Xmas during pandemic

Julio Ribeiro

Every year on Christmas Day, my two daughters host their aged parents. The younger one entertains the extended family of 25 which includes three Hindus, two Parsis and a Muslim to Christmas lunch. The older one has 50 friends at her home in the evening, not one Christian among them! There is much camaraderie in both gatherings and, of course, good food and drink.

This year the monster, Covid, has put a damper on merriment. Better be safe, than enjoy for a day and be sorry for the rest of the month and the months that follow. Our first thought is about the Midnight Mass on Xmas Eve. Every year, we keep awake till midnight to herald the birth of Christ. There is no question of doing so this year. Covid is particularly fond of nonagenarians and octogenarians! We have no intention of pandering to Covid’s wants!

So, we will spend the evening at home, listening to carols and hear Mass on YouTube. Even then, it will be better than the Christmas we spent in Bucharest in 1989. The Romanian dictator, Ceausescu, had that very morning been deposed and shot, along with his wife, Elena. There was much shooting in the street outside the ambassador’s residence. We could only dare to peep out of the windows and watch shadowy figures with guns in their hands disappear behind the shadows.

There was no question of attending church service. Around lunch time, we sent some goodies to the policemen outside our gate. We thought they would welcome some victuals on Xmas Day. What we learnt was that the Orthodox Church to which most Romanians belong, celebrate Christmas very cursorily, reserving merriment for Easter which is their main festival. Our goodies were accepted and demolished.

Reverting to our plans for Christmas in the time of Covid, we decided to limit the lunch to the immediate family. The evening repast was to be dropped. If the vaccine comes and family and friends are duly inoculated, a revival will be considered in 2021. In the meantime, we have to be thankful for small mercies.

Before the lockdown, my wife and I would drive to the small church round the corner from our flat to hear Mass. When the lockdown was announced, all places of worship were shut completely, and rightly so. These are places where people congregate in numbers, a sure recipe for contracting the coronavirus. Since March, we have not entered the church.

A month ago, the government of Maharashtra lifted restrictions on congregating at places of worship. But Melba and I will not be visiting any church till Covid is tamed, however long it takes. We will continue to hear Mass on the Net as we have been doing since March 29, when we shifted to our daughter’s home in order to survive the lockdown. The compulsion arose because domestic help frequenting the building from outside was banned by the housing society and we had no live-ins. That deficiency was rectified recently. Melba and I are back home with our kind neighbours, most of them from my former service.

Diwali was very subdued this year. The usual crackers were few and far between. What we missed, though, were the lights and the dinner at our neighbours’ place. This year, no one was willing to take any chances. Covid had frightened even hard-boiled policemen like us out of our comfort zones. The usual gifts of sweets were reduced to a trickle. One Chinese lantern on the doorsill and four diyas outside our front door were all we attempted, besides a fifth diya to honour our servicemen at the front as suggested by our PM. All in all, it was a ‘Covidified’ Diwali this year. Christmas will be no different. How long will this continue? Experts on TV hesitate to venture definite dates and that is how it is.

How has Covid changed my life? I awake at the same time. I walk for 45 minutes in the compound at a pace that is much slower now! But that speed reduction has not been Covid’s fault. The culprit is the fall I suffered in 2019, and my advancing age. My walking companions are very considerate though. Satish Sahney, Raja Reddy and MN Singh are all retired IPS officers in their seventies who easily traverse two rounds for my one, but have decided to humour the old man by walking at half their normal pace!

It is only after bath and breakfast that life has changed. I used to attend the office of the Public Concern for Governance Trust (PCGT, an NGO) every day till lunch. That is over. Covid demands home quarantine for the elderly. One reads the newspaper more minutely. Then think about the subject of next week’s column in The Tribune. The writing thereof takes up the time before lunch. And if the article is despatched in time on Wednesday, a big weight is off my shoulder and I have time to interact with other trustees and staff of the PCGT or one or other of the four charitable organisations in which I am still involved.

The Happy Home and School for the Blind caters to 200 blind boys, most of them residing in the school itself. The school closed when the lockdown was announced. The boys were sent home. The teachers cannot attend in the absence of public transport. But my monthly commitment to discuss the affairs of the school continues, albeit on a digital platform.

The Bombay Mothers and Children Welfare Society, an NGO in existence for the past 100 years, caters to the working class staying in the city’s chawls. It runs two hospitals in the BDD chawls, one at Worli and the other at Parel. It also runs four crèches. But more about my NGOs in a future article, if and when I am stuck for a subject to write on. I beg readers to forgive me if I have bored them with my own life during the pandemic. My appeal to my readers is: Remain useful to yourself, your family and society at large as long as you are alive and kicking!

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.