Buwalguri

I spent a week at a quarantine facility towards the end of June. Singular experience. Here's a fragment, haphazardly cut from an account that I hope to write someday when it's old enough to pass for a memoir.

I reached the facility at 11 pm with 11 other inbound travellers from my own district, all of whom were complete strangers to me, in a convoy of four hired cabs escorted by a police Jeep. Upon our arrival, an official who had apparently been waiting for us for two long hours hurried through our documents, asked a few questions, checked our IDs, pointed to the first room on the left wing of the building which we understood to be where we were going to be lodged and vanished from sight, not without foresight, because it didn’t take us long to realise what a shithole we had landed in and everyone began to voice their disappointment rather hotly and growls of “where is that mfucking doctor, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind” and “what sort of a third-class quarantine centre is this” went up from here and there. The room we’d been allotted had 15 mattresses laid on the floor in rows of five. A pair of plastic ropes ran in parallel above each row from which 15 mosquito nets hung above the beds and looked like mesh cages. The bedsheets and pillow covers had not been touched since the previous occupants’ release and were covered in a thin layer of dust. Countless insects flew in circles around the few CFLs in the room. It was dirty and it stank.

After half an hour of pretending to unpack my rucksack and arrange my affairs, in a state of trepidation which I imagined at the moment to be similar to what newly imprisoned people must experience upon their arrival at a jail, a feeling that I hadn’t experienced since my early days at the boarding school where I was sent at the age of 11, I walked out of the room and went to the portico of the building. The chair I'd sat on while the formalities were being completed was still there and I sat down on it. It was so much better than the suffocating room. After a few minutes like this I got up and I began to walk back to our hall when a man, whom I recognized to be one of the staffers at the facility, and who shall henceforth be called stupid piece of shit, appeared at the doorway and rudely asked me what I thought I was doing.

Stupid piece of shit: (In Assamese) did you just sit on that chair?

Me: Yes.

Sps: (enraged and shouting) PICK IT UP RIGHT NOW! That is not for you and you’re not allowed to get out of the building. Pick the chair up and keep it on top of that table over there.

Me: Sorry! (does as told)

Sps: Now get back to the room and don’t go beyond this (points to the main entrance to the building)

Me: Why are you yelling, I am already leaving.

Sps: Shut up. Isn't this your first day? You don’t know how things work here, come on, move along now.

Me: What the hell, is this a jail? Are you the gang leader here? 

Sps: (somewhat taken aback) This is a quarantine facility and there are some rules that you must follow.

Me: But that doesn’t mean you get to treat me like shit. I just sat on a chair I’d already sat on when I'd arrived here, two others had also sat down on those two chairs over there and the officer didn’t ask us not to sit. If you don’t want inmates to sit on chairs then label them, don’t keep them outside or whatever, man. I understand that there are rules and I will surely follow all of them but there’s no way am I going to let you bully me, okay? Talk nicely.

The sps pursed his lips, as if to say, son, you have no idea what you’ve got yourself into. But the threat never came and he just kept staring at me and I walked back to the room. The building, which was the academic block of the Buwalguri Women’s ITI college, was rectangular in layout with a veranda running an entire loop around an inner courtyard. I walked past the tall plastic buckets where Styrofoam plates and leftover food made great stinking domes far above the brims. A foul smell followed me to my bed. I was tired and I fell asleep without trying.

Breakfast came in a loose newspaper bundle the next morning. A morsel of fried potatoes and pointed gourd wrapped in an oily parantha, brought from an eatery 15 kilometres away because the cooks at the facility were not equipped, instructed, or paid to make anything other than the perfunctory rice meal. As I would soon find out, lunch and dinner were always rice, daal, and a pointed gourd curry, all of which tasted like shit, occasionally accompanied by a boiled egg or a funny puddle of chicken gravy in a Styrofoam bowl. If you held this bowl in your palms and whispered “chicken assemble” authoritatively, a few shreds of chicken would materialize from the soup and form a miserable lump.

The facility turned out to be even more filthy in the morning light than I'd originally taken it to be. One cursory walk through the building was enough to understand that anyone who passed through this place without contracting any disease would remain immune to all diseases known to mankind for a very long time. The concept of social distancing felt like a joke so nobody practised it. There were too many people and only three working latrines. There were two handpumps in two corners of the courtyard and everyone bathed in the open. After breakfast, I learned that our batch was the only one with Hindu inmates. 8 Hindus in total, 4 Bengalis, 4 Biharis. The rest of the 250 something population was entirely Bengali speaking Muslim. Miya. This made some of the Hindus very uncomfortable. “Couldn’t they keep us with our own people!” said one of them.

In our room, apart from another kid who was studying pharmacy in Bangaluru, everyone else was a migrant worker. Most worked as security guards in Chennai or Bangaluru. Everyone ate gutka and chewed tobacco and spit around the place in four different styles. 

The Local Ninja: when you spit without making any sound. You move your tongue and lips in such a way that the spit gathers at the tip of your mouth and drips soundlessly.  

The Explosion: KHAK THUH. 

The Slow Burner: Khaaa… [get up, go to the window, open it, look for people outside, contemplate the meaning of existence].. THUH. 

The Reverse Slurp: put your tongue in the middle of your mouth and blow with all your might: Flursflursf. Splash damage.

Anyway, after breakfast I decided to talk to the authorities about the pathetic condition of the facility. I went to the only office in the building and saw that some of my roommates were already there, apparently to voice a certain grievance, and stood in a semi-circle in the veranda talking to the same stupid piece of shit from the previous night who was at the moment comfortably planted on a plastic chair. I approached the gathering and the sps acknowledged me with a nod and exclaimed, “Oh, so you’re Bengali?”

I said, “No, I’m Assamese.”

“Oh, I thought you were Muslim last night and that’s why..” He trailed off. People have been telling me that I look “muslim” because of my beard for many years. Most people from the village have said it. Actual Muslims have mistaken me as one of them and bigots have called me Jaish-e-Mohammad. Even the village barber, who’s mute and deaf, has communicated it beyond any doubt by always greeting me with an adaab gesture. But this was so much worse. 

The little piece of shit now addressed the crow, “So, I understand that you have a problem with Muslim cooks but there’s no problem because our main cook is not Muslim but Hindu. He’s a Nath man from Lelabori.”

A stoutly built man in the crowd replied, “It’s not just about cooking, sir. It’s that they serve the food at mealtime. We don’t see who cooks what so we don’t have anything to say about that but you can at least get a Hindu man to serve the food, right? This is not the way we’ve been raised. How do you expect us to accept it just like that?” to which the SPS said, “Okay, I’ll ask Nath to serve you separately, then. I understand, I’m also a Koch man, but sometimes you have to adjust.” With this, he turned towards me said: “Or am I wrong?”

I blurted out, “Yeah no I don’t care, I eat beef and all.”

“What?” By now, more people had joined the crowd and I could sense everyone’s gaze at me but there was no going back now. 

“What’s your religion?”

“I was born in a Hindu family.”

“And now you’re Muslim?”

“No.”

“So, what is your religion?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Why do you eat beef?”

“Because I like it. It’s a democracy, right?”

“It’s banned in this country.”

“Not in every state. I have broken no law.”

“But why did you say that in front of these gentlemen to whom this is a sensitive issue?”

“I haven’t said anything against their demand, have I? But I will not be a part of this. I came here to complain about the dismal hygiene situation in this facility, and now I would like to formally lodge a complaint.”

The SPS looked at his colleague who was standing to his right with disbelief and anger. “Do you hear this fellow?” He said. “We are policemen, we are not here to take complaints. Talk to whoever’s managing the facility.” So, he was police. Why, that made perfect sense.

“And who is that?”

“He’s not here today. Please stop bothering us, we cannot help you.” I left the crowd, resolved to get this fucker, my blood coursing through my veins at neckbreak speed.