Pandemic and Me: Part 1

To disperse the “clickbait” content swirling out in the internet, I will clarify the intention of the title in order to inform in the first place. This account has no thematic relation to any of my romantic relationships or lack of there of during the pandemic, but my “relationship” with the pandemic itself! The significance of adding turbulent to the title will be apparent quite soon. This will be a two part series.

Prior warning : I have spend 28 days quarantining alone in a hotel which did lead to a vast conjunction of thoughts and hence a rather extensive account. I was initially hesitant to write about the mishandling and inconsistencies of various governments but I realized that I had nothing to lose. I would by no means discredit the incredible efforts clocked in by various incredible individuals during this turbulent period. This has been my honest experience which may very well be different for any of you and could be tar-balled away. For ease of typing it out, I will rename Covid-19 as C21.

Let’s get started.

Place : Berlin, Germany. Date : 13th March 2020. Time : 2:00 A.M.

After defending my master thesis, I took an exciting opportunity to attend a spring school on “Lattice-Boltzmann methods using OpenLB” at TU Berlin for a week. The school was scheduled to be panned out for 5 days and I chose to stay in Berlin for 8 days in order to explore Berlin and have a mini vacation of sorts after graduating from my masters. On 12th March, all the participants along with the organizers after the evening session headed to the Futurium to enrich ourselves on modern technologies and have glimpses of what our future would look like. The museum provided a very optimistic and reassuring future which was swiftly overturned that very night.

After spending a few hours in the museum, we headed to a restaurant close to the river which so beautifully encompasses Berlin unbeknownst to the shattering news going in close circles around us. After we were seated comfortably in a very crème de la crème eating haven, the main organizer rose to deliver the news to us. Lockdown was announced in Germany in stages starting from the following weekend. It also meant that this was the last meal I devoured in a German restaurant. I’m not getting into much details of the events that unrolled after this, primarily because I will cover them in my writeup on my experiences in Berlin.

I headed back to Aachen on 14th March afternoon due to a lot of miscommunications and chaos associated to it. My flight back to India was scheduled on 27th March which was fearfully close to my visa expiry date, 31st March. While travelling back to Aachen, I had a tinging feeling that I wouldn’t be able to fly back for good. And my apprehensions turned out to be valid in the next two days. All the flights were cancelled and with little help or support from any authorities everything was propelled into the dark.

My mind was in constant turmoil, day in and day out. I didn’t spend a single day with an ability to think clearly or work on anything significant. These were some of the questions vehemently impeding into my mind :

• What should I do now in Germany?
• Given I do not have any medical insurance now, how will I be able to get any medical support if I do catch C21?
• What if I get to travel after my visa expired and I need to bill out the fines incurred?
• How do I support myself financially while being unemployed (paying rent and other living expenses)?
• What if while travelling to India, I catch C21 and need to be isolated or develop any other complication?
• Is there anyone in Germany who is going through a similar situation as I am so that we could brainstorm and support each other?
• Is my master’s even worth it at the end of the day?
• Where do I see myself in the next five years? (slipping in an unrelated HR question!)

There were several other questions on top of my mind which cannot be discussed on a public space. I received answers to some of the above questions during my two month stay before leaving to India. This experience left a deep scar in me personally and I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone else. I had my family to support me during this period of uncertainty. Without them, I don’t think I would have made it through. A student-run initiative in Frankfurt held weekly sessions to discuss the plight of Indian expats in Germany and provided a speckle of hope. My landlord was very generous during this period and offered me a reduction in rent and also various flexibilities with respect to the rental contract. This is very uncommon among accommodations and in his words, he hasn’t had a tenant like me ever before. Very few friends and juniors of mine gave me some upliftment and provided a brighter picture of my rather bleak world. Loneliness didn’t strike me much as I grew accustomed to it, but my disassociation with nature through walks or treks took a toll on me.

Things weren’t improving for the better as days passed by, but the motive of returning back to India kept me going. My German roommate was one of few people who was compassionate enough to engage me with interesting conversations and table tennis evenings while others were interested only in what I would do next in my career. I realized then how society fearing, career driven individuals we were portrayed to be, sometimes discounting mental health wellness or empathy towards each other. Our lives were defined only by the success stories we tell and the careers we build for ourselves, not the kindness we show or the affection we have towards each other. I admit, I have been a pessimist for major portions of my life and this experience added to the fuel in making me feel more like a person incapable of success as defined by our society.

Due to several such conflicting thoughts running around my mind, I couldn’t concentrate on making any mindful job/PhD applications nor contribute properly towards voluntary projects I had undertaken. There were job freezes throughout Germany and who were currently employed were asked to work for lesser working hours for lesser pay to keep the economy striving. Many low wage employees lost their sources of income and I hadn’t worked long enough to receive “kurzarbeit” benefits. Every day until June 14th was bleak, some days filled with little hope or microaggressions or some self-humiliations.

Place : Aachen, Germany. Date : 15th June 2020. Time : 11:00 A.M.

The day had finally arrived when I was able to travel back to India. My extended visa was to expire on 30th June (after repeated phone calls and emails explaining my situation to immigration officers), it was again a close call. Things weren’t straightforward. On 7th June the embassy of India in Germany informed through its social channels that an evacuation flight was scheduled on 16th June to Delhi and those willing to fly must register themselves and pay an squandering price for an one way ticket. I’m not being naïve here, I do know how the economy works. Aviation industry has been heavily impugned and bruised by the travel restrictions imposed around the world. To me, this was an economically viable option considering the rent, living costs and visa penalty costs likely incurred. Yes, the employees of aviation industry were heavily overworked and I can empathize with them. But they do not reap any benefits from this surge apart from not losing their jobs. I just wished back then that they communicated the preponderance of my flight from 16th to the 15th much earlier than two days prior to the day of travel. And this information was passed through a pretentious mail which can very well be identified as a spam and ignored. I became frantic as I had to cancel my train tickets to Frankfurt losing money on that front and book another overpriced ticket to get to Frankfurt in order to catch my flight. So much loss of hard earned money.

I left Aachen just the way I had entered it, with three trolleys and a laptop bag. The only distinction being the excitement I had felt lacking. I have wandered within Aachen alone, discovering its sparsely lit alleys with a dainty promise of cheerfulness and grandquilence.

I have wandered within Aachen alone, discovering its sparsely lit alleys with a dainty promise of cheerfulness and grandquilence.

I had throttled along its lanes leading to the city centre. Hands in my pocket while the cold wind ran a shock through my spine. I laughed and face palmed myself while hanging around with friends along the staircase leading to the church. Many of these memories might fade as time progresses but my association with Aachen will stay as long as this blog exists. With a heavy heart I locked my room and handed my keys to my roommate.

With great difficulty, I boarded the bus to the railway station alone with four bags to be transported along with me (and a violin). Midway during the ride, one of the trolleys gained consciousness of its own and sprinted towards the driver at unbelievable pace. For a minute, I was scared about being jailed for letting my luggage lose which would have hurt any passenger onboard. If not for one of the passengers who had lunged to get a hold of the “flying” trolley, I might have faced some serious charges. Thankfully, one of my friends helped me transfer the luggage at the station and travelled with me until Cologne to transit (11 minutes only!) to another train heading to Frankfurt. S from this post provided me additional masks, gloves and some Chinese medicines and bid farewell to me at Aachen’s station for which I am grateful.

The train tracks leading towards Frankfurt was laid close to the beautiful Rhein which provided the much needed bittersweet farewell from Germany. As I passed through Bonn, I recollected my trek to Schloss Drachenberg and the cherry blossoms which bloomed during Spring (to be covered later in their respective blogs).

To anyone who might be travelling to Frankfurt from Aachen, I would wholeheartedly suggest you to take a train to witness such marvellous natural beauty. While making my way from the Frankfurt Airport station to Frankfurt Airport, I met an old Brazilian women who was visibly lost in the airport with an overpacked luggage. She spoke in rapid French, I was able to decipher that she was essentially lost and wanted to take a flight back to Brazil. I accompanied and conversed with her (in my broken French) until we reached her check-in counter. As we parted ways, she uttered along the lines of “God bless you, you were just like my son”. I was touched.

I still had five hours in hand before my flight departed, but I proceeded towards the check-in counter nevertheless. To my absolute dismay, there was already a long queue formed for my intended flight. I joined the queue reluctantly with not a single soul to talk or converse with. After an hour, my turn had arrived. The ground staff checked my documents, temperature and asked an amusing question after noticing my violin.

“Can you play a song for me with that?” asked the ground staff.

To which I answered “Sure, but now is not the best time I think”.

She was disappointed. But to be fair, there was several people waiting behind me and some accompanied by elderly too. Many of them the very same day were also denied entry to the flight due to some lacking documents. And I wasn’t in a mood to play any music notes too. I boarded the flight and thankfully was seated next to a postdoc who followed the safety guidelines (some of them casually ignored it). Flight landed in Delhi with minimal turbulence (unlike the tale which followed).

Place : Delhi, India. Date : 16th June 2020. Time : Hazy

I spent close to 7.5 hours in Delhi Airport. Yes, you heard it right.

7.5 hours?!

Without internet for most parts of it nor a sim card. My family were undeniably worried about my status. I had no means to communicate with them for the first two hours until I asked a support staff for the access code to Delhi airport’s WiFi. What a futuristic ideology to mandate a sim card in order to use WiFi ! What was I doing for the first two hours? Waiting. Before I was assigned to a “group leader” who happened to be a military personnel. This leader guided us through various sublayers before we were to reach the c21 centre. Until I reached the c21 centre, everything was well managed but not fast paced. The whole ordeal took ~4 hours thanks to my broken Hindi until we made our way to the c21 centre along with my luggage.

For starters, this C21 centre was raised and bolted with a poorly inclined and narrow ramp which didn’t facilitate gliding my trolley towards it. It was set sufficiently close to the Airport as we were escorted by our “leader”. To add to the dread, there existed only a single entry/exit to this newly raised structure. Imagine the unnecessary physical effort one must exert to be able to push their luggage forward! Half my energy reserves were pumped out before I could make it to the centre itself.

The rest was exhausted within it.

to be continued….

The following account will be about my 28 days institutional quarantine which has been spaced out for a year in India and Oman. I spent 7 days in Delhi, 14 days in Bangalore and currently spending my 6th day in Oman. The sequent account wouldn’t be very pleasant or ground breaking, but dosed with self-reflection and my docile self-inculcation.

Stay tuned!

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