Quarantine and Social Distancing - Corona times for us

It was two weeks ago that our daughter came back from  the US. Her University was shifting to online classes for the spring semester thanks to the Corona Virus pandemic. When she arrived at the airport in Chennai, she did not have to undergo any medical examination nor was there any talk about quarantine. All that they did was to ask for her present address which she wrote down.

When she came home, as required  ,we kept her in quarantine inside her room. Our building has 7 apartments out of which only 6 are occupied at the moment. Her arrival was known to most people in the building 

Six days after her arrival, a couple of men from the Chennai Corporation came at about 11.00 AM in the morning asking about her. We confirmed her presence in the house and they noted down the date of her arrival in India ( strange actually, one would have expected the immigration authorities to have provided them with that information). We also informed them that she was under home quarantine and we were being careful about ourselves too.  And then on the same day at about 7.30 PM two masked men from the Corporation were at our door again. This time they asked for her! The mother in me got a bit nervous, so I called my husband instead. Since they insisted on seeing her  we summoned her out of her room. They then put a  stamp on her  arm, using indelible ink that said "In Quarantine" and to our horror stuck a poster outside our door that said in red  " Do not enter- House under quarantine"!

While I understand the importance of quarantine and self isolation at times like this, the notice shook me up , totally!!! I was reminded of Hitler's Germany where Jews had the star of David sewn on their sleeve and their homes had  the notice "Juden" written outside! We were a "marked" family!!! I couldn't sleep that night! I felt this irrational need to walk into my daughter's room at midnight just to check if she was there! And strangely this fear for her physical safety overtook my general concern about any of us developing symptoms!

"These are not the biblical times, they are not going to take me and throw me out into the Sinai desert like the used to do with lepers" she said with irritation as I had obviously interrupted her online class.

My husband laughed  when she told him about it in the morning.

But twenty four years of knowing  him, told me that behind that laugh was a similar  uneasiness that I was probably expressing more openly!

So what was bothering us?

The notice? Yes!! Certainly! At this point I would not have been surprised if they had even put up a poster on our street with her photograph!  The way the health authorities were dealing with our privacy was shocking!!!

But then, as my daughter said " We are paying for the indiscretions of other travelers from abroad who jumped quarantine"

So the question is - Why were people jumping quarantine? Irresponsibility? Yes, maybe!! But why were they lying to authorities at the airport about their symptoms?

The reason is simple- It is the stigma!! In India, with our natural tendencies towards social exclusion and untouchability, no one wants to be identified as someone  who should be kept away ! Social distancing-  it is the new word  for something we have been naturally practicing very successfully  over the centuries!!!

Purity, pollution and distancing ourselves from people who we consider "polluted" is an inherent part of our culture. My grand mother used to wash the vessels that her maid had already washed. Both my mother and my mother in law used to keep separate plates, glasses and cups for the maids in their respective kitchens! And as a teenager ,  I myself have experienced this "social distancing" in my mother's home when I was having my period- I could not touch anyone, many parts of the house were off limits for me , I had to sleep on a separate  bed and eat out of separate vessels which would undergo ritual "purification" on day 4 of my cycle!!

In Tam bram households such as mine,  such distancing also happens  in the reverse- my grand mother when she had bathed and was praying, could not be touched by anyone - even if they had  bathed. Her purity was special !! She wore clothes that were dried on a separate line, high above ours! We were all considered uniformly polluting to her exalted pure presence until she had finished praying and made her offerings to the Gods!!!

So, imagine in this context, how does one expect an average Indian to deal with the home quarantine issue where you are painted and pointed out? I am so thankful that my neighbors in this apartment are extremely nice and kind people. The lady on the first floor ( my namesake ) constantly messages me asking if we were okay. Whenever someone from her family goes out, she wants to know if we need something. The secretary of our building, a soft spoken gentleman has been most understanding when I told him that I would be using the treadmill in the gym downstairs in the evenings when no one is around and that I would wipe it after use  ( he is the only one who uses it and he does it early in the morning) . The young man and his grand mother who live in the flat opposite ours, have conversations with us across the landing and the lady from the family upstairs messaged me from Singapore wanting to know about our well being. I have been most pleasantly surprised with them because my previous experience in the neighborhood where I have spent a large part of my life in this city was very different!!

But then everyone has not had similar experiences!! There have been doctors and other health care professionals whose landlords and building society members have asked to vacate or stay away!! Air hostesses and pilots have been asked to move out by their upper middle  class neighbors!

In India, any disease that is stated as being contagious, immediately acquires a social stigma!! Migrant workers who are walking long distances to reach villages are being treated like cattle by authorities who are spraying chlorine on them! There was a case of one worker who managed to reach his village only to find that the people in his village did not allow him in!!

As kids when our school bus passed the TB block of the hospital  in the small railway township in West Bengal where we used to live, we would pull out our handkerchiefs and hold them over our noses!! I don't know how we learnt to do that because were all really small kids then!! We would watch the patients in their blue and white striped hospital gowns walking in the compound like they were some germs that were getting ready to attack us!! The movies, where TB patients coughed blood only added to it!!

And then there were those biblical movies "Ben Hur" etc where those affected by leprosy would be pulled away from their families and thrown out!! And those western novels about the plague where apparently carts would go around on the streets when the driver would ring a bell and shout "Bring out your dead!" .  But then western society has got past this. There is no stigma  when the media reports about Prince Charles, Boris Johansen, Tom Hanks or Sophie Trudeau  being infected.

But when an eighteen year old boy in Calcutta is found infected it  is publicized at the "first" case of the virus in the city then  you hear terrible things about him.  In social media groups that I have been part of , some members have even given out his address!!  Yes, he and his family were irresponsible about his quarantine. But that does not warrant people breaching his privacy and talking nonsense about him, saying he was "dancing" with an infected girl - like he had sex with a syphilis infected sex worker!!

Instead of doing all this negative marking and singling out families in quarantine, the better thing to do would be to test us - we can pay for the tests. That way we would be sure about our state of infection. But our public health authorities have a wonky sense of    economics when it comes to this. So until that gets corrected, people would still look at families in quarantine as threats! A song from a Tagore dance drama "Chandalika" that we had enacted as kids comes to my mind, that aptly describes the Indian feelings about quarantine " Oke chuyo na chuyo na chi, Oje, Chandalini chi " (Don't touch her she is a chandaal - untouchable)

And meanwhile, I am now waiting for the 28th day of our quarantine ( yes, we are supposed to be quarantined for 28 days!!!) - when I am having fantasies about how I would tear that poster down and burn in in front of my door !!!

Do you think I am over reacting? Put yourself in my place, and then say that!