Hunger of Another Kind

Hunger of Another Kind

 

Author: Prasun Dutta, Delhi India ([e-mail])

The summer days of April to June of the year 2021 were very difficult in Delhi and so also in our residential society in the eastern part of the city. A new Covid wave, named delta by WHO, was raging.

The residents of the society mostly belonged to the upper middle income group and some of them, the main protagonists of this story, were affluent though. They owned acres of fertile land in the states of Punjab and Haryana which, tilled by the hired laborers from the poorer states like Bihar and Jharkhand, generated handsome agricultural income, tax free in India. A few of them owned small businesses producing or trading merchandise which were sold mostly in India and in some instances were exported also. They were known to flaunt their wealth buying expensive cars and splurging money hosting extravagant family functions like wedding ceremonies. More often than not, they funded their children's education abroad, usually in lower graded educational institutes, and took immense pride when they settled abroad as that was a status symbol in their life. When they grew old and their children were away in faraway countries, they lived as a lonely old couple or sometimes just alone if one of the partners had already demised. Once in a year or two their children visited them or they themselves traveled abroad to visit them, save that, WhatsApp video calls kept the connections alive. Besides, the younger neighbors and some distant relatives, if any, who lived in the city, took care of their occasional medical necessities.

Those rich people had means of their own, added to that they received regular remittances from their children abroad, so they could afford living comfortably. They employed a full time maid or the part time ones, two or more, to do the household chores. The domestic helps worked to sweep, mop, dust, clean the dishes using dish washers, wash the clothes using washing machines, shop items of daily needs and walk the pet dogs if they had. A cook would also come twice every day to prepare meals, a part time male servant would report twice a week to clean the window panes, ceiling fans, door handles and the likes and also to take care of heavy washing of bedsheets, pillow covers, curtains etc when required. A part time gardener was engaged to tend the potted plants, aesthetically kept in the balcony, euphemistically called the balcony garden, and a part time driver was employed to drive their cars when they went out. Ironing of clothes was hardly done at home as it was outsourced to the professional ironers who collected the clothes from the apartments, iron them outside the main entrance of the society and returned.

Labor cost in India was low and that was why not only the rich but also the upper middle class residents like us could afford some household helps without hurting our expense budget. To the westerners, this lifestyle might seem luxurious and even unfair exploitation of the poor, yet it generated employment in the household sector and provided livelihood to the marginalized population.

We, the residents, whether young or old, faced the first Covid wave, preceding the delta, in 2020 and the harsh lockdown that ensued, quite bravely. Domestic helps were not allowed to enter the society and many of them migrated to their home states. Forced to do all the household work of our own we relearned what dignity of labor meant. Work from home, home delivery of the essentials, digital payment and of course masks and sanitizers upended our routine life. Delivery boys were not allowed to deliver directly to the apartments and instead they delivered at the entry gate of the society for the residents to pick up from there. The plight of the elderly people, seventy plus in age, leaving alone as their children lived abroad or in other parts of the country, was miserable. They were not internet savvy so they depended on the younger neighbors to place the on line orders and on the society guards to carry the deliveries to their apartments. This was a win-win arrangement for the guards as they could earn tips. Those elderly residents, in absence of the services of the domestic helps, had to do the household chores of their own and that caused immense hardship to them.

Sedentary lifestyles took a toll on the health of the elders. Many of them were infected and hospitalized but fortunately no one died in the first wave. In this first wave on the other hand we faced another problem and that was the social stigma the Covid patients had to suffer affecting their mental well-being.

When the vaccination started in January of 2021 after some sort of power tussle between the central and state governments, the first wave ebbed. Health authorities were in triumphant mood and overconfidence crept in, consequently the number of the hospital beds exclusively reserved for the Covid patients was curtailed, riding on this exuberance of optimism. Proposed installation of new oxygen plants was deferred as the demand for medical oxygen was found moderate in the first wave.

In April 2021, Delhi and the entire India suddenly started reeling under the severe surge of second wave, cases rose so also deaths. The cremation grounds and the grave yards were unable to cope with the fresh arrivals and in the nearby state of Uttar Pradesh, corpses were found floating on the river Ganga. Hospitals ran out of beds and availability of plasma, crucially needed that time for the experimental treatment of the Covid patients, was scarce and therefore unaffordable to the common public. Oxygen demand soared in this delta wave and oxygen availability in the hospitals plummeted. India produced sufficient medical oxygen but owing to transportation logistics, speedy delivery of the commodity from the production units to the hospitals was a formidable challenge. Oxygen was transported to Delhi by road and rail passing through the bordering states, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, and the authorities in those states started confiscating the consignments for use in their own hospitals. Everywhere lifesaving medical oxygen was the most sought after commodity and its acute scarcity led to unethical predatory competition among the neighboring states requiring mediation by the government at the centre.

I always believed Mr. Taneja was the healthiest resident of our society. At the age of forty-five, despite his busy schedule which kept him wholly engaged in his flourishing electronics business, he used to play badminton every morning before the deadly delta wave struck. Suddenly he fell sick and tasted positive. When his oxygen level started falling, hospitalization was necessary. He could manage a hospital bed but oxygen played truant. Finally, because of his business contacts, he could be moved to an oxygenated bed, but it was too late.

Mr. Chopra, a moneyed man, who had aggravated his diabetes due to culinary indulgence and lack of physical exercise, hoped one dose of vaccination would protect him from infection but it proved wrong. He needed oxygen but no oxygenated bed was available. His son, in his mid-twenties, was working from home for a software company. Mr Chopra was never proud of this younger son simply because he could not settle abroad. He always showcased the success of his elder son who studied and worked in the US, but at this time of life and death crisis, this elder son could only make repeated phone calls, offer plethora of advice, express deep concern but delegate all the responsibilities to his younger brother who his father always thought incorrigibly laggard. This young man could identify a vendor who was dispensing portable oxygen cylinders at a whooping black market price but the buyers had to take deliveries at his warehouse in the neighboring state Haryana, more than sixty kilometers away. Over a week till his father Mr. Chopra did not need oxygen anymore, he, leaving home at four in the morning drove to the distance, surreptitiously collected one filled cylinder and returned the empty one. Mr. Chopra recovered. He was fortunate that the police did not confiscate the oxygen cylinder his son was carrying while driving. The authorities in a bid to boost oxygen supply to the hospitals had already banned private sale of oxygen.

Mr. Arora was not that lucky. He had two children but both were living in the US. Mrs. Chopra was no more as she had died a couple of years back leaving him alone. He got the deadly infection and needed oxygen. Fortunately, a bed was available in a nearby small hospital but they ran out of oxygen. The hospital admitted him but asked his kin, a nephew who lived close by, to arrange a cylinder expeditiously. Desperately, his kin contacted a supplier who promised to deliver within two hours against online transfer of an astronomical amount. The amount was paid as money was no constraint, the cylinder was also delivered but sadly it was empty. That night in the hospital Mr. Arora's oxygen level dipped so low that the hospital had to move him to a bigger hospital where they put him on the ventilator in a life threatening situation. On that fateful night, a terrible fire broke out in the hospital and a few patients died. Mr. Arora was one of them.

My wife was leading the management of our society in her capacity as the honorary President of the Managing Committee. She, a diminutive lady with enormous patience and mental strength, tried her best to comfort the elderly residents who were living in constant fear of catching the disease any time soon. This fear often caused mental depression, and then, led by my wife, a few members of the managing committee had to speak to them and cheered them up. Their children living abroad or in other cities in India often called my wife past midnight imploring her to take personal care of their parents. She never refused any call, always listened to them attentively, ignoring her own sleep and promised help to the best of her ability. This confidence building phone talks coupled with reassuring empathy and compassion indeed had a positive impact. Besides, supported by a group of residents, a kitchen was set up to provide hygienically prepared meals, three times every day, to the aged and infirm residents who were unable to cook their own food. The same kitchen also catered to the core maintenance and housekeeping staff who were given temporary accommodation inside the premises of our society.

The management team had procured a portable oxygen cylinder during the first wave of Covid in 2020 when it was used by some residents by rotation but demand for oxygen was low enough to cause a panic. It was refilled a couple of times during this delta wave clandestinely defying ban imposed by the government of Delhi but procurement of oxygen increasingly became tougher and riskier. One day the supplier backed out expressing regret and since then the empty cylinder remained unused inside the store room of the society. A few days later Mr. Asif's wife caught the virus and her oxygen saturation dropped but Mr. Asif, a wealthy wholesale trader and owner of a shop, had contacts to arrange oxygen. The supplier he contracted took the empty cylinder from our society but could not deliver. His outfit that existed in an obscure lane of old Delhi was raided and closed by the police for illegal trade and he had to abscond to evade arrest. Mrs. Asif's conditions deteriorated but thanks to her husband's connections she could be admitted in the intensive care unit of a state owned hospital. Later she had to be moved to a ventilator but could not survive. The doctors opined that timely delivery of oxygen to her home could save her life.

In my home, three of us, my son, wife and I, were not infected but we too were scared of our safety as the danger was looming. My son was working from home for a large corporation. On those peak days of delta wave, the parents of quite a few of his colleagues died of Covid and almost all of them due to non-availability of oxygen on time. The news of fatalities made him so distraught that he insisted on personally inspecting and rigorously sanitizing all our deliveries, food and other essentials, before allowing us to even touch them. Because of his strictures my wife, in-spite of her role to manage the society, could hardly go out of the apartment and whenever she went out she had to wear two masks, a disposable surgical and one N95 on top of it, and a pair of disposable gloves. None visited us except some employees of the society and that too in extreme urgent situations. My son permitted my wife to meet them briefly in the floor lobby outside our apartment, maintaining the mandatory distance of six feet with masks and gloves duly worn. In the constant fear that something would happen to us my son was in a depressed mood, he could hardly enjoy sound sleep at night.

Eventually the supply of medical oxygen improved. Ramp up of domestic as well as international supplies progressively mitigated the oxygen woes. The Delta wave ebbed too but not before the loss of fifteen precious lives among seven hundred residents of our society and at least twelve of them were solely attributed to lack of medical oxygen.

None of the residents in our complex because of their socio-economic status ever experienced the pangs of hunger. This deadly delta wave made them face the hunger of another kind. It was the terrible hunger for medical oxygen which starved a few of them to unfortunate and untimely death. The tragedy jolted us all. Ironically all these happened affecting the well to do people in the capital city of an emerging global super power.

In India’s federal politics, the governments in the opposition ruled states are invariably at loggerheads with the central government on all issues, but on the issue of deaths caused by oxygen starvation there was an unprecedented solidarity. They were unanimous in asserting that no death was caused by the non-availability of oxygen.

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About the author:

The author, based in Delhi, India is a 64-year-old electrical engineer who worked as a senior business executive in both Indian and multinational corporations. After superannuation from full time employment he has rekindled his old passion of writing.