Locked Down And Quarantined

Chapter-3

No one knew how long the epidemic was going to last, and people started losing their patience. First, they said we are closing down the city for just two weeks. Then they were told – you all have to wait for a month because the virus is not gone, and making vaccines takes time. Then it extended for three months and then six months. And now, they just say, “We are working on it as fast as we can.”

A man named Yash, a man in his late twenties, observed that he had lost all his composure and now he must do something to get out. The man was an accountant and came to Lucknow on a business trip, and he had been stuck there for more than ten months. He missed his family. He had two kids, a boy of about ten and an eighteen months old baby girl. He missed her first birthday already and wanted to be there before the second. It was already established that jumping over the barbed wire would never work. Because the military was always on the watch. And now, they had even made watch towers around the border. So he made a plan. He searched for a blind spot near the borderline but found none. Military units were deployed in thousands, and they were too disciplined. They would take turns to look over. And a soldier would only leave his post when his replacement was ready to take his place. He searched for months and finally found a solitary-empty house. It was about one and a fifty meters inside the border. He broke in, and started living there. He got hold of a rickshaw. How he managed to get one is a mystery. People speculated that it was not through peaceful negotiation because rickshaws became precious, even more desirable than the cars once were. Since the supply of petrol was stopped – it became the primary mode of travel around the city. If you had a working rickshaw – you did not need to worry about anything else. You could have that much business.

Yash would only work for three to five hours. That was enough for a trip or two and more than enough to buy essentials. He would not even go to get government supplies anymore. He did not have time to get in line. Instead, he spent his time digging the floor of the house. It was taking a lot more time than he anticipated, and pretty soon, all the rooms were full of dirt coming from the tunnel. He needed to think of other ways to dispose. His activities became dubious. Every night precisely at 1 am – which was the time of shift change at the border, he would go out carrying four or five sack-full of dirt. He worried more about someone snatching his rickshaw than finding out what he was doing late at night. Fortunately, no one looted his rickshaw. But unfortunately, the military knew what he was doing – from the moment he occupied the house. And they saw an opportunity in his endeavor. They were sick and tired of protecting the borders. And killing innocent citizens was a matter of abomination among the soldiers. So they recorded his activities from a night-vision camera and waited till he came out to the other side.

Later, a colonel named Jaswant – a man about fifty, his hair white side to side, managed to convince the government that barbed wire was not enough. People could still make the tunnels. The government agreed and a budget was issued to build an underground wall of fifteen feet. But they went a step further – and the wall went up above the ground too. And it seemed like it would never stop. With each passing day, the wall got higher and higher. 

It took him about six months to complete the tunnel and he was excited to meet his wife and children. It was his daughter's second birthday and he made it on time. Precisely 6:37 am on 15nth April 1981, Yash peeped out of the tunnel – and colonel Jaswant was waiting for him on the other side. His story was told in the gatherings of Lucknow, over and over again. A man of sheer determination and strong will. A man who never lost sight of his vision. The man who did it all by himself. With a bullet in his skull, his body lays in the depths of the tunnel he dug so diligently. 

***

Dhruv had money to buy food grains and vegetables. Ladies never hesitated to make food and do the chores around his house for cash or a bit of gold. But he could not keep on doing that forever. Half of the people had stopped accepting money and preferred things like clothes, shoes, water bottles, soaps, pots and pans, knives and spoons, and best of all jewelry – in exchange for other things or services.