The Corona Virus in Porvorim Goa

I was boarding a Mumbai-Goa flight. As always, I looked around to see if there was anyone I knew, who looked familiar, to chat with. This was at 0300 hours. Everyone around me was wearing masks. I didn’t know nose and mouth masks came in such variety. Plastic ones with punched holes, the usual porous green and white tissue ones, some resembled foxes’ noses in colour and shape and others were triangular-folded handkerchiefs knotted at the back of the head. At the main entrance, I wondered how the guard (masked himself) recognized who was entering with whose identity-card or ‘photo-proof’ as he called it, considering that all he could see was the eyes and forehead of the person presenting it. “Irregular protocol,” Shri Husband agreed. Cheers to the Corona-V, after four and more decades we agreed on something without arguing. The girl at the counter didn’t need to ask me questions more than once because she could hear me and read my lips. Because I was unmasked. The virus was a ‘maybe’ attacker, whilst any mask is sure suffocation for me. I took my own precautions by sitting next to masked persons so that I got filtered air to breathe. If they had germs to share, those germs would get right back into their own nostrils, I reasoned. (“Stupid logic,” remarked Shri Husband. Why he wanted to read over my shoulder what I typed I don’t know. Gave both of us a headache.) The others’ mouths could be made out through the masks. Whatever they spoke was indistinct and lots of guesswork, shouting and gesturing happened before the communication was complete. Sample question: ‘Sir, aisle or window seat?’ Answer: ‘Ju oo half a cee er da aafoo?’ After a couple of frustrating minutes, the mask was momentarily removed, exposing the to-be-dead-if-infected, near panic-stricken passenger to unfiltered air. Passenger quickly spat the words “Do you have a seat near the bathroom?” and before you could say ‘covid-19’, adjusted the mask and elastic to shut the mouth again. No one seemed to mind removing the mask-filters whilst consuming chai and samosas, though. Inside the aircraft, we were all zombies, having spent most of the night awake, a large majority of us ‘faceless’. Back in Porvorim, Goa, following the Centre’s advisory to take precautions against this micro-sized part-living part-inorganic creature that was killing planet earth’s most important biped, the CM announced on a Saturday evening, on television, that schools were to be shut till the end of March. I celebrated. Prematurely. No students to come to school, I read the soft-copy circular on Whatsapp, but exams would be held as scheduled. Confused, my colleagues and I waited ‘virtually’ for another circular from the God of Schools, the Department of Education, or the ADEI. (Aside: my colleagues say ‘Dipaamen’ when they refer to the former. Dropping the ‘r’ and both the ‘t’s, I have learnt, is the Goan thing to do. The long form of ADEI has been long forgotten. We all know that when a notice/ circular/ letter/ anything comes from the ADEI, we must jump and do whatever is ‘ordered’, unreasonably late though it may reach us. Now I find the same folk saying Coyona Viyus. Peculiar Goan thing.) Doctor friends sent scientific facts—I’m convinced by them-- to say:- • we were and have been for a long time more at risk of dying from multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis or plain old diarrhoea than this new pathogen that doesn’t survive at Goan summer temperatures, • that Corona was heavy enough by virus standards to, if exhaled in a sneeze or cough, drop to the ground and not bounce back into another nose, • that we needed to worry only if we were immuno-compromised, old and frail, or plain unlucky, • that hand-washing with soap and water before and after touching suspect surfaces (including other people’s hands) was not inferior to expensive and out-of-stock ‘sanitizers’. • that the collective immunity of the sub-continent was possibly better than that, say, of the Canadian population, as we were regularly exposed to garbage, sewage, pollution and mostly not in air-conditioned environments. Other friends sent other ‘facts’—I’m unconvinced by those—to say:- • cow urine would solve this health problem amongst others. My retort: bull-shit. Why it (cow-urine, not bull-shit) could never stop or cure small-pox, leprosy or diabetes amongst the old-fangled diseases, I don’t know. • that if I suddenly and permanently converted to veganism and additionally cut off onions and garlic from my diet, I’d be protected from harm. Here, there was some confusion on Facebook, because one party insisted that garlic was medicinal and another said it was not sattvic (pure) for human consumption. For some reason, that diet hadn’t saved anyone from renal or cardiac failure or any dreaded illness. Wondered why. • that this virus was created to teach the western world a lesson, etc. Um…we have some organisms that teach us lessons, like the amoebae, the Salmonella typhimurium, the vectors causing leptospirosis, malaria and dengue, etc. India is dealing with them on war-footing, too, but the media doesn’t give it credit for that because the western world might not be interested in those headlines. We, as responsible citizens, decided to self-isolate ourselves. Of course, the poder, the nustekar, the bai who got the bhaji from the fields, the linesmen from the electricity department and those digging our roads were at work. No one had told them they should restrict themselves to their huts. They couldn’t afford masks/ sanitizers anyway. I don’t know whether they used soap or had running water, but that was not the time to ask. The policemen were manning their posts. No shops were shut. Those highest at risk-- doctors, nurses, technicians, taxi-drivers, bus-conductors, were doing their duties diligently, not taking rest, not looking for glory. Whilst Twitter told me the number of deaths due to the C-V, I googled to find out how many died in rail/road accidents that very week, in India. I don’t worry about the planet or humankind. I don’t worry about the country or the state most times. My world is restricted to my home in Porvorim. When this self-confinement to contain a pandemic had to be tackled, my worry was spending twenty-four hours without respite, with Shri Husband and Bai Goanna at home. It was panic time for me. I carefully re-re-heard what the CM had said on television. School would be shut for students, but exams would be conducted. Teachers and the rest of the gang had to clock in. I had to go to school. I smiled. Shri Husband grunted. Amicably, I think.