for a hobnobbing agreement among the majority to legalize the acts and deeds to justify the inherent insecurity, hate and greed. No superstition or blind faith is involved when I accept this reality. It's just about karmic balancing. Among all the so called established and institutionalized belief systems and faiths, the one that has been put at the bottom--Animism--stands first from the perspective of more elevated plains of existence. Contrary to our scientifically self-hatched truths and norms of front ranks and the last ones, Animism is scientifically, from the perspective of quantum physics, first in perceiving reality as it should at the level of our physical existence. The emerging concept of panpsychism validates my point. Earlier I thought Humanism was the crest jewel of our belief system, but had to downgrade it the moment I realized that Humanism, even though talking of parity and well being among all Homo sapiens, stands on the flawed premise that creation is human-centric and hence it unleashed the futile chain reaction of Homo sapiens versus the rest in cosmos. (May be, Corona is the joint volley hurled at us from the rest pitched against us.) The results we can see in the present world. It could not even serve the cause of the weak and the downtrodden among the Homo sapiens forget about the lesser species among the rest of existence. Feel free to condemn me as a Tribal era wretch; I am but more than happy to attribute living souls to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena. If natural intelligence pervades each and every ounce of this common pool of energy, we cannot just reserve the domain of soul to our own bodies. There is just one soul, one energy, manifesting in countless ways ranging from the so called inert stone to the best brains on this planet or elsewhere.

There is more to dreams than it’s usually acknowledged. Especially the seekers of truth about consciousness know it very well. Sadhguru blessed me with his darshan in dream. I haven't met him in real life, nor have I ever been to Isha foundation. I just listen to Sadhguru's talks online now and then. Not as a disciple, but as a curious learner to know more about life and living from an enlightened sage. A sort of tutorial I take it as. But look at my ego construction, I was sitting on the same platform with him and there was some upheavals in the hills in the distance. Sadguru got up, like so many others, to take notice of the event. I kept sitting. Not out of arrogance or being stubborn I am sure. Just that I kept sitting and Sadguru and the rest got back to sitting position. Don't have any clue. I believe in the symbolism of dreams. Something about our subconscious dimension interacting with the super-conscious dimensions. Can you guys share your opinion on this particular dream?

Plasma Therapy holds some promise. The patient who has beaten Covid-19 gets virus antibodies in his blood which is transfused into someone suffering currently. Shouldn’t we remember the lesson of love and compassion taught by all the world religions? If my blood holds the potential to cure you, the goodness in my spirit will surely do good to you also. So remedying self is as good as helping others. At least we ensure that there is one wrong-doer less in the world.

Mr. Kuroki from Japan has been plating flowers for the last two years so that his visually impaired wife would be able to smell thousands of these flowers. The smell makes her smile now. So much for a smile! Well, a genuine full hearted smile is worth beyond any monetary sum. Let’s redefine our elements that sum up our meaning in life. The best and most beautiful face is the face that smiles. Smile more! Let me share an anecdote to give you a little smile. It’s raining in Scotland and a dog is sitting in the open outside a store, waiting for its master who has gone inside for shopping. The watchman, Ethan Dearman, walks over to the wet dog and holds his umbrella over it. “Well, you never know how dogs feel about the rain,” he says.

Millions of migrant laborers who wrote personal histories in reaching their homes alive against all odds, are now ready to undo all of the feat by somehow reaching the spots they had escaped from. They cannot survive without their well of fire anymore. Immediate death is scarier than a bit prolonged one. They can’t survive without the odd jobs that held the baton of life and living for them. It’s never about the basic necessities and two meals a day. To be human means to be something more than one’s circumstances have cast the mould around. So again they are creeping out of their countryside escape holes and taking a beeline for the behemoths they had run away from.

Kindergarten 2020-21 have lost a year. CBSE has reduced the syllabus of 10 and 12 by 30 percent. Even without no education everybody seems as smart and intelligent as before. The kids don’t seem too dull and duffer. It means we aren’t missing too much even with the entire academic session gone void. Modern education system needs a lot to reflect over.  

The WHO is revising its guidelines to include the fact that the virus may be airborne. If not airborne, how can it be so contagious? Now SERO survey—blood testing for the presence of antibodies indicating Covid infection—conducted on random groups says as much as 4 million people in Delhi might have been infected. More importantly, they got well without too much of symptoms. Corona has played more with our minds than our bodies. If the SERUM survey is taken into account, the fatality rate is even below than 0.2%. In fact, any young Indian faces more risk of dying in a road accident than Corona. The elderly have 1% additional risk of dying in the year with Corona around. It shows that the pandemic plays as much on our minds as it does the body. Of course, we should be bothered by virus like Corona because they highlight mortality and death pretty bluntly and directly. But equally serious are other more virulent killers like air pollution. In the chronically polluted Indo-Gangetic plains air pollution cuts of 5.2 years from the average age of an average Indian.

Well, human system is still to be known in entirety by the medics. T-cells hold the beacon of hope as per the latest researches. Killer T-cells bestow long term immunity to be termed as ‘immune warriors’. They terminate infected cells and are born as our response to any kind of viral infection. They are known to possess long-lasting memory against the germs they fought even after decades. Let’s us we all have robust T-cells that remember to swipe away cowardly Corona virus when it happens to attack our body.

Brooks Brothers who dressed 40 US Presidents have filed for bankruptcy. Pandemic has exacerbated their woes by taking debts to unmanageable height. The Wall Street formalism is dying as workplaces open up to more casual culture. Be prepared for more upheavals. The rate of the occurrence of strange upheavals will go up till a new equilibrium is established between the changed nature and modified human body. Don’t panic. It’s the same old buddy change driving all this. Just that it is speeded up a bit more during the modern times.    

Rafale landed in India amid much patriotic fanfare. It’s a massive morale booster. All of us we Indians feel safer against China. 1.3 billion people pinning hope on five metallic birds of war. Well, what can you do if you are unfortunate enough to have a communist regime as your neighbor?! With Rafale, ew can at least add to our military posturing now. Coming to the destructive war machines and our mindless expenditure on them. More than any Indo-Chinese human brutality or machine lethality in the Galwan scuffle, the inhospitable nature did the maximum pounding as most of the soldiers from both died from hypothermia and low oxygen levels at such high altitudes. Merciless cold awaits with a glee as China wears India out and winters creep in.

Gods have at long last given some respite and vacation as Amarnath Yatra is completed virtually and holy Kaaba having just 10000 well spaced Haj pilgrims. We have given the house of Gods some respite from our continuous haggling and bickering.

August 5 occupies a landmark date in modern Indian history. Kashmir problem was left redundant in its old form last year on the same date. This year it goes onto herald a new era. Now it’s clear after long last that there will be a Ram Temple at Ayodhya. PM Modi officiated the bhoomi pujan ceremony at Lord Ram’s birth place. His performance of ceremonial rituals stands out as a ground-breaking event amidst crores of Indians hailing Jai Shri Ram and Jai Siya Ram. The PM prostrated in shastanga dandvata posture on all fours in front of the makeshift sanctum sanctorum. He put earth on his forehead from the foundation marking the beginning of temple construction. Ram Lalla will now have a proper shrine instead of a makeshift tent after 500 years of struggle that dissected Indian psyche at social, cultural, political and legal levels. As the soil from 2000 pilgrim places across India and water from 100 sacred rivers graces the foundation stone, it culminates almost 30 years of nationalistic mobilization by the party in power in company with its ideological affiliates.

Hope it ushers into peaceful times with progress for all!

A Day in the Life of a Resident Doctor

I am a residential doctor at a Delhi government hospital. Just like any other student of medicine I was waiting eagerly for my final year post graduation exams just a couple of months away. Life is so uncertain! Who can know it better then we doctors. On a daily basis we are exposed to the warming sunrays of life, living and healing on the one hand and the gloomy shadow of death on the other. I don’t know which one is more substantial. When life and living prevails against all odds with our support, it seems life is the strongest force. But come one swipe by death and it manipulates the very air in the ward. Over a period of time, a kind of detachment builds up towards both life and death. I know we all have to die. But more importantly, I know that we have to live before that.

The initial panic build-up in the hospital designated as a Covid care center left us clueless. It was a viral blast equivalent of an actual explosive blast. There you see the wounds and physical destruction. Here the wreckage lies in minds as panic and hysteria creeps up the walls of logic and common sense. So we jumped up and tried to salvage all that we could. The fear of the unknown manifests in full strength in case of a new and incurable disease. We ourselves were as helpless as the patients. But a doctor has to try to save lives and we did all we could.

Pushed to the corners, we turned even operation theaters into Corona patient care yards. Through the sheer strength of mass fear, the word ‘Corona’ was gaining more and momentum in its avalanche type of march across the routine and normal yards of our lives. We flailed our arms like the ship is sinking and you are in an emergency mode. Usually we doctors feel empowered against the routine diseases as we handle the mission to save a life. However, in this case, we were as much of a prey liable to fall to the new virus as anyone else. Usually, we give our best to save a life. Here we have to devote a lot of energies to save ourselves also. Divided attention. The debilitated mission.

With hundred beds on a floor, it appeared scary to we resident doctors. There was a separate donning area to get decked up like astronauts, where they help each other into the PPE kits. You get suspicious of your hand-washing skills as you go on rubbing and rubbing. You aren’t sure about anything. The nasty microscopic organism might be lurking around to lay ambush. Precaution raised to the power of above normalcy results in paranoia. Let there be the littlest chink in your armor and you are slain. So we padded up like soldiers going to bloody medieval wars and hid behind heavy metallic armor of the uncouth, unsuitable PPE kits. The first layer of gloves goes over the excessively rubbed soft skin. You are scared that some soldier of the evil might have remained behind. The shoe covers appear to make you lose your footprints. You try your level best to steady yourself to be confident of your walk. The overalls take you into the folds of strange anonymity, like you are an alien in a queer setting. The possibility of things going wrong lurking well over the benchmark of calculated risk in medical parlance. You then go faceless to the outside world as you put on an N95 mask followed by a surgical mask still followed by the cap. The withdrawal into the womb of anonymity isn’t still over as another layer of gloves and a face shield or goggles turn you into an altogether different species. You are an thickly armored soldier, cumbersomely space-suited astronaut and a heavily donned firefighter all mixed in one. That’s how I felt.

As the pandemic and the panic arrived like a sudden Tsunami strike, the initial PPE kits were inhumanly cumbersome and suffocating. It shows how unprepared we are against emergencies. You felt tightly squeezed and thrown into the hostile environment of a strange planet like a guinea pig. You lose on something precious to your sense of freedom, making you feel depressive, indecisive and suffocated. Like a lumbering snowman forced into a snowless, sweltering hot valley, you lose your focus as the goggles turn foggy due to your labored breathing. Nervousness and heat turn you a sweating pig inside. You don’t have the liberty to wipe your sweat or clean your goggles. You speak like from a subterranean vault. You are barely audible from behind the covering and hence have to shout to be audible. It scares both the nursing staff and the patients. In case of managing the health of severely ill patients, you are highly responsible for what words you use in your communication. To avoid sounding bullying and rowdy to the patients and nursing staff, we force ourselves to communicate through sign language and hand gestures. Once you go into the cockpit of your PPE kit, you cannot eat, drink or visit bathroom for six hours at a stretch. Sweat drains like tiny rivers over the face. The air-conditioning system is put off to avoid the virus aerosolizing in the central ducts. 

The virus creates Silent Hypoxia, wherein the oxygen level silently creeps down unnoticeably. The patient stays asymptomatic till the oxygen level plummets to a critical point. The normal oxygen saturation level is 99-100%. If it falls below 90%, one needs oxygen support to avoid organ damage. What makes Corona quite fearsome is the fact that the patient doesn’t show any signs of restlessness, drowsiness and difficulty in breathing even when the saturation level has fallen to 80%. This ‘air hunger’ makes it almost fatal.

It’s an ordeal to face dead scared patients arriving with a look as if they are being forced into gas chambers. This acceptance of fear, this surrender of the life force to the veritable agent of death makes the virus all the more powerful as the psychological trauma eats into the vital reserves of energy that would have been used by the soldiers of immunity to build up a counter attack. Inserting oropharynx or swab in the patients’ nose was like performing a big surgery. Not that we found it so difficult. It’s an innocuous cotton bud intended to touch the inside of the nose. All it takes is 20 seconds. But the look of fear turns it into an intolerable ordeal for the patient as if this little medical process is the thin line between life and death.

As a resident doctor, I’m relatively new to see people dying. I was happily awaiting my post graduation exams and get onto the medical bandwagon like in normal times. It’s traumatic to see the first patient dying under your care. The situation makes it all the more painful. They gasp like fish out of water. You are alone on the night shift. The patient dies all alone in isolation beyond the sympathy and support of her near and dear ones.  

You yourself have to keep yourself isolated and quarantined after 12 hour shifts. Imagine two doctors and four nurses for more than hundred patients. As you lumber out of your anonymity, you just try to hydrate yourself as if you have been in the driest desert for months and you simply prey upon water bottles and ORS. You just sleep, work, sleep, work in an interminable sequence.

More than the onerous duties, it’s the paperwork that traumatizes the soul of we doctors. I cannot understand why doctors have to do so much of paperwork themselves. It can be safely designated to some other staff. Doctors doing data entry isn’t too promising for any country’s healthcare system.

The true nature of we humans comes naked during such critical times. We needed blood for a critically ill patient and made a pleading announcement in front of a crowd. They simply vanished. One haggard old man came forward with a few hundred rupees to help.

Nursing orderlies have to carry out the bodies of Corona victims. They think it’s more burdensome than an ox ferrying hundreds of tons of cargo in a rickety cart. They are scared of the corpses and dilly-dally and slip around their responsibilities. The dead body stays in the yard as a ghastly reminder to the patients who get more panicked. We have to run around to somehow get the body sent to the crematorium to salvage some respect for the dead as there are no family members around.    

All I wish is the return of our normal world of six months back. It’s irritants and problems now appear well digestible and worthy to have around.