To
Hon’ble President of India.
Honorable sir,
I hope you and your family are in the best of your health in the Rashtrapati Bhawan. You don’t worry about us, we are also trying to spend these days of starvation in the best of our spirits. I have been hearing that India has been affected by an imported fever called Corona, which is so powerful that the biggest temples, mosques and churches of this country have succumbed to it. Some were heard saying that this imported fever has made its way into your residence as well. I was flabbergasted to hear it.
The media speculated that Chittiyan Kalaiyan fame singer Kanika Kapoor may have transported this virus to Rashtrapati Bhawan through the London-Mumbai-Lucknow route. In my idleness forced by the elongated unemployment, I wondered like a true genius, if the government should have stopped such people coming from abroad in the first place, perhaps India may have defeated Corona without us, the locals even once washing our hands. But I am only a silly person and no true genius as the restrictions by the virtue of their nature are not for elite travellers but are only to be imposed on the poor!
Oh I got lost in my mindless chatter, when I heard about you, I locked myself up in my room as I was too worried about your health and well being to want to go anywhere. However on 24th March 2020, at 8pm, the almighty Prime Minister announced the blocking of all exit routes, the whole country was put under a lockdown. The sycophantic ministers immediately jumped to applaud the Prime Minister for it. Social distancing was being projected as the only possible solution to this virus, these bootlickers were the first ones to get on that bandwagon and conveniently distance themselves from the very countrymen they vowed to represent. This was not something unprecedented or new, but this time, Coronavirus gave them the legitimacy to abandon the citizenry.
The citizens were strictly directed to follow the rules of the lockdown. On 1st April 2020, we heard that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan declared that anyone violating the lockdown should be shot. This declaration made many rounds on Whatsapp groups. It was later found that this was a mere rumor. Similarly, an outspoken BJP MLA from Ghaziabad, Nandkishor Gujjar, suggested that violators of the lockdown should be shot dead and the policemen who would make the said shootings should be rewarded with a sum of Rs 5,100. The police forces too largely used barbaric lathicharge as their first response to the crisis. Common men walking on the streets were beaten brutally with batons. Fear stricken and worried for their survival, most people kept hiding in their homes. These restrictions, however, are only for the labouring masses of our country, which is perhaps why the Chief MInister of Karnataka was free to go attend a wedding party, I believe he must have visited it to disinfect the party with Coronavirus antidote. In these times when all the temples, mosques, etc have been ordered to be locked down, and even the favored deities are expected to adhere to its rules, Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took a large procession to place a Ram Lalla idol in a fiber temple. Now, who can dare stop these ministers?
Uff.. once again babbling about insignificant things. Let that be, I hope you and your family are adhering to the social distancing rules? Your mansion is gigantic with hundreds of well-lit rooms and overlooking the majestic Mughal Garden. Have you had the chance to take a tour of the premises yet? I ask because I heard that Mukesh Ambani got the chance to look around his colossal residence Antilla for the first time. The rich have such enormous houses that it must be hard to remember which floor has a garden and which one has the swimming pool. It must also be difficult to remember where to eat and where to sleep. However, we are not plagued by any of these worries in my eight by eight (8 x 8) room, and I never have to worry about where to eat and where to sleep. In these cramped houses, the lack of physical-personal space can be well imagined by the fact that after eating in one such small room, smell of one’s gastronomical reactions can be felt within radius of the two or three rooms nearby, such that one can easily figure out which food has been consumed. In such a situation, social-distancing seems like the proverbial promise of Rs. 15 lakh. After my father passed away, our mother has raised us children by working at factories for 12 hours a day. Due to the over ingestion of the factory smoke, my mother is now a patient of Tuberculosis. The doctor recommended that we must maintain physical distance with her or else the rest of the family could get infected with TB as well. I fail to understand how to achieve that physical distance in a room that measures eight by eight (8 x 8) and houses a family of five members. We are struggling to maintain that physical distance, how are we to achieve the feat of social distancing?
I apologise for all the diversions. How have you been spending your days during the lockdown? These days the rich appear to be spending a fabulous time, playing Antakshari, playing harmonium and guitar, painting and cooking. Their excitement for this lockdown resembles that of schoolchildren during the Dussehra holidays. Chintu Ji aka Rishi Kapoor took to Twitter to demand that this lockdown be lifted from wine and beer shops, so that he may enjoy this lockdown in a drunken stupor. Many other elite and respected individuals are busy making videos of their mann ki baat and appealing to the common folk to stay inside their homes. Even the beautiful actress, Katrina Kaif, whose large poster graces the wall of my room, made a video of her washing dirty utensils and advising us to do the same to overcome our boredom during these difficult times. However, for a large section of this country working as domestic workers, washing utensils is not a means of recreation. Instead, it is their sole avenue to earn their daily bread. This section of the population has been adversely affected as they have been stripped of their livelihood and how they have been abandoned to scrounge for their survival.
It is ironic that the ones advertising this social-distancing formula for the well being of the society, have not themselves been very social beings. Had the Coronavirus not been the global phenomenon that it is, and was concentrated only in India, these people who seem so concerned about the state of the country would be the very first ones to leave behind our Dearest Bharat Mata for greener avenues in countries like the US, UK and Italy.
My Excellency, I wonder why you did not release a video of yourself during the lockdown, I am certain it would have gone viral in a matter of time. I hope you are staying home sir, because there are many senseless people who are not heeding to these regulations of staying at home and insist upon reaching their native villages on foot. Neither did these people stay home, nor could they reach their villages and they are now bothering the government to provide them with buses to reach their destinations. Now who will explain to these short-sighted people that the government has to focus on fetching the elite with aircrafts and cannot spend such crucial time and resources to arrange buses for them. I have one such foolish friend too. My friend Deepu told me that his house neither had any ration to feed the family nor any money to procure it. The factory owner locked it down and the labour has been forced to retreat to their villages on foot. I tried to warn him not to go on foot, as he could get infected by the imported virus, to which he angrily replied that hunger would kill him before Coronavirus does. Now who can talk sense to such unintelligent people? I next saw Deepu in a video from Bareilly, squatting within a crowd that was being sprayed with some kind of chemical. I wondered if they were trying to kill the germs that caused this hunger. I was furious after watching this video. Deepu is the kind of person who doesn’t even take a bath on Holi, why was he being forced to bathe in chemicals?
By the way, the problem of hunger is our Desi item, while Corona is a foreign product. Therefore, our countrymen should thump their chests with pride that we have already petted bigger diseases than what exist abroad. Corona would lay down its arsenal before such mighty afflictions. Just like hunger we already have the disease of Tuberculosis amongst us. TB alone kills about 5 lakh people every year in India, and India accounts for more than one-fourth of the deaths caused by TB despite it being a curable disease. TB has been accepted in the Indian environment in such a hospitable way regardless of its origins, that India can proudly call it an indigenous infection unlike the Chinese Coronavirus. We Indians are so fearful of losing our beloved ones that till date we have carefully watched over our dear TB. But, following the tradition of Atithi Devo Bhava i.e. Guests are God, the Indian government has accorded more importance to the imported fever (Corona) as compared to TB. One can sympathise with TB and one cannot but feel that ‘a prophet is not honoured in his own country’.
WHO’s reports on Tuberculosis reveal that India is the worst affected by infection and deaths related to TB. In India, a person gets infected with TB every 10 seconds. However the Indian Prime Minister wouldn’t impose a lockdown to combat Tuberculosis. It is ironical how he chose the date of 24th march, World Tuberculosis Day to announce the nationwide lockdown to deal with the Coronavirus. The masses that lose their lives to Tuberculosis belong to the poorest sections of the society. It seems that Corona is of a classless character, as one cannot ensure saving an infected person’s life irrespective of his/her wealth or the lack thereof, once he contracts Covid-19. It is perhaps why the whole country has been turned into a prison to save the wealthy, while the poor struggle for survival amidst the dangers of starvation. It seems that the ration card holders will have to pay with their lives for the fault of the passport holders who brought Corona.
Pardon me for my sentimentality. Your Excellency, do not worry about us, the paupers of the country, if we could survive hunger and TB, we will surely survive Corona. Avoid this imported fever of classless character by all means. Wear a mask regularly, clean your hands with soap and sanitizer, and enjoy breakfast, lunch and dinner as per the daily less-than-ordinary menu. Sleep without worry and enjoy the lockdown by watching Ramayana. Maintain social-distancing and yes, please do inform when the report of your Coronavirus test arrives.
Your modest well-wisher,
An Indian resident Sarvesh Rai,
Student,
School of Open Learning,
University of Delhi
(Written during Lockdown 1.0)