CHENNAI: …Beach. I think, I miss Elliot’s Beach the most,” says Keshav Trivedi, taking a sip from the water bottle that he usually carried to the gym. It has been a couple of months since Keshav, a network security engineer, last visited a gym. To compensate for the loss of exercise, he indulges in boxing sessions on the terrace. His punching bag bears a testimony to his dedication towards fitness. A resident of Mogappair West’s Jeswantnagar, 5th Main Road, life had been pretty hassle-free when the lockdown was announced. That was until the area first recorded its suspected case of COVID-19 and earned the status of ‘containment zone’. Keshav’s abode is two buildings away from the barricaded area. Taking a stroll down the road painted white with bleaching powder, mask in place, he talks about his newly established routine. “My day starts at around 11 am when I turn off the alarm after letting it snooze a couple of times.”
Changing routines
A native of Rajasthan, Keshav is a vegetarian who savours the taste of paneer. Since the area graduated to being a containment zone, paneer had not been that easy to get. When he did get his hands on the favourite ingredient, he used it well. It was one of those rare days. Putting the wok to the induction stove and tempering fennel seeds for the gravy he is about to prepare, he goes on, “We had asked a shop to deliver the groceries. Sometimes, we did not get all that we asked for but we manged with whatever we had. With the house-help staying home too, my flatmates and I divided the regular chores.” He pours the gravy into a bowl and steps out of the kitchen.
“Working from home is as exhaustive as working from the office. By the time I finish my part of the household chores, it is already time to log into office server and start work,” he narrates as he sits down with his laptop at 6 pm. Work would go on till 3 am. As Keshav settles down, his roommate Arun Yadav — a fellow network security engineer — joins him on the couch after putting aside the ready-to-throw garbage. “Disposing of the garbage used to be a huge task earlier. During the containment, we learned our way. We disposed it twice a week in the roadside bin nearby, just outside the building. The trash was cleared by the municipality workers,” he narrates. Venturing out of the house even for this small task they followed all the protocols, armed with their mask and maintaining social distancing. Waste disposal was not the only part of their routine that had to change.
“Earlier, when there was no suspected case in the vicinity, one of us used to go to the grocery shop to buy essentials like milk and curd. But during containment, we opted for home delivery of groceries. After the items were delivered to our doorstep, we made sure to clean them,” he explains. This was their only interaction with the outside world. The men refrained from ordering in anything else, even food. “Cooking our own meals had kept us going,” says Arun, his voice sounding softer behind the mask. Shutting down his laptop after having just finished work at 7 pm, he goes down to drop off the garbage. He returns but settles down only after washing his hands for 20 seconds.
No alternatives
Life was pretty similar for Sujata Padhy, a software engineer who lives a few buildings away. Her pressing problem seemed to be the unreliable milk supply. “Sometimes, I get it; sometimes, I don’t. When I don’t, I have to go without a caffeinated drink for a few days,” she complains as she walks around the empty house. Her flatmates left for their hometowns just before the lockdown was announced. Her building, which had earlier housed 40 people, now plays host to just five. Unlike Arun and Keshav, she did not have it easy with purchasing groceries. There was only one shop in the vicinity and the prices increased manifold. “I still had to go to the shop to buy essentials.
There was no alternative as most online apps were not delivering to the area,” she says, as she washes the vegetables she recently bought. A week after the area was declared a corona hotspot, the test result of the person suspected to have been infected came out negative. A resident of the building, where the suspected case was reported, says, “Though the result came out negative, the family had been quarantined. The barricades were eased and kept half open; we went out but only for essential services and followed social distancing norms.” The fall out of a suspected case of COVID-19 is as petrifying as a positive case for people continue to respond with fear, says Nandini Singh. As a resident of the containment zone, she got to witness the stigma in person. “After the area was declared a containment zone some weeks back, the only thing I did not worry about was getting regular water supply. We were getting the supply through tankers. The biggest concern was essentials and medicines, though there are shops in my vicinity, I was not ready to step out of my home. The fear had engulfed me completely.”
Life goes on
While most people have learned to live the frugal way of life in these two months, things seemed same for a few. The time limit to keep shops open and the limited supply of provisions did not affect them. “Even when the area was declared containment zone, access to food had been same. Even earlier we survived on meagre meals like dal, bhaat, which we continued getting in the nearby stores,” says a house-help in her late forties, who lives in a bamboo-andsteel house in the nearby ground. Mahesh, a night guard, concurs. “Since we are not into consuming fancy foods, life continued as usual for us. We bought pulses from nearby stores and sometimes I managed to get milk, if I happened to be among the early customer at any grocery shop or milk booth,” he says. Now, though the area has been confirmed to be COVID-free, the fear over the virus continues to hold sway. All credit goes to the rampant increase in the number of cases in the city and Tamil Nadu. Even as the restrictions that come with the lockdown are slowly being removed, one after another, life on these roads are far from returning to normalcy.
What’s a containment zone?
Containment zones are those areas where one or more COVID-19 cases have been reported. As of May 16, the city has more than 700 containment zones.