As the third wave of the pandemic began picking pace across India, students had just returned from their homes to start their new year on campus. The warm reunion did come with the tiny virus grabbing a handful of residents and sending them into a week of isolation at the Yoga Hall. Here’s an account of what their stay at the facility looked like.
Day 1-2: “A sorry solitude”
“Bhaiya, ambulance neeche aa gayi hai, jaldi aaiye.” And there it began.
When one reaches New SAC, you come here hoping quarantine isn’t a big deal. You see, there’s the OAT tower. The OAT. A place you’ve associated with unabated bustle and human activity, from the experiences you’ve had in your brief week-long campus safari. You expect this place is going to hold up to the reputation of its noisy neighbours. However, things change when you enter, tch, the Yoga Hall enters you.
The first impression is – “What a sad place, man.” It’s fifty beds, half clad, half unclad. Around ten beds are occupied. Except a few staring at their laptops, all are asleep in Indian Railways-esque blankets. You look up at the ceiling scaffolding and the vacuity of your surroundings resonates with how quarantine feels. Hollow. You try to look for a suitable bed but you realise that all the beds along the boundary of the hall have been occupied because those are the only spots where you can have a power outlet nearby. You do notice a single extension line running along the middle of the hall that has been hastily taped to the ground (they seem to take pride in the fact that they tried) only to realise afterwards that the line is unplugged and doesn’t have a outlet to plug into, anywhere in the room. Now not just you, your dying electronics are disappointed too.
And you’re fatigued. And hungry. You can hear a muffled announcement from the SIS Guard at the gate, in a language certainly not recognizable to you (only to discover later it was Hindi and the guard was announcing the arrival of meals from the mess). A few others have their plates in hand, but you have absolutely no idea how to get yours. It was only on the direction of a generous neighbour that you figured you had to call your mess manager for food. After all this, it calls for a break on the only real estate you own here – your bed. Psych, mosquitoes and no power outlets for your repellent vaporisers. It’s not a lot of time before you realise that this place is gonna get cold in the night. But no heaters.
This is just the beginning and you are absolutely oblivious about what is going to unfold in the coming days.
Day 3-4: “Mid-quarantine crisis”
Considering this part of my quarantine overlapped with a dreary weekend with despondent rain, it called for a mental breakdown of sorts. You realise that monotony has set in when the conversations in your dreams start out as, “Hum Kanpur Medical cell se call kar rahe aapki tabiyat kaisi hai?”. The only notifications which excite you anymore are texts from HC saying, “Please send vitals”. You know something is wrong when it doesn’t seem to make a difference whether you are entering the gents’ or ladies’ washrooms because it’s not like either of them is cleaner and you’re too lousy and ignorant to care. You suddenly feel like a sick patient in a hospital measuring your temperature and SpO2 and swallowing meds all day. Yoga hall even gets to your academics when you compare your lab temperature readings to your body temperature. The entire place feels like a big sauna bath instead, because of all the steam from the kettles. Like the case with all mid-whatever crises, the monotony calls for changes and new experiences. The most favourable of these being the fact that more people are coming into the yoga hall and you get to play the ‘reverse-baapu’ role, showing your seniors around the place and initiating them into the yoga hall quarantine regime.
News spread in town, err, the hall, that one of our co-residents had typed in a furiously inspired mail to the DoSA complaining about the sheer mismanagement of this place. And that’s why supposedly there are now heaters across the room. The extension line has been plugged somewhere as the middle rows have started to populate. People have started to bring their own extension cords and the whole place has started to look like a cobweb of charger and water kettle cables lying beside extension cords looking for their kettle partner.
Among other news that spread, there seems to have been a guideline released by the Central Government, stating asymptomatic cases are allowed to exit after seven days of home isolation without retesting. This comes as a big relief to us, as the medical prescription would have otherwise suggested a stay of a minimum of ten days, and that most of us have almost fully recovered from all the symptoms. This may have also marked an overall mood transformation of this entire place, as this hall starts to feel…less hollow.
Day 5-7: “Reconciliation”
More people. More energy in the place. Still grim throughout the day, but better. At this instant, we are done, and are looking for methods of refuge from outside. Pizza deliveries from Domino’s and waffles from The Chocolate Room have started coming in. It’s almost as if people are graduating out of Yoga Hall. A lot of people are getting comfort stuff fetched by their fellows outside the gate – including packed eatables from the E-shop and mineral water bottles – for the tap drinking water at the Yoga Hall has desensitised our taste buds. Among all that, badminton racquets have also been smuggled in, so the dry and empty foyer has been changed into a badminton court facility. A high chair has been found on the first floor and is now repurposed as a referee’s chair. Alongside that, people are starting to sit on the stairs with their laptops and chai, having light-hearted discussions with the occasional laugh that reaches the quarantine area. That doesn’t mean people inside the quarantine area are not having fun – we can spot an odd group playing UNO and a few in a huddle, sharing their dishes from the extras menus of their messes.
In latest unfoldings, it has also been discovered that the speaker system the SIS guard uses, has a spare mic that lies in plain sight and it has now been hidden in a secret vault away from the guard’s access and is being used for… obvious purposes, primarily with the objective of having fun. The speaker system also has Bluetooth and that means the foyer has become a place for jamming to music as well. The whole place feels different now.
A path has also been tracked down that connects the girls’ quarantine hall to the boys’ quarantine hall, so the odd friend group (or couple) can also be spotted near the rock-climbing area of New SAC. The whole place feels as if it’s crawling back to normalcy by virtue of the cheer creeping into people’s hearts. Quarantine isn’t so bad after all.
Humans have always been known to find out means to overcome the adversities in their life and livelihood. Probably the greatest capability of the human race lies in how we manipulate and consciously mould our surroundings to suit us. So was the case with Yoga Hall and its transition from gloominess to liveliness.
Writers: Pradeep Suresh, Vijay Bharadwaj
Editing: Akshat Goyal
Photography: Naman Jain, Ishita Vyavahare
