Mixed Shots

June 21, Sunday—Summer Solstice, the year’s longest day, Father’s Day, Yoga Day…and Solar Eclipse Day this year. The sun hides in Calcutta, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ghaziabad, Patna, Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai.

Till just a few days ago, Union minister Ramdas Athawale was an exemplar of the dictum ‘Hindi Cheeni Bhai Bhai’. In the august company of the Chinese consul general in Mumbai, Tang Guocai, his chants of “Go corona go” reverberated so forcefully, one would imagine the novel coronavirus quivered in fear. Guocai, for his part, kept a straight face as he witnessed what he presumed must be an ancient Indian ritual. But like India and China, Athawale seems to have forgotten the dictum of friendship. After the incursions along the LAC, he wants Chinese products/food to be banned. We are not sure, though, if he is referring to actual Chinese food, or its misbegotten Indian progeny, such as chowmein samosa and paneer schezwan dosa.

Gimme Mor

Koni, 10 km from Gorakhpur, seems like just every other village in the cow belt. That is until you notice it has more peacocks than humans, giving it the appellation ‘mor wala gaon’ (peacock village). Legend has it that during a flood in 1998, its residents gave shelter and food to two marooned peacocks. After the water receded and they returned to their homes, the peacocks followed them. The pair proved to be so fecund and the village so hospitable that over the years, their numbers surged to 170. They have settled well around the four ponds in the village surrounded by bamboo trees.

Cure Worse Than Disease

A toddler in a tribal region in Amravati, Maharashtra, was suffering from stomach bloating. So his father took him to a 55-year-old witchdoctor who came up with a cure so horrifying that bloodletting, snake oil and animal sacrifices seem cutting-edge in comparison. She branded the child 100 times with the tip of a scalding sickle, which predictably led to severe burns. The police have now arrested both the father and the quack. It’s not a one-off incident, though. Cases of branding, which purportedly scorches a certain nerve that is responsible for diseases, have been reported from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Odisha among other states.

Death By Dunces

A 40-year-old on a ventilator at a government hospital in Kota was fighting for his life, until he suddenly died. The reason was not a sudden worsening of his condition—in fact, his COVID-19 test was negative—but because his relatives unplugged his ventilator. But why! It was too hot, you see, so they removed the life-saving device from the socket and plugged in an air cooler. For 30 minutes, the ventilator ran on backup power, but it finally stuttered to a halt, along with the hapless patient’s life. If that were not bad enough, his relatives even attacked doctors. But how did they get into an isolation ward?

Chuk Chuk Cool

It was a marvellous idea—turning railway coaches to isolation wards for COVID-19 patients and suspected cases. But as anybody who has travelled by sleeper class can vouch, the cauldron-like temperatures during summer are unbearable. So the railways used bamboo blinds, heat-resistant coating, hay and bubble wrap to cool the ovens that the coaches were turning into. It meant a relatively pleasant stint for those isolated in the giant steel boxes, but there was something the railways hadn’t accounted for: the attack of bloodsuckers. A family of six stationed in a coach in Mau, Uttar Pradesh, were more fearful of contracting dengue and malaria from the swarming mosquitoes than coronavirus. Luckily, they tested negative and were soon able to return to a vermin-less abode.