Last year,
in the belly of pandemic spring,
I was shut in.
Walls warped,
windows were eyes,
and the chair in the corner stayed empty.
The year 2020 was a bit different!
A phone call, “Hello dear! I tested positive for Covid!”
I was numb for a second. The settings couldn’t be more unreal for me as my friend and I were travelling by OLA towards Kolkata Airport.
I gripped my mobile phone even more tightly.
“Do you have any symptoms? Where will you be quarantined? Did you see your RT PCR test report? Could something be wrong with the test? I was the last one to see you, right?” I asked.
I could see the cab driver looking anxiously at me in the rearview mirror. He offered me a sanitiser bottle. I realized that it’s not the time to press the panic button.
“Dear, I don’t have any symptoms. The officials said that they would schedule another test if I remain with no symptoms. As a result, I’m quarantined in one of my rooms which has an attached washroom. I can taste and smell everything. No cough or fever either,” grandma said. 
Deep breaths! My grandma had tested positive and I was zooming out of her city in the next two hours. What if we are not allowed to fly out? I would be stranded in this big place without any sources. Also, the test report had to be faulty. Heavens! Was I infected too?
My friend was scared and I was a mess.
The smell of the filter coffee at the airport was enough to bolster our flagging spirits. Yes, we smelt it right through our masks. We had to be fine, with that confidence we flew back home without any drama. By the way, we carried our own negative RT PCR test conducted three days ago. We just couldn’t have got the bug except now with my grandma under a Corona cloud. We were suspects and our face shields and double masks remained firmly in place all the way to my home.
Four days later, we whooped with joy; my queen, my grandma tested negative and none of my contacts back in the city were sick. Good times could begin but within that waiting period, my friend and I developed a raging cough. I got a weird stomach ache too that made me want to curl up into a ball. A possible Corona infection? Well, Google was of no help.
I readily agreed to dash off at 10 pm for a RAT (Rapid Antigen Test). A lockdown was in place, so the deserted road with a siren blaring police vehicle patrolling looked like a scene from an apocalyptic world. We got our negative results after a nerve- racking 20 minutes wait. Before we could celebrate, we were informed that RAT can only be taken as 60 % accurate. Go figure! To be sure we got our RT PCR done and thankfully it was negative.
Several things had changed. For once, the news channels on the telly were not exaggerating the despair and death. Facebook was no longer a mindless source of comfort. Surprisingly, my social media accounts have turned into a plasma/ hospital bed / Remdesivir / oxygen seeking request machine.
Recently, there was an SOS from an old mate on my WhatsApp. His father could only get a bed in the hospital if he bought his own oxygen cylinder. I was still stumped! The same friend later shared the pictures he clicked of rows of cylinders with their handlers sitting around, and waiting for their turns for refilling.
Now, my Arogya Setu App tells me that I might be at low risk of infection. Apparently, I had contact with an infected person for a minute the day I accompanied my brother for the X-ray.
That inspired a mad scramble to take my first dose of vaccine.
Hopefully, the vaccine lives up to its promise of not letting us die.
Stay Home, Stay Safe!