Let me say a few things a little openly. In early March, when the first announcement came that three people in the country had been infected with the coronavirus, I had already sensed that something like this was on its way. So on 16 March I left Dhaka for our village home. But things turned out worse than even I had imagined, and I have been stuck here ever since. I never made it back to Dhaka.
A hunch of my own
For a long time I had a hunch, nothing more than my own private guess with no proof behind it, that the real number of infected people was higher than the figure shown on television. Along with that I used to think that if a much bigger number suddenly appeared in front of everyone, people might panic and sink into deep worry. Worry alone is enough to make a healthy person ill, and what it would do to someone who actually has the virus I would rather not say.
That is how I thought right up until Eid. Then, suddenly, just before Eid, everything was opened up on a limited scale. While I was still trying to understand why such a decision had been taken, I saw that transport was running again as well.
All sorts of explanations went through my head. It may well have been done with us in mind. Everyone knows that even if nothing were opened, people would quietly open their shops and go home to their villages anyway, each in his own way. What the imam said before the Eid prayer was much the same thing. It is not that the chance of catching corona has gone down, he said, but no matter how many times you forbid them, Bengalis will pray the Eid prayer, so permission had to be given so that at least people could pray safely, following a few rules. Or it could be none of these and something else entirely. What is really going on is hard to tell.
Everyone is heading back
Before I could begin a fresh round of speculation after Eid, I am now hearing that the general holiday will not be extended beyond 15 June and that everything will run as normal. Today, page after page of the newspapers says the same thing: the crowds heading for Dhaka are growing, everyone is going back. But why? Only today I saw that the number of cases has risen again. One headline online said the highest number of tests so far had found the highest number of cases so far, 2,523 in a single day.
Is it right to lift the lockdown like this? I do not know what the people at the top of the country are thinking when they take these decisions. Perhaps they can see something that I cannot. But villager or city dweller, apart from a handful of people in this country, nobody looks as if they know that the infection rate is not falling day by day but still rising.
What I saw at the crossroads
What worries me is that while the number of cases keeps going up, the lockdown has lost every bit of the effect it had at the beginning, and what little is left keeps shrinking by the day. Yesterday I had to go out to the bazaar for something unavoidable, and when I reached the crossroads I found the road buzzing. In all the time I stood there, the only thing I did not see was a bus. Everything else was running as usual, without a single precaution against corona.
Among all those people, apart from one or two, nobody had a mask on and nobody was keeping any distance. And their reasoning is lovely. They say nobody here has tested positive so far, so there is nothing to worry about. Fair enough, but they do not want to understand that not detected yet does not mean it will never be detected. And by the time one patient is identified, how many people will have caught it from him? Is anyone keeping count?
So what do I do now?
So was everything I have been thinking all this time wrong? Perhaps the number on television was right all along. Perhaps I am the only one spending his days afraid of corona.
I simply cannot work out what to do. If educational institutions reopen, do I fall in step with everyone around me, admit that all my thinking was wrong, and go back to Dhaka? Or do I hold on to my own judgement, stay in the village until Eid-ul-Adha, and return to Dhaka after that? I am still looking for the answer.
This is entirely a personal post about personal thoughts, not a social or political issue.
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