On the morning of 15 April, Pawan Kumar woke up with a high fever. He’d turned 27 the day before but the night curfews and the threat of COVID-19 meant celebrations had been muted and restricted to family. He brushed the high temperature off and went to open his mobile shop anyway. Keeping it shut was not an option, not with a mother, two younger brothers, a wife and two kids dependent on his earnings.
By evening when the fever refused to abate, his mother Paan Devi consulted a doctor in the JJ Colony in Madanpur Khadar. The doctor recommended Pawan get an RT-PCR test. It returned positive. On Saturday though, his fever broke but his family insisted he rest, stay at home and avoid the risk altogether. She’d heard that cases were rising every day and there was huge pressure on the medical facilities in Delhi. It was best to stay inside and wait for things to tide over.
On Sunday night Pawan’s oxygen levels dipped. Paan Devi rushed him first to Safdarjung hospital and then to Ram Manohar Lohia hospital in Connaught Place. Both were out of beds and oxygen cylinders. In sheer desperation, she reached out to acquaintances and friends, one of whom put her in touch with Amanatullah Khan, the AAP MLA from her constituency. Khan asked her to go to Alshifa hospital in Okhla. They went but were forced to wait outside because of the glut of ambulances filled with patients under similar duress. Pawan passed away at noon on 19 April while they waited to be let inside.
Paan Devi has stopped watching the news now. Every Covid news report induces new trauma. She has spent the last two months reliving the worst moment of her life. Not long ago she was a mother of three, a grandmother of two, hoping to ease her old age gracefully; now her elder son was gone and she was suddenly responsible to earn and provide for the family.
“He would’ve been married for five years on 20 April,” she says, standing in a corridor waiting for rations. “Mera beta…” is all she manages before collapsing in tears. Aid workers come and help her up. “Roiye mat,” one of them says. “Dheeraj rakhiye.” Two months since her eldest son passed away, Paan Devi is still desperate for the time and space to grieve.
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On 19 April, 240 people died of COVID-19 in Delhi. The city recorded 23,636 new cases that day. If one plots the statistics on a graph, that day forms the base of the bell curve. It was officially the day when everyone recognised the second wave had arrived. Later that day, the state government announced a strict lockdown they would extend continuously for close to two months. As the humanitarian crisis unfolded, social media was filled with links to helplines, oxygen supplies and even ambulances. If it was heartbreaking to watch it unfold on television, on the ground it was worse. The messages, posts and databases were helpful for a section of society with access to — at the very least — the internet. In real life, where information was transferred word of mouth or via phone call, things were dire.
Madanpur Khadar was declared a containment zone early. But those words, while useful for administrative purposes, meant very little in real life. The resettlement colony is tightly packed, with houses often sharing boundary walls and some alleys so narrow to permanently be in shade. Residents mostly own or work in small shops, as house helps or as daily wagers for the garment industry. #WFH does not exist in the economies they work for.
Lalita, 28, lost her father to a sudden cardiac arrest last year in May. He was an auto driver. Her mother, Maya, a house help passed away on 28 April this year. Maya was diagnosed COVID-19 positive just two days before but displayed no symptoms until Lalita found her on the floor beside her bed, struggling to breathe. She called a doctor and ran to four hospitals, each of which turned her away because they just did not have space.
As a last resort, she started calling doctors in the JJ colony. “Unhone saaf mana kar diya ghar aane se, bola hospital le jao (They refused to visit our home straightaway and advised us to take her to the hospital). My mother was unable to sit up. She was gasping for breath and there was no one to treat her when she died,” Lalita said. Within the space of a year, Lalita and her two younger siblings were orphaned. Her parents were the breadwinners of the family. Of the three, the youngest, a boy, was still in school. Even if the two sisters wanted jobs there were none available in the market. The market was in lockdown.
“What did I do? I turned to aid,” Lalita says, her face impassive. “I relied on the generosity of others, and hoped I could land a job. I called the house my mother worked at, but they didn’t want anything to do with me. They paid her for the days she worked leading up to the lockdown, but then nothing else. Kabhi ek baar poocha tak nahi. Mainey bataya unhe ki maa guzar gayi.” (They did not even bother to call even after I informed them that our mother passed away).
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Sughra has worked at EFRAH (Empowerment for Rehabilitation Academic & Health) for 17 years now. The NGO works extensively to educate and provide vocational training to the youth in Madanpur Khadar. Pawan had attended a course on computer science at the NGO eight years ago. It sparked an interest in technology that resulted in the phone shop.
“He was a hatta-katta (healthy) boy,” Sughra says. “Always helpful, always polite, we all remember him.”
Her — and many of her co-workers’— big regret is that they could not reach out to families in distress during the early days of the crisis. “Contact karne ki dikat thi,(It was a problem to get in touch with them) Phones were a problem, and the whole system was collapsing…,” she says.
For the past few weeks EFRAH, collaborating with Oxfam India, has started providing rations as aid to families in the area. The rations help tide them over, but Sughra — who teaches school dropouts at the facility in normal times — is concerned for the children.
With schools shut and no future comfortable opening in sight, there are many she fears will drift away from education — a tough enough enterprise for many at the best of times. The new term is starting and textbooks have to be bought. But with incomes at an all-time low, most families can ill afford books. Rice and atta are more important after all.
Neelam and her son Anshuman sit in a corner of the office, waiting for their turn to receive aid. It is hot, and the lone fan does little to counter the gloom. Social distancing demands everyone be separated by a few feet, an action in which compassion and empathy have little part to play. Everyone is trying to go about their jobs with as much dignity as they can muster, be strict but also not rude. Sughra is coordinating all this. She points to Anshuman and asks him if his classes are on?
“Online chal rahe hain, Online classes are on),” he whispers.
He attends them using his mother’s phone. Neelam worked as a seamstress for a local garment company. She would stitch sequins onto dresses, salwars and blouses. She refuses to say how much she was paid to do it, but does go on to mention that “chal jaata tha (could meet ends)”.
Her mother Kohi, worked as a house help in Kalindi Kunj. When Tika Diwas was in full swing, her employers demanded Kohi get herself inoculated to keep her job. They registered her for her first shot at a government facility nearby.
It seems far away in the trailing dust now, but earlier this year when the Government of India announced the Indian variant Covaxin into the market, there was scientific concern about its effectiveness, and more importantly, its safety.
Kohi didn’t know all of this, being spoken as it was in the Twittersphere. On the ground, the vaccines were being given and people were lining up to take them because they didn’t have much choice. She got her first shot in early March and went for her second in April when the lockdowns were in force.
“Unko bukhaar hua tha pehle wale ke baad. Doosre mei takleef badh gayi. Unhe bukhaar phir se hua, phir heart attack ho gaya, (After the first shot, she had fever. When she took the second shot, the problems increased. She had a fever again which was followed by a heart attack,” Neelam says. She claims that the death certificate mentions blood clots, but cannot say for sure. The vaccine certificate is among her mother’s things, but she hasn’t gone into the room since she passed away.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs when asked if she will take the vaccine herself. “They never told us there may be complications. If they had we would’ve prepared. They never said she may get a fever, or her oxygen may dip, or her heart may stop. If they had,” she sighs “well maybe she wouldn’t have got it.”
There is a very real hesitancy among various members in the area — a concern voiced mostly by young men with access to social media — about how the economy will recover, the jobs lost, government interventions for aid and the vaccines themselves. For now, as the city slowly opens back up, they are happy to get back to work and earn some money.
Pawan’s shop still remains closed. Paan Devi thought about sending her middle son to open it on the second day of the ‘Unlock’ but he had a college paper to attend to. The task fell upon her. The shop is at the main crossing that leads into Madanpur Khadar. Everything around has already opened up. She mustered the courage to take the keys and walk up to the steps of the shop. And then she turned back home.
The author is a photographer, journalist and designer. He cycles in his free time, and even otherwise. The photos were shot on assignment for Oxfam India, in New Delhi