Two days before India closed its borders to the UK and Europe
By Radhika Iyengar
Monday,
16th March morning, two of my four flatmates suddenly informed me
that they were returning to their home countries. Europe was moving towards a
lockdown and their families in Sweden and Finland respectively, were calling
them back. So far, India had denied entry to foreign passengers, but was still
allowing Indian passport holders to return to the country, if they wanted.
Since
I was at Kent University in Canterbury, UK, on a fellowship, I didn’t want to
cut it short. So, I had decided to stay back. I was advised by my friends to
stock up on food supplies and home essentials for at least three weeks. Tesco,
a known supermarket chain, had refused to deliver groceries to our student
accommodation, stating that most items were “out of stock”. So, I decided to
head down to the City Centre, 15 minutes away by bus, to visit Tesco
personally.
I had
been living in Canterbury for the last six weeks and Tesco shelves always had
rows and rows of neatly stacked products available – more than required. This
visit revealed a somewhat different scene. A few shelves, including the health
aisle, had been scraped bare. Thermometers, hand sanitisers and toilet rolls
were nowhere to be seen. The cereals shelf too was almost empty, with a few
oatmeal packets knocked down – you could tell that people had been in terrible
haste.
Earlier,
I would find a majority of customers hovering around fresh vegetables, gingerly
picking plump tomatoes, carefully smelling avocados or walking through the
fresh meats section, selecting poultry and bacon packets, as well as fresh milk
cartons. At the back of the store, was the canned food aisle. On this visit,
that aisle was crowded. Customers were dropping dozens of pasta, oats, noodles
and milk powder packets, as well as canned tins: kidney beans, tuna and other
ready-to-eat goods into their trolleys. Some of them were rushing back and
forth, cradling food tins in their arms. Was this the first sign of the world coming
to an end?
Countries
like China, Italy and Spain had buckled into a lockdown, but the UK was far
from it. As of March 16, clothing stores, pubs, cafes and restaurants were
still running. Schools and universities were still having face-to-face classes.
However, self-regulated, smaller communities like Soka-Gakkai UK had taken the
weekly community meet-ups to an online platform called Zoom. As of March 20,
the NHS website guidelines stated that if an individual experienced any
Covid-19 symptoms, he/she was requested to stay at home, practice
self-isolation and not visit a “GP surgery, pharmacy or a hospital” for seven
days. It said that if at the end of the week, an individual felt that his/her
symptoms were getting worse, then he/she had to contact the NHS solely via its
website instead of placing a call.
I
finally exited the store with groceries which I assumed would last me for at
least three weeks. I glanced at my phone and noticed I had received a text from
my best friend in India. She wrote: “Not to cause panic, but take a look at
this,” and attached a screenshot of a Coronavirus (Covid-19) update. The
Ministry of Health in India had announced that it was going to start
“prohibiting” passengers “travelling from European Union countries, European
Free Trade Association, Turkey and UK to India” from March 18. At this time,
the number of cases in India had risen to 114. This was a blanket travel ban
for everyone, including those holding Indian passports. That included me.
My
country was on the verge of closing its borders. Although the government
declaration stated that the ban was until March 31, no one knew whether it
would be later extended if the situation escalated. From the looks of it, we
were heading towards a lockdown.
While
this dawned on me, there I was standing in the middle of a semi-busy street
with three large grocery bags packed to the brim, left to make a very
uncomfortable decision. Did I have to rush back to campus and buy the next
ticket out? What would I tell my administrator at the university or my
fellowship advisor? Would I get a ticket back to India in time? How expensive
would it be? What about my fellowship – how could I leave it midway? And, what
was going to happen to all the food I had just bought?
I
called my parents. They advised me to return half of the items, in case I
decided to leave right away. If I was forced to stay back in the UK, then at
least I’d have some groceries to fall back on. I re-entered Tesco in panic,
ramming into scrambling customers with my overloaded bags. I approached a staff
member, apologised in advance, and told her that I needed to return most of the
products I had bought ten minutes ago. She looked at me quizzically, took a
deep breath and smiled, “Don’t worry, hon, there are a lot of people here who’d
want buy what you are returning. So, it’s all good.”
On my
bus-ride back to the university campus, streets looked emptier, yet some people
were still walking about holding hands. The sun was out and the bus passed
through leafy boulevards, which was immensely therapeutic. The seats around me
were almost empty; when I turned around to count the number of people on board,
I heard a girl behind me sniffling. Her country had already closed its borders
and now she didn’t know what to do. She used words like “stranded” and
“depression” while she was speaking on the phone.
By
the time I returned to my campus, students from the other houses were rolling
their suitcases towards the bus station. The university had already begun to
look like a ghost town. When I entered my campus home, my flatmates were in the
middle of packing and throwing out trash. One of them had already left, I was
informed.
I
rushed to my room and called my brother. “You need to book a flight back to
India immediately,” he told me, trying to calm me down. “I’m looking at the
flight options – they are disappearing fast.”
Over
the last few days, things had spiralled out of control so quickly, I hadn’t had
the time to process any of it. Now everyone was leaving. After considering the
pros and cons, I took the difficult decision of leaving too. I managed to buy a
ticket on a direct flight which had only four seats remaining. The ticket’s
price was tenfold,
I
heard horror stories of how several flights to France and Norway were getting
cancelled. My Finnish flatmate’s flight got cancelled too and I saw her shaking
with fear, thinking she would be stuck. It took her hours, but she did finally
manage to rebook another flight in the nick of time.
The
international students, scholars and fellows were leaving town, except for
Italians, who felt it was safer to live in Canterbury. I left all the food that
I had bought to them.
As I
sat in the cab to the airport the next day, I listened to radio reports on the
situation in the UK. There were cases where two brothers couldn’t hug each
other after the sudden demise of their father; a 74-year-old woman who had two
doctor appointments and could not reschedule them to a later date, because she
would otherwise lose “her place”. The airport itself was deserted – I had never
seen it so empty, neither had I felt so alone. But I knew one thing for sure, I
was going home.