How two live-in couples survived the lockdown in Mumbai

We had been dating for two months when I asked her to move in with me. We both thought it was too soon; I share a 1.5 BHK in Santacruz with another couple. One morning, a pipe burst, and the mist lifted from our eyes

Last January, much before newspapers printed stories of not being coronavirus carriers, I was sitting in my office in Lower Parel, waiting for a dove to drop a snappy headline. The Maharashtra government had decided to open Mumbai 24x7. I was suppressing the urge to put “city that never sleeps” as the slug. Finally, I wrote “Non-Stop Mumbai” and green-lit the page. I was in a hurry. I had a midnight date.

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My partner was waiting for me below the building. We walked to a nearby mall and found an open café. There was a lone attendant smoking outside. He went in to make pesto sandwiches for us. My partner was trying to recollect the plot of ‘Death of a Salesman’. We were planning to catch a play if we chanced upon some common offs. She asked for extra napkins and salt. Months later, when the city went into a pandemic-induced hibernation, I still thought back to that night. The attendant who might have lost his job. The feeling of sharing a napkin. Her silver earrings.

We had been dating for two months when I asked her to move in with me — partly because I wanted to, and partly because Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a nation-wide lockdown. By then, Maharashtra had overtaken Kerala in the number of cases. My partner’s roommate had left for her hometown in Karnataka’s Belgaum and living alone would have made her anxious. We both thought it was too soon, but took the plunge.

I share a 1.5 BHK flat in Santacruz East with another couple. They are both journalists — a film critic and a features writer. They knew my partner and had no qualms about her moving in.

Every morning, like a medieval news reader, I announced the number of coronavirus cases and deaths to my flatmates. After a while, they stopped caring. I later learned it was called psychic numbing. “The more people die, the less we care,” stated a BBC report.

My partner’s morning ritual was different. She sat on the bed, sipping her coffee, and stared outside our bedroom window. She told me that the guy in the opposite building, whose living room was visible to us, had finally stopped using his treadmill as a clothesline. I often saw him running but his treadmill wasn’t visible from the confines of our room. It was as if he was suspended in thin air, running, not reaching anywhere.

A view from our window. Pic/ Kartik Bhardwaj

After all house-helps were prohibited by the apartment committee due to the virus spread, we resorted to food delivery apps. We told ourselves we weren’t lazy; we were contributing to the economy by paying large corporates. Then I read about a pizza delivery boy contracting COVID-19. We had a house intervention and agreed to stop ordering.

We divided the work. The guys—the critic and I—were responsible for ‘hunting-gathering’ the groceries. My partner and Features were supposed to do the cooking. It wasn’t patriarchal, we surmised. The women just wanted to have good food.

Every day, at 8 am, Critic and I stood in a line outside the grocery store downstairs. I always took it as a personal offence when people didn’t stand inside the white circles made to ensure social distancing. The store owner, or ‘seth’ as we called him, told me he was shutting shop and going back to his home in Uttar Pradesh. He was going via an autorickshaw, he said. It would be a three-day journey. He didn’t know when he'd be back.

Six months later, the Centre said in Parliament that they had no information about the number of migrant workers who died while travelling to their hometowns. The labour ministry, however, said that over 1.04 crore migrants returned to their home states. The most were received by Uttar Pradesh at 32.4 lakh. Seth came back to the city after two months, thankfully.

The media industry was (is) always bleeding. I scrolled down my father’s WhatsApp forwards to read about a veteran journalist being fired. My boss allayed our termination fears by asking us to have a good night’s sleep. I worked from 4 pm to 1 am.

One morning, the HR called. My boss and his boss were on line. A list had come through from Delhi. My name was on it. I was fired.

I sat on the bed, its ends touching the walls. My room felt like it had shrunk overnight. My partner came inside, whipping coffee in a glass, and asked if it was Dalgona yet. I looked at her. She sat beside me and held my hand. I am here, she said.

An attempt at Dalgona Coffee. Pic/ Kartik Bhardwaj

One night, after I cart-wheeled in the living room because my body felt stiff and got reprimanded for it, we decided to play a game. The four of us had to share what we will do once the lockdown ends, something we were afraid of. Critic said he wanted to do karaoke. Features wanted a trip to Dras, in Jammu and Kashmir. My partner, after much contemplation, said she wanted a belly-button piercing. I realised I was going to be a buzzkill since I had nothing. Suddenly, we heard an ambulance siren and rushed downstairs. The virus had claimed one in the adjacent wing, the watchman told us. I had trouble sleeping that night.

Lighting up the room during the lockdown. Pic/ Kartik Bhardwaj

The next morning, I woke up to the sight of water touching the foot of my bed. One of my slippers was floating. A pipe had burst in the toilet and there was a commotion of repairmen in the house. I saw the watchman enter, and someone I hadn’t seen before. There were too many people in the flat without masks. The plumber was drenched, desperately turning valves to stop the flow. His feet were soaked. I asked him to send someone who knows the job. He demanded payment. Critic snapped, abuses were hurled. Features got her purse and paid the guy.

As the door shut, Critic accused us of putting everybody at a risk of contracting the virus. He screamed. He blamed Features for getting someone who didn’t know his job.

“Everything is not my job,” she said.

He climbed atop a chair and shouted, “You had one.”

“You are a small man with a big ego,” she said. I confronted him, he wasn’t very cordial. We went to our rooms and shut the doors.

That evening my partner and I went for a walk. She asked me if there was any data on increase in divorces during the lockdown. I said I didn’t know.

When we returned, Critic called all of us and apologized. We stood in the living room, huddled like a team at half time. “We’ll get through this,” we told each other. No social-distancing norms were followed.

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