Mask? What mask?

Negotiating a world in which no one believes in Covid protocols can be a scary experience

 

What do you do when you are the only person wearing a face mask in a room full of unmasked people? What do you say when the unmasked lady sitting next to you asks, in a very passive-aggressive manner, “Are you very scared of Covid?” 

 

Well, I don’t know what the etiquette in such circumstances is, so I can only tell you what I did. I kept my mask – an N95 no less – resolutely on, refusing to take it off even for the pictures that everyone was posing for. And I responded, as coldly as I could, to the question I was asked. “Yes, I am scared of Covid,” I said, and then added after a beat, “And so should you be.”

 

It’s probably needless to say that she paid no attention to my advice, and continued to keep her face mask off for the duration of the event that we were both attending. As did the rest of the audience in that large hall. 

 

I should not have been surprised, really. Ever since we landed in Amritsar for a book launch, the one thing we had noticed was the complete absence of mask discipline in the city. Nobody on the roads wore masks, not even the policemen. Guests at our hotel cheerfully ignored the signs that specified masks in all public areas and moved around barefaced. And those who did put them on, kept them around the chin area, leaving their noses and mouths unencumbered. 

 

When we mentioned this on Twitter, we were told by some people who had visited the Golden Temple that they had been asked to take off their masks by the guards before they were allowed inside the Darbar Sahib. “Don’t you trust in God to take care of you?” they were asked. There was only one way to respond: and that was to remove their masks.

 

Hurriedly cancelling our own plans of visiting Harmandir Sahib – hitherto an essential stop on every trip to Amritsar, given my Punjabi roots – we settled down in the safety of our own room to recover from this culture shock. Coming from Delhi, where mask discipline is strictly enforced and adhered to (especially after the second wave), this mask-less world took some getting used to. 

 

When I tried to explain this to some of the guests at the book launch the next day, they waved away my fears with an airy, “Oh, there is no Covid in Punjab now. Only 30 cases in the entire state.” Yes, I agreed, but there are only around 30 cases every day in Delhi too, and yet people wear masks to make sure that we don’t have a third wave in a few weeks’ time. Oh Delhi, they muttered exasperatedly, that is nothing like Punjab.

 

There was no good response to that, so I kept my peace and moved on. But this exchange – and many others like it – did get me thinking. Were these people being totally irresponsible and risking sparking a third wave in their city? Or was I being needlessly nervous about contracting Covid in an environment in which nearly everyone was double vaccinated? Were they being stupid or was I just virtue-signaling?

 

Well, you can make up your own mind about that. But, as far as I am concerned, in these times, discretion is the better part of valour. And in the age of Corona, discretion involves masking up in public, especially when indoors, practicing social distancing from people who are not in your bubble, and sanitizing your hands ever so often. So, that’s what I did during my short stay in Amritsar, ignoring the pitying looks being cast in my direction from all the mask-less people around. 

 

And it came as something of a relief to finally land back in Delhi, at an airport where everyone was masked, driving back home on streets where people observed mask discipline. Of course, it felt even better to take off my mask in the sanctuary of my own home. But that, as the saying goes, is another story.