Stories from the pandemic - John vakil

 My wife and I travelled to Kerala in Sept 2020 during the Covid pandemic. We’d taken a ‘short stay’ pass that the Kerala government allows if you have work that cannot be deferred.

Most people we met in Kerala agreed the government was doing a good job managing the pandemic. From tackling the humanitarian crisis of migrant workers to identifying infected cases, isolating them and tracing their contacts to ensuring food and medicine supply for quarantined people, the state is thought to have done well.

What helps is that the populace is diligent about wearing masks, maintaining social distance and washing hands – a result of high levels of education and the slight paranoia common in Kerala on health matters.

Of course things are not perfect. There are complaints about lapses in the process, lack of supplies, and petty corruption but that is inevitable in any large endeavour.

But this story is about our neighbour in Kerala. Let’s call him John. John vakil (so called because he is an advocate) lives in a isolated house next to ours with his wife and their three young daughters. Like everyone else, his business has been severely impacted by the pandemic since litigants have dried up and courts are non- or minimally functional.

John was the subject of some amusement among neighbours and the macho men who came to work on our property for repairs and general maintenance.

We’ve hardly seen John vakil during the last few months, they sniggered. As for his wife and children, they have been locked up since Covid began.

John strolled over to meet us one morning when my wife and I were supervising some workmen on the property. He is a slight man and his mask covered nearly all of his face below the eyes. He stood on the other side of our compound wall and a good ten feet away.

Where are the wife and kids, my wife asked him. People say they haven’t seen you all for months.

Can’t take a risk, said John. If I test positive and am quarantined, the girls and my wife will have no one to look after them. We have no one in town and relatives from other places will not travel.

The thing is, said John nervously, the Covid ward of the District Hospital is not far from my house. People joke that if all the patients sneeze together, we’ll catch the virus.

The hospital is close to our place and quarantine rules are strict. I could understand how John was worried that if he was lodged there, his wife and daughters would have to fend for themselves.  

Then John said something surprising. But I was in that Covid ward for three days, he said.

Why on earth, I asked. Weren’t you worried about getting infected?

I’m no hero, said John. But there was a young mother who was tested Covid positive and she was quarantined in the hospital. The husband is working elsewhere and her family is in a Containment Zone and cannot travel to meet her.

The child was born after IVF treatment and so the mother does not lactate. The infant needs baby food for all meals. When they shifted her to the hospital, she did not have time or the resources to pack anything. No change of clothes, no baby food, and no relatives to support her.

But surely the hospital would have helped, I said. I hear good things about the government in Kerala.

It’s not for lack of trying, said John. But there is a shortage of PPE kits, baby food was not available, and they certainly don’t have a change of clothes.

That’s tough, I said. But don’t the NGOs, or in your case the church, help in such cases?

How do you think I got involved, asked John. The father in our church called me and there is no refusing him.

So for the next three days, till alternative arrangements were made, this nervous householder donned a PPE and visited the Covid ward twice a day with infant food and clothes and other essentials to tend to a stranger.

The next time I met our macho workers, I told them about what John had done during the pandemic. 

Being fair men, they agreed they had been too quick to judge.