Uninvited Prison break
My quarantine stay in Mumbai, a living hell and a paradise!
We’ve reached a stage where sanitizer is merely adding another layer to the skin yet, we allow ourselves to get blinded by its fragrance. We carelessly socialize believing it to be an effective protective shield. One year into the pandemic, we’re tired of the drill and simply hope to get over this as we welcome the second wave!
I chose to be ignorant and lived in my bubble of first-world problems. Until one fine day, the COVID nightmare knocked on my door to remind me it does exist! I barely let myself think or feel in the initial stage of COVID being diagnosed. My self-awareness was on airplane mode. Of course, this wasn’t the ‘positivity’ I was looking forward to!? With the concern of monitoring my parents well being, we decided to get hospitalized.
We were greeted with the security guard yelling ‘ Close the door behind, few patients ran away last night!’ We clearly doubted, ‘What are we really signing up for!?’
I ended up giving a work interview moments later I shifted to the quarantine center. This was not to flex my courage rather, as an attempt to prove that corona cannot screw up my life. My work has always been my worship. No doubt my reflex was to charge my iPad and Macbook when the results came in. More I avoided facing the fact it came running back at me.
Entering soon enough the medicines started making me drowsy and the environment gloomy. These were not the right motivators I was looking for to complete my graduation project with. Yet I decided to breathe behind the mask, and believe in this too shall pass! The refugee camp look-alike quarantine center is actually a famous exhibition center of Mumbai called ‘Nesco’. A HubSpot for events like ‘Comic Con’ and ‘Home decor’ events was soon transited to hundreds of beds, syringes, and oxygen cylinders.
Earlier, another person’s sneeze made me skip my heartbeat. Here, I was surrounded by hundreds of others coughing, sneezing, and vomiting as they breathe. I tried to not get inspired by the surroundings as I didn’t want to recall this experience. Well, you cannot really remove art from the artist. Hence I decided to document it to help anyone struggling to make a decision, or believing COVID cannot do anything to them relive this experience through my article:
Well, is it worth staying in a quarantine center?
To start with, you’ll be staying with 100+ positive people from all walks of life in the same ward with different levels of COVID. You’d need to have an adjustment mindset. They’ll be providing you all the services free of cost along with timely medicines, decent food, and doctors checking up on you thrice. This may vary center to center but here I can vouch for Nesco, Goregaon.
You should definitely opt for this :
- When you need supervision in cases of severe COVID cases and people with oxygen level problems or medical history.
- You cannot financially afford private hospitals or medication.
- You don’t want to go through this illness alone. Seeing people going through the same things as you might give assurance.
The Great Indian Jugaad to rescue:
The quintessential desi-ness had always fascinated me. It surprises you more when you spot these instances at the most unexpected places.
Be it everyone hanging masks around the IV stand or 101 ways to fix the broken jet spray. I was in awe when a kid-created his own set of the temple with bottles and dupatta. Packing bags for this trip was surely not exciting but it does teach you to live with the bare minimum supplies. If not, atleast the jugaad will surely come to your rescue!
In the darkest time, for your family, you’ll care
Mobiles acted as umbilical cords to connect with the outer world. It was refreshing to see people smiling, crying, worrying, and sharing their daily happenings back with their loved ones. It was comforting for once, to see people treating mental breakdowns normally. Seeing the aunty a bed ahead of me caressing the phone screen seeing her daughter in it was definitely heartbreaking.
The glass is half full or not…
Coming from a place of privilege adjusting to the surrounding be it bathing in common washrooms, gulping the tasteless food, surviving in a room full of people with other severe sicknesses was not easy. Asymptomatic me was super grateful at the moment to not experience COVID at its worst. Being a spectator was emotionally draining in itself. Hats off to people who go through this with a strong will!
Especially, the doctors and the hospital staff who live through this experience every day and still manage to come back with their hearts on their sleeve! Even if you’re home quarantined, or admitted in a hospital seeing the glass half empty or full is our perspective. No amount of checking-up calls from friends and family is going to change that. You will get through this if you decide!
Please take 2021 seriously.
It’s far easier to criticize what government and other organisations are doing wrong. Hoping them to lift the lockdown as we sit back watching Netflix in our comfy houses with AC blasting is a privilege. How much you try you still won’t get what people dying in isolation wards, doctors having multiple breakdowns, or daughter longing to meet her mother feel.
This experience was much required for me to empathize for better but I still wouldn’t like to revisit it. The post covid fatigue is real. This year might feel like a dejá vu indeed! We are halfway through the 2021 interval but don’t forget how this one ends is still in our hands :)
Wear a mask, stay indoors if you can!
