NEW DELHI: When Mukul Garg learned that a member of his family had tested positive for the new coronavirus, he immediately knew it was just the beginning.
© Mukul Garg
Four generations of the Garg family live together in a home in Delhi. Almost all adults tested positive for the new coronavirus, including those aged 90 and 87.
His extended family had stayed indoors for weeks during a national confinement, eating together and playing together in their shared home in the Indian capital. They were 17 people in total, aged between 3 months and 90 years.
Mukul, 33, was struck by a simple and devastating question: how many would they lose?
“We knew we would all be positive,” he said. “We were pretty sure that someone would be euthanized.”
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The Garg family’s battle with the pandemic is increasingly prevalent in India, which is in the hands of one of the world’s largest coronavirus outbreaks. To date, more than 650,000 cases and more than 19,000 deaths have been reported. The pressure on hospitals is intense and forces families to find beds for their loved ones.
In India, it is common for several generations of a family to live under one roof, which is a source of cultural pride. Government statistics show that 42 percent of households are “non-nuclear” families.
Such arrangements represent a challenge for younger people seeking to protect their older and more vulnerable relatives from exposure to the virus. About half of the coronavirus deaths in India have been people over the age of 60.
In just a few days, 11 members of the Garg family tested positive for the virus. Among them were Mukul’s bedridden grandfather, 90; 87-year-old grandmother; 62-year-old father, who has diabetes and high blood pressure; and a 60-year-old uncle, who also suffers from the same two conditions.
Her home at the end of a tree-lined street in Delhi became her own group of coronavirus cases, marked with a quarantine label and isolated from the outside world.
The Garg family story is a vivid illustration of the whim of the virus. Some people escape without symptoms, while others become seriously ill. Scientists are investigating whether genetic factors, including blood types, play a role in a person’s susceptibility to the disease.
Zarir Udwadia, a pulmonologist at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai, said he had seen situations in which members of the same family experienced severe results after contracting the virus, suggesting a genetic vulnerability. It has also witnessed the opposite scenario: cases of families who had milder cases, even when other factors pointed to the risk of serious illness.
For the Gargs, living together may have been a source of vulnerability, but it was also a reserve of strength. Three siblings and their families, along with their parents, have had what is known here as a “joint family” agreement for decades.
For the past nine years, each brother and his family have occupied a spacious apartment in a four-story building in north-west Delhi. The brothers and their respective children work together in different businesses.
In normal times, each branch of the family was consumed with its own routines: work, children, friends, exercise. At first, the closure was a period of unusual satisfaction. With everyone trapped at home, all the Gargs often met for lunch or dinner. There were endless hands of playing cards and hopscotch and freezing games on the terrace. The men in the family “suddenly became a chef” and began trying new recipes, Mukul said.
Family members were hypervigilant in taking precautions against the virus. They stayed inside. Only one person at a time went to the grocery store to buy supplies for the whole family. They developed a ritual to disinfect the person who made the purchases that involved spraying “every visible part of the body” with disinfectant, Mukul said.
In late April, one of Mukul’s uncles began to feel weak and feverish. Initially, the family believed it was a common flu. A few days later, his aunt Anita also became ill. Then Mukul’s parents developed fevers, as did his grandmother.
“We were confident that because we had been extremely careful, the coronavirus could not pass us,” said Mukul’s mother, Meena Devi, 58. “But then, one by one, everyone fell feverish.”
Still, the Gargs hesitated to get tested, hoping it would pass. They were also afraid: they worried that they would ostracize them if they tested positive, and would even place them in an institutional quarantine. Just in case, everyone in the family began to isolate themselves in their rooms on their respective floors.
© Mukul Garg
Mukul Garg, 33, wrote an extensive account of his family’s experience during the pandemic.
After five days of fever, Anita began to have difficulty breathing. A coronavirus detection test was performed, and the following day the result was positive. “It all fell apart after that,” Mukul wrote in a blog post detailing her family’s experience that has been viewed more than 400,000 times.
Anita would prove to be the most serious case in the family. After her condition worsened, she was admitted to a private hospital. “It was then that panic hit hard,” said her son, Abhishek, 26.
But the virus also behaved unpredictably. Mukuland Abhishek’s 90-year-old grandfather, Shyamlal, tested positive but showed no symptoms. His 87-year-old grandmother Beena had a fever that persisted for a month, along with a cough and headache, but his condition never deteriorated to the point that he felt he should be hospitalized. A 29-year-old cousin and his wife tested negative. Four children under 6 years of age were not evaluated or were negative.
Mukul trained as a doctor before completing an MBA and joining his father’s plastic packaging business. He and the younger adults helped coordinate care for their family members, distributing acetaminophen, cough syrup, and vitamin supplements. The family was fortunate to have the financial resources to help them overcome the illness, Mukul said.
For Mukul’s mother Meena, the illness included fever, cough, headache, and body pain that lasted nearly two weeks. She spent her days listening to devotional music and praying for the family’s recovery, unable to see her grandchildren. Her daughter-in-law would leave meals outside her door. She spent almost a month confined to her room.
A major turning point occurred when Mukul’s aunt Anita was able to return home after 10 days in the hospital, where she had received oxygen treatment. Neighbors applauded and rang bells from their balconies as she entered. The family threw flower petals.
How the family became infected in the first place remains a mystery. They speculate that Mukul’s uncle, the first person to get sick, may have contracted the virus by buying food, but there is no way to know for sure. At the time they got sick, there were no other cases in the area.
In early June, after everyone had tested negative, the family finally reunited over dinner, their first time together in weeks. There was laughter, tasty vegetarian food and a sweet pudding for dessert. Being able to hug his cousins’ children after such a long time was “an incredible feeling,” Abhishek said.
There was also painful news. Two distant relatives of the family have died from the virus in recent weeks, Mukul said. Both had called in to control the Gargs and offer moral support during their fight with covid-19.
“It is not a simple disease to conquer,” said Mukul. “We were just lucky.”
Tania Dutta contributed to this report.
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