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Delhi living in the shadow of coronavirus

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
Mar 17, 2020 02:36 PM IST

Delhiites adjust to a new life as fear of Covid-19 grows by the day, businesses temporarily shut shops, people socially distance themselves and go looking for books dealing with prophesies, conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic.

It is late afternoon and a train heading to Dwarka has just arrived at the Noida City Centre Metro Station. Inside the half-empty compartment, Rohit Khanna has his headphones plugged in and seems oblivious to everything else.

Rajiv Chowk Metro station, one of Delhi’s busiest, has been witnessing a thin crowd of commuters ever since the coronavirus outbreak in the city.(Raj K Raj/ HT Photo)
Rajiv Chowk Metro station, one of Delhi’s busiest, has been witnessing a thin crowd of commuters ever since the coronavirus outbreak in the city.(Raj K Raj/ HT Photo)

Suddenly, a middle-aged man sitting next to him sneezes. A visibly irritated Khanna picks up his bag and moves to stand next to the train doors, his eyes suspiciously scanning his fellow travellers, most of whom, like him, are wearing masks.

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“I am really worried while travelling on this route. A couple of days back, over 700 employees of a firm in Noida were quarantined after one of their senior executives was tested positive for the coronavirus. I assume that many of these employees would have travelled in these trains. What we are faced with is an invisible and unpredictable enemy, which is moving slowly and stealthily among us,” says Khanna.

The ‘invisible enemy’, Covid-19, the disease caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus, has spread from Wuhan, China to almost all corners of the world. On Friday, it claimed its first victim in the Capital, adding one more to the over 5,000 deaths globally.

Delhi, which has been on the edge since the first case was reported earlier this month, began quarantining itself. Companies asked employees to work from home, educational institutes and cinema halls have shut, medical shops are running out of masks and hand sanitisers, while people stayed away from hotels and restaurants.

“No, I do not fear Wuhan 2.0 in Delhi, but we need to be careful, and avoid the ‘it cannot happen to me syndrome’. These are not normal times in the city,” says Khanna as he exited the train at Rajiv Chowk Metro station, which had a thin crowd of commuters with most eateries having few customers, something rare during the peak hour of the day.

In Khan Market, shoppers could be seen pulling out small bottles of hand sanitisers from their bags and rubbing a few drops onto their hands. Many idle shopkeepers sat at the counters of mostly empty shops, watching the news, or reading newspapers.

“There were a lot of people in the market on Thursday. Our TV was on, and suddenly the news flashed that the Delhi government had declared Covid-19 an epidemic. It ordered all cinema halls in the city to shut, and the few customers we had left soon,” says Jatin Kanjoria, a cashier at the China Fare, a restaurant in Khan Market. “Half an hour after the news, I went out and saw that the crowd had thinned dramatically in the market. People feared the worst and rushed home, I guess.”

On Friday evening, there was just one customer inside China Fare , his eyes glued to the news on TV. “Earlier, we used to play only music on TV, but now customers only want to watch the news,” says Kanjoria. The walls of the restaurant had a mural of a person seemingly feeding a dragon. Does being a Chinese food restaurant create a problem in the time of Coronavirus? Konjoria chooses not to answer, but says, “Everyone’s business has gone down dramatically in the market. The otherwise crammed parking lot has enough space for everyone these days.”

A lot of shopkeepers in the market could be seen wearing masks. “It is because of the fear of foreign customers. No one knows which country they have come from. Khan Market attracts the maximum number of foreign shoppers in the city, and you never know who could be carrying the disease,” says a shopkeeper, who does not want to be named.

After a pause, he adds, “If the wife of the Canadian Prime Minister can contract the disease, anyone can. It does not discriminate between class, colour, communities and countries. The virus has proved the world is indeed flat.”

Uncertainty over who will be next, or what will be the route that the virus will take has spooked many residents.

“Natural disasters, riots and horrific crimes do shock the city, but then it is over in a few days. In the case of the coronavirus, people do not know what they are up against, how long it will last and whether they too will fall victim,” says Mahendra Chauhan, a Vasant Kunj resident who comes to the market to shop for books.

Abhinav Bhami, who runs Faqir Chand & Sons, a bookstore in Khan Market, has had customers in the past week demanding books he had never heard of from people he had never seen before. “See, these are two books people want at any cost these days,” he says, showing us the jackets of the books — ‘End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies About the End of the World’ by Sylvia Brown, and ‘The Eyes of Darkness’ by Dean Koontz — on his iPhone.

The apparent reason for the growing demand for these books is that both seem to have made eerie prophecies on pandemic, which the Covid-19 is.

“In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again 10 years later, and then disappear completely,” reads a paragraph in Brown’s book.

Similarly, Koontz, many believe, ‘predicted’ the coronavirus outbreak in 1981. His novel made reference to a virus called “Wuhan-400”. Thankfully, the similarities end there: in the novel, the virus was a biological weapon with a 100% “kill rate” — it would kill everyone it infected. In comparison, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the mortality rate from Covid-19 at about 3.4%. It has also now emerged that the original name of the virus was “Gorki-400”, in reference to a Russian locality; its name was changed to “Wuhan-400” when the book was released again in 1989.

Bhami tried his best to get his “new customers” the books they wanted, but failed. He has, however, ensured that he will have enough copies of “The Corona Virus, What you need to know about the Global Pandemic” that will be published by Penguin Random House India. The book promises ‘to demystify the outbreak and debunk myths’ that are causing frenzy everywhere.

Physician Dr Swapneil Parikh, co-author of the book, says, “Either humanity changes its approach to pandemics or pandemics will devastatingly change humanity. The book will tackle conspiracy theories and talk about the economic, political and social fallout of the pandemic.”

The Full Circle Bookshop has prominently displayed a recently released book, curiously titled “Virusphere: From Common Colds to Ebola Epidemics—Why We Need the Viruses That Plague Us” by Frank Ryan, a UK- based physician who has written several best-selling books on evolutionary virology.

Bhami says that with schools closed, there has been a rise in the sale of children’s fiction. Ritu Gupta, who lives in South Extension, has just bought a bag full of books. “At this time of the year, we generally go out of the city for a few days. But this time we decided to stay at home, and it is hard keeping children busy. So far, they have spent time playing board games. Now, I have stocked up on books for a few months. We are not sure when schools will reopen,” says Gupta. “I believe reading is a good way of dealing with the pangs of compulsory social distancing. I must say that the government has responded with the urgency the pandemic required, even better than many western governments, including the US.”

Satish Sundra, owner of Ram Chander & Sons, perhaps the country’s oldest toy store in Connaught Place, is a worried man. He feels that a lot of fear and panic that he is witnessing in Delhi is unprecedented—and unnecessary. “During the war in 1965 and 1971, there were blackouts and CP shops would at close at 6pm for a couple of weeks. But I did not see the kind of fear in the city that I am seeing now,” the 83-year-old says. “Though experts have said it is not necessary, many people are walking around with facemasks. It is only fuelling fear. My business is down by 80 percent.”

A lot of his customers come from Odeon Cinema, one of over 150 cinemas that have downed their shutters across the city. On Friday, the box office is shut with a notice to the media. “This is what we have for reporters who come to check on the cinema,” says the security person there.

“The footfall in CP is down by 50%, and restaurants and garments shops are struggling to attract customers despite extending the sale season and offering discounts,” says Atul Bhargava, president, New Delhi Traders Association (NDTA). “Our shops in malls are suffering more as people feel they are more susceptible to the contracting virus in a closed space of a mall,” says Mayank Mohan, CEO, Mohanlal Sons, a garment chain across Delhi and the national capital region.

Even as Delhiites are trying to reduce all unnecessary contact, the city’s elderly are finding it difficult. Every day, a group of elderly people gather at the Senior Citizen Recreation Centre at Malviya Nagar.

“Isolation is not a solution for us. Many among us live alone and suffer from loneliness. We cannot disband, but we ensure that we take all safety measures like washing and sanitising hands,” says Ashok Prabhakar, 80, president, Senior Citizens Association, Malviya Nagar. “I am encouraging people not to worry, and have faith in God.” Prakash Chand, 79, got “special permission” from his daughter-in-law to come to a Janakpuri park for a walk on Saturday morning.

“She keeps telling me to wash my hands, not to touch my face, not to go to the local park, not to do this and that. I am finding it hard to keep up,” he says. “This new regimen is difficult to maintain.”

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Manoj Sharma is Metro Features Editor at Hindustan Times. He likes to pursue stories that otherwise fall through the cracks.

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