Patricia Mukhim
Life used to move at a frenetic pace. It still does for those who don’t have the option to, “stay at home.” They include health workers (doctors, nurses and paramedics), those in government, especially those at the higher echelons who need to reconfigure certain plans and take decisions on a daily basis; and then there are the police. For the first time police are doing, not law and order duties (although some are enforcing the curfew) but health-related duties because this is an extraordinary situation. After this pandemic is over I hope we make time to pay our respects to those that serve while the privileged remain at home. Indeed, it is a privilege to be staying and working from home. Not many can afford this; not those who earn from doing physical labour. For them, ‘staying at home’ is a penalty they are paying because of the coronavirus.
On March 30, Meghalaya lost a youth to the coronavirus, not because of the disease but as an indirect consequence of it – the sudden lockdown. Aldrin Lyngdoh a young man, working in a food court in Agra died of suicide but not before sending a longish WhatsApp message to Mr Robin Hibu, ACP Delhi Police who also runs an NGO – Helping Hands and who is constantly at the beck and call of troubled youth in Delhi. By the time anyone could reach out to the distressed Aldrin who was thrown out of his job following the closure of the food court, he had died of suicide. I have always wondered what a person feels and thinks at that desperate moment. Is there a hope-giving lifeline that someone could have given Aldrin so that he and others like him could have been saved? We can’t know; we don’t know. We can only grieve that a young man with so much of life before him should choose to give it up. But Aldrin must have been at the pits of despondency – of being alone away from home, unloved and uncared for. That’s it! Humans are social creatures yet some are left to carry their crosses alone. We don’t have enough social capital to prevent this sense of aloneness – to extend a lifeline to someone desperately in need of it. How many times we have failed and continue to fail.
Aldrin had one last wish. He wanted his body to be brought home and buried here. But with all flights grounded there was no way his body could have been airlifted to Shillong. But the Government of Meghalaya led by a compassionate Chief Secretary did the next best thing they could do at the time. After the post mortem was done, Aldrin was brought to Delhi from Agra and given the burial he would have hoped for with prayers and all honours and attended by the Khasi and Garo residents of Delhi, especially the staff of Meghalaya House, Delhi. His body was laid to rest at the oldest Indian Christian Cemetery at Paharganj, Delhi. As a people we have to be grateful that Aldrin’s body was not left to be disposed of by the Agra municipality. As Khasis we believe in respect for the dead (burom ia kiba lah khlad noh), no matter how the person lived his/her life.
This brings us to the criticality of mental health at this juncture. Clearly the lockdown is taking a toll on some and driving them round the bend. There are young people who draw sustenance from talking to someone, a close friend, a confidante; someone who would just hold their hand or lend them a shoulder to cry on. The lockdown prevents this human contact especially because Covid19 demands social isolation. If the lockdown continues, I fear for those with frail emotional quotient. The very fact that there is a rise in domestic violence should make us question why a couple that have lived together for so long are finding it unbearable to have to live and bump into each other 24×7. Faults that are normally dismissed are now amplified. This is what happens when couples find themselves in intense prolonged proximity with their partners who they normally meet with only in the morning and evenings and on weekends and without the Covid pandemic hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles.
The situation today is such that couples and their children are eating breakfast, lunch and dinner together 7 days a week and have been almost co-joined. Think especially of families living in small apartments. Besides, each member of the family has a different response to the crisis. While some members of the family are paranoid about hand-washing and sanitising everything, the children may be breaking all the rules and can’t see why they should be washing their hands frequently. It’s something they are not used to and they will argue about it till they are blue in the face. Mostly, its kids who go crazy staying indoors! Television programmes and video games are temporary pursuits. Few become couch potatoes. Here is one contingency plan we never thought of and were not prepared for.
Then there are parents who work from home (WHM) the new mantra, and need some quiet but kids can hardly understand why they can’t shout or play loud music. Then everyone is consuming the internet so the speed is slowed down making it difficult for WHM adults to send large files across. The problems are numerous. There are accusations of one person being insensitive to the needs of the others etc. In any case when you are in confinement for a long period of time all sorts of mental health problems start showing up especially in people who are already emotionally fragile. Psychologists the world over, caution that couples who are already in a rocky relationship need extra support during this period. Where will that support come from during the lockdown when psychiatrists and psychologists are overworked?
This lockdown is a situation which demands that parents develop skills they don’t have. There are several write-ups and YouTube channels telling parents, essentially mothers, to engage their kids in creative exercises. But creativity demands that we adults be relaxed and not anxious. Parents now have to be kindergarten or high school teachers even if they have not been trained to be one. We never asked for this. Covid19 brought it on us. Do we cope or break? That depends on each person and this is where mental wellness is so important.
And then let me come to the social distancing part. In some communities such as the Khasis, this is an oxymoron. We do not and cannot function alone. We need company even if it’s just one more person. I stand on the terrace and watch peoples’ behaviour. Those who walk in the big football field across my house do so in pairs. People even go to shops in pairs. They go to their MLAs in fives and sixes and no one seems able to stop them. Social distancing just does not come easy to us. I don’t know what it will take to drum this into our heads.
Covid19 has also revealed the cleavage in tribal society today. The word “community” is passé. Now it is each to herself/himself. The poor have dipped even below the Below Poverty Line (BPL) yardstick. According to the NSSO data, 29% of families in Meghalaya are female–headed households and 30% of the population live in those households. This is something that policy makers have yet to take cognisance of. But this will lead to huge societal disruptions sooner than later.
I hope Covid19 will push our government to take a deeper look at these disturbing societal fractures.