The COVID Mother

It was a white ambulance with a red warning light.

We were following it for quite some time through the early morning traffic of Delhi. 

It carried someone who was very dear to us.

The van entered the cremation ground and went straight to platform No 15.

The air was heavy with the smell of burning human flesh.

Two male medical assistants, clad in blue PPE slithered out of the back door.

One of them peeped inside and pushed open a rectangular freezer.

Carefully, they pulled out a grey, laminated body bag which was sealed and tagged.

They placed the bag on top of a wooden pyre which was already there.

‘Who is the elder among you?’ a young pandit asked indifferently, unpacking at the same time a sleek, cardboard box that contained a pack of incense sticks.

My brother inched forward.

‘Can we have one last look at her?’ he said in a feeble voice.

‘Look, as per the rules, it is not allowed. She died of COVID. We can’t take a chance.’

My brother wanted to plead further but I softly placed my hand on his shoulder. 

He relented.

‘Rest of you, please move back and don’t take off your gloves, face shields and masks. OK?’

We were only four of us there.

Relatives, friends, family members- everyone decided to skip the funeral.  No one wanted to take a chance. It was medically not advised. They did what was right but somehow, it never felt right.

The pandit turned towards my brother.

‘Since you would be performing the last rites, you need to put on the kit.’

There were nine more cremations taking place in that suffocating place.

That meant nine more body bags lying atop wooden pyres.

And nine more families going through an ordeal they had never imagined. 

Once my brother got ready, he appeared like an alien covered in white plastic.

The pandit started chanting sacred mantras hurriedly.

He asked me and my nephew to help him with some more wood which was lying nearby in a heap. My father placed a new red saree, matching bangles and some cosmetics on the body bag as per the Hindu tradition.

Finally, my brother was asked to light the pyre.

The virus had given my mother just six days.

It attacked her lungs with vengeance.

She struggled hard to breathe.

A tall oxygen cylinder had stood next to her bed helplessly.

My father never left her side till the time he realized that she could breathe no longer.

She was declared ‘brought-in-dead’ at the hospital.

Her body was then moved to a cold freezer.

What was till then just a figure appearing on news channels turned into a stark reality for us.

As yellow flames engulfed the grey body bag, the old man sat down on the broken pavement and watched helplessly.

His life partner for more than sixty years was going away forever.

He threw up his hands in despair.

He could never understand what wrong he had done to deserve this disaster.

No one could.

‘You all can wait outside in the shed now. Come tomorrow morning to collect the ashes.’

As we all came out, no one had anything to say.

More than her demise, it was the manner in which my mother’s cremation was carried out that had shocked us and rattled our nerves.

We could not even have one last look at her.

That day, I saw death being dealt with in a business-like manner.

Very efficiently indeed.

There was no place for emotions.

Only precautions.

The world had indeed changed.

An unknown virus not only killed people.

It killed much more.

It destroyed human dignity.

It made us afraid, not of death, but of each other.

One man avoided the other.

We realized how helpless we actually were.

Conquerors of space, owners of great inventions, we actually were nobodies who had no clue how to fight a tiny, invisible enemy.

The whole of humanity was on its knees.

Ultimately, man’s monstrous ego had found a match and got crushed badly.

And the funny thing was, you couldn’t blame anybody.

No one was at fault.

It was just one of those things.

A careless leak from a lab somewhere.

I watched the burning pyre from a distance.

A gentle wind began to blow over.

Suddenly, I saw a young, beautiful woman standing next to the pyre.

It was her.

That was how she looked in her hay days.

A young boy with dimpled cheeks and long flowing hair, stood next to her, clutching tightly on her arm.

She smiled and waved at me.

Then, she disappeared into the flames.

The boy started crying and ran after her.

I rushed towards him but the pandit blocked my way.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘That boy,’ I struggled to speak, ‘he would get burned.’

‘Where?’ the pandit turned back.

There was nobody.

‘I think you need some rest.’

I stood there like a statue.

The times that I had spent with her flashed across my mind like giant waves.

There she was, helping me with my homework, playing with me, feeding me lovingly and then putting me to sleep.

There was very little that I could ever do for her.

I couldn’t even tell her how much I loved her.

I was cut off from the source of my life suddenly by the cruel hand of fate.

I felt a growing vacuum within. 

The officer-in-charge at the cremation ground walked up to me and smiled in a matter-of-fact way through a row of yellow teeth.

‘You are very lucky sir. At other places, there are long queues and people are waiting for hours together. And here, you just got free in forty five minutes.’

Just then, another ambulance barged in.

It was business as usual.

(Image by Shalini Singh)