In the tiny room of a house they share with four other families in congested Paharganj, Jagdish Kashyap (32), his wife Vineeta and their six-year-old daughter are in mourning. They had just lost their eight-month-old son, Prince, the latest entry to the swelling dossier of COVID-19 deaths in the city.
It’s been just 11 days since Prince died, the second time they are enduring the agony of losing a child. The first being their six-months-old daughter who died of pneumonia in 2016, but they are yet to grapple with the reality.
A devastated Vineeta said the past few weeks have been the most difficult time of her life. Especially June 6, when Prince would not stop crying, and when they touched his chest, he began to cry louder.
Her husband Jagdish, a housekeeping staff at the Lok Nayak Hospital, vividly recollected the day: “We took him to a hospital in Geeta Colony. The doctor conducted his X-ray and said that there was a swelling on his heart and they have to take him to a cardiologist.”
In the next few hours, they ended up running frantically from one hospital to another. They took him to GB Pant Hospital from where he was referred to Kalawati Saran Hospital, from there to the Lady Hardinge Medical College and then finally to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, where he was admitted at 2.36 a.m. on June 7.
“The hospitals kept referring [to other hospitals] after saying that they don’t have the required facilities. The whole day we roamed around hospitals and finally he was admitted in the wee hours,” Vineeta said.
Fever develops
A few hours later, around 6.30 a.m., Prince got fever. Then about 11p.m., the doctors told the parents that he died. His COVID-19 test was conducted at RML and he tested positive the next day while his lifeless body remained at the mortuary.
“We strongly suspect that our boy contracted the virus because of being exposed to so many hospitals’ environment. He was a toddler and prone to virus,” the mother said.
On June 9, Prince was cremated at Punjabi Bagh cremation ground in the presence of his father, grandfather and uncles. Vineeta, wiping her tears, said that she developed depression after she lost her daughter in 2016 and it took her medication and several years to recover.
“After I lost my daughter to pneumonia and battled depression, the doctor had told me to not try for a child but we still did thinking it’ll make me happy. I have lost him too. I am unable to forget his face and how he held me,” she cried.
Jagdish is yet to overcome his sense of loss. Remembering Prince and choking for words, he said, “Usually, the first word children say is Maa but he said Pa .”
Their only strain of consolation is daughter Pihu, but they are concerned of her as well. “She misses him. She used to play with him all day. We have even deleted Prince’s pictures from our phone so that she doesn’t see them,” said Vineeta.
Indifferent neighbours
It’s been 11 days since the incident, but the family feels they’ve been excommunicated by their neighbours. “Except one woman, nobody talks to us and treats us like we are going to harm them,” Jagdish observed.
Add to that their financial strife. “My husband earns ₹12,000 and father-in-law, ₹5,000. There is no air in the room we live in and the surroundings are dirty. We are prone to diseases anyway,” she said. But none of these, she would say, would amount to the loss of her child.
