CORONA’S GIFT & “HOPEFULLY PERMANENT” BLESSING TO INDIA + OTHER DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

And I dare say you could read the above twice!

It was during the summer vacation of 1979 when Gumnitha, my paternal uncle, and Mala-ma, my aunt, had visited us in Tirunelveli, a lesser-known district in interior Tamil Nadu, India, from Dubai. They arrived with four oversized suitcases that then seemed to me, a six-year-old, as though I’d fit inside any of them, for they appeared large enough to hold the two of us together; my sister, Vinu, a year-and-a-quarter younger to me, and me!

One suitcase belonged to the traveling couple, and the other three were for us, the family, filled with goodies from abroad for each member of the household!

A fun-filled week later, Gumnitha and Mala-ma left for Dubai, and my parents soon decided we would pay a visit to Mumbai, then called Bombay, to meet my maternal grandmother and our dozen other relatives living in the city.

Dad got our tickets booked, and a fortnight later, we boarded a train from Tamil Nadu to Mumbai–my first experience in a public mode of transport of which I remember, in a long-distance train and a journey spanning 36+ hours, and a trip I have hated to remember each time I have!

Regardless, I thank Coronavirus whenever I think about it!

Vinu and I were having the time of our lives inside our compartment in the non-AC bogie that dad had reserved our tickets in, and we’d happily traded seats with our parents to park ourselves beside the window seats, if only to place our faces as close as we could near the window’s barricaded openings to catch the breeze hitting our faces, and to look at the passing scenery as the train chugged on.

Local sellers selling fried snacks, beverages, fruits, newspapers, and other stuff entered the bogie non-stop announcing their wares in loud voices, and many travelers bought their items. Next, beggars, by the dozens, came by to pester people for money, after which eunuchs in large groups dressed as females and draped in sarees kept arriving to stare at the seated with their teeth flashing at everyone as they clapped & sang Bollywood numbers in male voices albeit with grossly grating cacophonic tones in them, then made sure every passenger parted with some change before they moved on!

Hours later, it was time for me to ask mom to take me to the restroom. She led me to the toilet area at the end of the bogie with over 20 individual compartments like ours, where two toilets stood facing the other with their doors wide open.

Mom asked me to take my pants off and get in. I did, to only face a soiled Indian toilet with no place to stand over and, well, empty myself!

Mom, understanding my predicament, looked about for the railway mug to fill some water and clean the mess, but it was nowhere in view! So she asked me to stay put, with my pants down as they were, ahem, then darted across to the opposite toilet and well, found the mug gone there too! So she cleaned the dirty area with water that she repeatedly collected with her cupped palms from the basin tap, keeping at it until the place was reasonably clean.

Who’d she complain to about the missing mug in a running train with only strangers traveling along with us inside the bogie, most sleeping in their compartments, and with no railway official in sight? (On hind thoughts, seriously, I doubt if it would have made much of a difference had she been able to locate a railway official then! And assuming she’d miraculously found one during the time, from where would the guy have got us a mug? From the opposite toilet that mom had already checked, which too did not have one?)

And mom obviously did not have any toilet cleaning paraphernalia with her as we were traveling in a public train and standing inside a public toilet that was being used by over a hundred people who traveled along with us. However, that was the last time I visited the restroom on the journey.

Over the years, I have tried my best to avoid using railway toilets or other public toilets when I’ve perforce traveled by public transport, only because none in India are anywhere close to the word hygienic; correction, I should have said ‘were’! Things have drastically changed from March 2020!

And am I glad to mean it in a good way, for a change, thank you Coronavirus!

• To start, the government has, among its other designated Coronavirus recovery isolation wards, converted railway bogies in India into the same which has made them go about doing what mom, back in 1979, not-too-successfully tried doing for me, albeit with no cleaning equipment or disinfectants! Yes, today, you’ll find the Indian railway toilets sprayed clean and disinfected, each single one of them, only because of Coronavirus; thank you Coronavirus!

Not that I back the government’s decision in converting our trains into isolation wards, if only because of the lesser than two feet distance between the five-foot-long couches within the compartments (which can easily spread the virus), coupled with, again, two public toilets for two dozen or more infected Corona recovery patients! No way!

• That said, in India today, it is not the railway toilets alone that have got disinfected and clean. We have sanitized streets everywhere; thank you Coronavirus!
• Next, previously neglected spaces that the public once used as trash dumping areas/grounds in several neighborhoods across the country today stand improved and better, with the government organizing daily trash trucks to pick up the trash; thank you Coronavirus!
• We have cleanliness & sanitization on focus and radar everywhere; thank you Coronavirus!
• Importantly, because of the viral scare, people now do not swarm or crowd in spaces where they previously used to. They wear masks and maintain safe distances from the other. This works to the advantage of children, women, and elderly people who would, before these viral times, in most public places; be it public transport, malls, grocery shops, or others; patiently await their turns to get to whatever, for the weaker are always pushed behind and usually stay toward the end of the crowd everywhere; thank you Coronavirus!

The point is will we see this “cleanliness on hyper-drive” continue once we are through with Coronavirus? I suppose it will. It must; thank you Coronavirus!

Well, Gumnitha and Mala-ma are now in the U.S., where the Killer virus has claimed over 55,000 official lives as I write and seems to go strong, but the couple have little to fear. They are safe at home and protected by the Almighty, totally locked down, praying for the welfare of humanity, and spending quality time doing that which constructive, sane folk in their 70’s would–they follow a pious life filled with forgiveness, forbearance, harmony, and like love for all beings, for they are among those that believe in loving all and serving all.