The title “Life during Lockdown ne’ Quarantine” was given me as part of a blog prompt of the Chennai bloggers club where various members have written about their lives during the compulsory lockdown for the past few months to prevent corona virus transmission. I really don’t know if I am qualified to write on the same topic as my situation is very different and hence I prefer to go with a title reflecting reality. I was never in lockdown but was in quarantine for a few days initially; as I have been working continuously ever since the first reports of the virus came in -every alternate week on-duty with a week off as self-quarantine for the first month (March) aka the initial denial phase when corona was supposed to go away if our eyes were closed tightly. This on/off weekly concession was gradually reduced to five days on/off, three days on/off etc in the subsequent months as it was decided by the powers that be that the hospital’s need all hands on deck and they were willing to risk working the doctors continuously and may the strongest healthcare worker survive in this gladiatorial contest for the watching/voting public’s edification (doctors were never a significant vote bank for our politicians).
As such I don’t have any big
lockdown stories to share about how lonely I felt at home (for I was travelling
the empty roads daily) or how desperate I was to dial up former girlfriends and
ask them if they were still alive and available(Link to that Blogpost of Jo’s
here). I meanwhile am being asked at every checkpoint by our local version of
the Minneapolis cops to show that my face on my government issued official id card
with a photo taken eight years ago matches my current mask wearing countenance
of today to authenticate that I am indeed travelling for work even as my
vehicle is the only one on the road at such an early morning or late at night. So,
I am slightly jealous that a lot of people are doing work from home and getting
by with spending time at work in a “homely atmosphere” while others are
enjoying the true benefits of the lockdown by staying at home and doing stuff
like having a second honeymoon. Unfortunately, being classified as essential
services I don’t have the luxury of doing either.
For me it has been work from
office all this time and being classified as essential service there has been
no long period of relaxation at home, it has all been business as usual.
Scratch that. It has been far from business as usual. The constant fight for
protective gear, for safe working conditions, for getting paid for that work
instead of being forced to contribute against my will to the pm and cm cares
fund from my already meagre salary, to, hold your breath in irony, to fight
against coronavirus, the same corona virus I am already fighting against was
the height of callousness on the part of the government. So when there are empty
gestures like banging pots or throwing flowers from helicopters I am tempted to
say take these gestures and shove it up your arse and pay me my full salary for
working without a break all this while and don’t “voluntarily” deduct my salary
for your idiotic schemes.
Or spend a whole working day
– eight hours enclosed inside a thick thermo-plastic sheet covering head to
foot with no air ingress anywhere, rivulets of sweat flowing down the back so
that the clean scrubs you wore underneath are already soaked wet in a half
hours’ time and wearing an N-95 mask, tied tightly on to prevent the smallest
leakage to unfiltered air through any part of the nose or mouth or chin region,
with the tight elastic backing straps pulling your ears forward till you
realize that damn even ears can get sore, the strong and rough aluminium framework
of the front working end compressing your nostrils, pinching them so hard you are
left drooling through your nostrils and tasting your snot for the first time
since kindergarten (believe me not a pleasant experience) and either left to
suffocate with snot running down your nostrils or to learn an entirely new
skill- how to breathe through your mouth and that too breathing through those
multiple filtered layers of the n-95 leaving you with less than half the oxygen
you inhaled at first finally reaching your lung leaving you permanently oxygen craving
and resisting hyperventilation(and panicked breathing) through sheer willpower
and to wear a full face shield over top of all this with one more tight elastic
strap pinching the forehead tightly and leaving you with hazy vision if the
plastic external which has just been wiped with surgical spirit between
patients has left over smudges and through all these trying to communicate with
the patients speaking nasally like Darth Vader from the Star wars franchise. Do
this first; do all these first and then come and tell me how as responsible citizens
of the country we should all be willing to sacrifice for the country and if
that includes voluntary donations to some politicians care fund we should be
ready to do it.
Now that the rant has been
put out of the way let’s get back to the actual blogpost. To sum up- my life
during lockdown sucks majorly. Although there is the awareness that I am living
through interesting times (having complained a lot previously about how my
boring my life was), this constant war against known and unknown enemies (the
unknow being the virus) is a serious drag on both my physical and mental health
and well-being. To everyone who asks so how are you? the only honest answer I
can give is, I am surviving-on a day to day basis, no long-term plans yet. If
and when we get through this corona virus thing all I want to do is take a long
vacation in some Caribbean beach – Bahamas or Jamaica, just lie on the sand
with a raspberry breezer in hand and enjoy the solitude of the not-needed/useless
human being, the non-essential worker so to say, whose absence no one will
miss. Till then all I need is a cup of hot strong filter coffee every two
hours, oh wait, once I have dorned this sterile suit I cannot remove it for any
reason without breaking sterilization protocol; so hold that coffee till the
end of my shift. And while at that, hold everything else too, for PPE’s are
scarce resources strictly rationed and cant be changed/wasted again and again if
someone has a weak bladder and wants to go so often. Bladder control, ladies
and gentlemen, mind over matter so to say is my true gain this lockdown period.
