It is THE book on COVID we need to talk about. Barkha sheds light on the topics we love to brush under the carpet - police brutality on the poor and desolate in the name of enforcing lockdown, assault on doctors, lack of dignity in death to the patients and the economic inequality of infliction. We would rather talk about home remedies or conspiracies or other bizzare whatsapp forwards about COVID but not about these. Now that we know of the shameful things we, as a society, have done during the COVID, we must keep the conversations alive even today.
Police brutality in the name of controlling crowd is unnecessary and also inhumane. Treating doctors like outcasts is a display of ignorance. It is important to talk about these social issues too apart from the health impact of the pandemic. COVID revealed the ghastly reality of being a poor person in India.
My favourite story was that of the nurse Yogita Babad from Mumbai. She saw Ajmal Kasab shooting two guards on 26/11. In the nick of the moment, she hid her 35 patients, who are new moms and infants, safely until help arrived. She admitted how COVID was more frightful than the terror attack because it never seems to end.
Barkha confirms every tragic story you must have read during the pandemic but ten times over. While most of us were avoiding the news for our own mental health, we were aware in hindsight that the reality is far worse than what is making to the newspapers. Barkha writes that reality.
As she has been a journalist since before I was born, her writing minces no words, serious and pragmatic. Her reporting is about the people - their families, financial status, the loss and the future of it. The most important part of this book in my opinion is the undeniable impact of financial status on one's healthcare. Apart from COVID, there are people who lost their lives from other diseases too, because they didn't have the 'contacts' to get them one hospital visit. They died of the lacunae that the upper middle-class and rich would have solved in an hour.
The book is emotional and poignant in its elaboration of one of the worst disasters in history. It reminds one of the dreadful two years. But, how do we ever forget them?
Reading this book is also a humbling experience from me. Barkha reported the stories of the most downtrodden and neglected. We are a hundred times more privileged than them anyday. If we can be of a little help to them at least, we should (even after the pandemic).