Ostracism to acceptance: Covid survivors look back at a T20 year – Times of India

KOLKATA: Nine months ago, Monami Biswas and her family had overnight turned pariah in their neighbourhood, as did Sarika Meghani and her kin in their upscale New Town housing complex. Techie Srijani Majumdar needed police protection to enter her home, while a Salt Lake resident had his picture, and that of his house, circulated on WhatsApp groups. Their crime: testing positive for Covid-19.
The worst backlash, perhaps, was faced by a 19-year-old Oxford University student who had the misfortune of becoming the city’s first reported Covid patient. Testing positive after returning from the UK, he faced immense flak on social media, where insensitive memes on him and his parents were widely circulated.
Today, as crude ostracisation gives way to acceptance of Covid patients and social stigma is replaced by empathy, these early survivors recall the trauma of being shunned by society. Many say it has left them scarred for life.
Monami, the third person in Bengal to test positive, recalls she was blamed for “bringing the virus to the city” when she returned late March from Scotland, where she is a management student at the University of Edinburgh.
“I had reported my illness and got myself admitted to a hospital immediately, but still there were people who blamed me and stopped all contact with us. Since then, many of them have also contracted Covid-19 and I believe deep down they understand what they had done then was wrong,” says Monami, who returned to Scotland in September.
Sarika remembers how, back in April when she and her husband were about to get admitted to a government hospital after testing positive, the residents’ welfare association had asked her daughter and elderly mother-in-law, who were both negative, to leave. “The issue was resolved, but that conversation broke my heart,” said Sarika. “Those were the initial days and we didn’t know much about the disease. As if the disease weren’t scary enough, the social ostracisation was difficult to accept. Now, every month there are multiple patients in the complex, but the RWA no longer stigmatises them,” she said.
Srijani, who was almost forced out of her Jagaddal home by neighbours after she returned from Finland and whose plight TOI carried in an article on March 21, says she was recently stunned when she saw the same set of neighbours posting photographs of their vacation in crowded Mandarmani. “I feel pity for them. Today they are moving around as if the disease doesn’t even exist,” she said.
When TOI got in touch with the family of the city’s 17-year-old first victim, his bureaucrat mother refused to speak, saying they were “yet to get over the trauma”. The student has now returned to the UK. Supriyo Dutta, a post-graduate media student who had then shared multiple memes on the boy, now regrets having done so. He himself contracted the disease two months ago.
“I feel foolish and sorry to have ostracised that young boy on social media and sharing his photographs across platforms. No one knew anything about the disease back then. But now as I look upon what I had done, I feel ashamed,” said Dutta.
Doctors and psychologists say more than the disease, the fear of social ostracisation had bothered patients during the early days of the infection. “My initial days of Covid counselling was all about trying to pacify patients and make them understand that they would be accepted back in society. Such was the fear of social stigma that many people even stopped visiting doctors after getting fever. I am glad the situation has changed now,” said psychiatrist Siladitya Roy.
With the coronavirus leaving hardly any family untouched, not only are patients no longer hiding their condition but many are posting social media status messages immediately after diagnosis. “The day after I tested positive last month, the local club sent a packet of essentials to my doorstep. My neighbours checked on me multiple times and even offered to deliver home-cooked meals during my quarantine days,” said Puja Sengupta, a resident of Kasba, showing how far the city has travelled since March.