Storytellers

Through the masked face, express empathy Vijay Gopichandran For many people Covid-19 and the lock-down have completely changed their lives. For some of us, privileged lot, not much as changed. My 7-day work week has not changed. I am not locked down inside my home and go out to the hospital every day. For some of us, the not so ‘socially active’ lot, not meeting people, not hanging out, not going out for lunches and dinners etc. also do not matter much. But when I look at my work closely, I have realized that so much has changed. The change has been so sudden, but the ambient uncertainty and anxiety of the pandemic has made it imperceptible. Yesterday, I saw the video of an innovative ‘no contact’ Covid-19 screening clinic. It is a model of screening patients with suspected Covid-19 while minimizing the contact between the patient and the doctor. The video goes like this. The patient’s token number is called out in the public announcement system. A well dressed, confident...

Small deeds to maintain normalcy during pandemic times Vijay Gopichandran About two weeks ago, two of my colleagues and I sat in a large room, separating ourselves at the recommended 2 meter distance from each other and my senior colleague remarked “It is as though the ‘reset button’ for the world has been pressed. We all will soon have to adapt to a new normal in our lives”.  It was the beginning of the lock-down of the whole country to contain the spread of Covid-19. Since there are no public transport vehicles on the roads and I do not drive or own any private vehicles, I have started walking from and to the hospital. The distance is not much, just about 3 KM, but I am seeing things which I have never seen before. There are a bunch of people living on the pavements near the metro station on the way to my hospital. They were part of the background tapestry of the urban busy life that I had never noticed them before. One family has a young man, a woman and two scrawn...

Solidarity in the time of Covid-19 Vijay Gopichandran (All names reported in this blog are changed for confidentiality purposes) “Why haven’t your pasted that sticker outside my door?”, asked an anxious elderly lady to the health worker who visited her to check whether any members in her household had cough, cold or fever. “The lady was very much worried that we were paying less attention to her house compared to the house which had a sticker outside their door. She thought the ones with the sticker outside their house got better attention.”, narrated Mansoor, one of 26 other frontline health workers whom we met yesterday during our field visit to evaluate the cluster containment activity in the city. The field staff are working in a committed and diligent manner, carrying out their role in control of the Covid-19 illness. We read articles and newspaper reports about the stigma associated with stickers on people’s doors identifying them as quarantined houses and ind...