New York - Bleeding, Dying, Living.
Photos: ©Saswat Pattanayak
(Written for The News NYC)
By Saswat Pattanayak
New York, April 8, 2020
These are some of the saddest days yet.
This city, my home for the past fourteen years, is going through an unprecedented phase. A phase of deaths, silence, and helplessness. It’s bleeding, and despite best attempts and endless sacrifices of the caregivers - the doctors, the nurses, the essential services workers, the bleeding won’t stop. It will not stop for a long, long time to come.
Those who don’t know this city, ask why is there no lockdown? They don’t realize it has already locked itself down. It’s locked in grief and down with tears. Don’t you see, New York City didn’t have to get caged. We have voluntarily locked ourselves in. The city that never sleeps is sleeping nights and sleeping days. The city which opens its heart and harbors to people from across the world is today hiding from its own residents. The lights of the Times Square are still on, and they are screaming at the darkness of the broad daylight. The Empire State Building bulbs are no longer marking different festivals, but only flickering red as though to reflect the blood from the streets. The heartbeats of those bulbs, no one seems to hear. The color of red no one wants to see. The ambulances don't need to wait for other vehicles on the empty streets. Every street, avenue, and intersection is suddenly a memory book of a very distant past, which they say happened only a few days ago. The journal pages chronicling the moments don’t, and won’t read the same anymore. The city which used to make a year seem like a fleeting moment, that made one crave for time to halt because too many things were happening at the same time; now it makes an hour seem like years. The clock of pace has stopped for New York. Its only a tick-tock of death counts. There is no Manic Monday to complain about. There is nothing to thank God for any Friday.
Its true, this is a pandemic. And it probably feels the same everywhere else in the world today. Every country is going through its challenges. Every other state, every other city in the United States is also going through their own slow moments. But this is still the New York City. The brightest, the greatest, the mightiest, and also the kindest known to humanity. The city which Sartre did not realize he would “fall in love with immediately” when he arrived here from Europe “fresh off the boat”, and yet which he experienced in his blood and breath; that he described as “New York sickness, no different from seasickness, air sickness or mountain sickness.”
This totality of New York City, this permeability of its aura, this sickness of its nostalgia, this frothing teeming visceral existence of its appeal; the city of parades which celebrates every national, cultural, racial, religious, gender, and sexual identity; the city of 800 actively spoken languages; the most diverse, the most tolerant, the most forgiving, the most accommodating region in the entire planet - is palpable no more. It’s parading no more. Its marching no more. Its selling hot dogs and pretzels no more. Chinese and Halaal no more. Cheesecakes and bagels no more. Museums mile no more. Strand books no more. Science halls no more. Nathan’s famous no more. Bronx attracts no more. Coney islands no more. Columbus circles no more. Central parks no more. Union squares no more.
Without its people, the city is not the city anymore. Yes, the people have locked themselves in since the virus outbreak. There are no artists on the streets creating portraits for the tourists. There are no vendors on the avenues directing the lost. No more seen are visitors with a subway brochure. No more are packed trains in rush hours and yellow cabs that don’t halt when you need them.
If it’s a pandemic, one needs to look no further. The city that houses people from all over the world, which represents all the cultures known to the world - this population, the very cosmopolitan people, bohemian people, greedy corporate people, dreamy debt-ridden people - all of them have voluntarily remained at home. Out of concern for the others, they have stayed home. The same concern that made the city support the Occupiers of Wall Street. Same concern that made the climate change protests and women’s marches and NYC Loves Muslims marches happen. What made them protest white supremacists of Charlottesville outside the Trump Tower to prevent the President from entering his own territory. What made them come out in thousands to support the black lives of Baltimore. The same concern which stopped agendas of Frisk-and-Search that targeted Blacks and Latinos. Same concern that drove them to airports to defy the presidential “Muslim ban”. This is the city of Lady Liberty that has welcomed legals, illegals, privileged and the downtrodden. New Yorkers have always overpowered bans. They have banned the bans. They house this world’s largest population of immigrants. And today all of these beautiful people who worked together to shape and reshape this city are weeping together. Mourning together.
The experts are saying we will have a peak this week. What is a peak for the New York City? 100 people dying everyday? 500 people dying everyday? We have now surpassed 700 people dying everyday. And this does not even take into account many more home deaths. The city that took care of all its residents - old and the young, the homeless and the hungry, the disabled and the abused, workers without paperworks and the starving artists. What is a peak for us? How can be a thousand deaths everyday make it sound like a peak? Peak is a pinnacle. Its a glory. Its a height. What we are witnessing is a despair. Its a depth. Its a bottomless pit of piling bodies. Bodies that are unknown, unsung and given the paucity of time, unwept. The city that ceremoniously used to pay tribute to its 9/11 victims every year and whose names are enshrined forever at the memorial site, today is witnessing a number of deaths that has well surpassed them and we have overlooked those names in horror. New York has at once become the grieving, and the cold.
Most of us are suffering from not just various physical symptoms that are indescribable except by a physician, but also from deep mental anguish of undergoing an uncertainty that is guaranteed only by the statistics of deaths. There seems to be not enough ways to mitigate even as we look at a graph and take solace that it will not be a million deaths. It will be only thousands. To make that happen, to “flatten that curve” our physicians are tending only to the most vulnerable ones and instructing the rest to stay at home and figure it out until we are in urgent need of ventilators. There are hospital beds in Javits Center that used to host Comic Con. There are emergency tents set up in Central Park. Our doctors are telling us the person who is delivering mail and food and grocery is a hero. They are reminding us that the person on the street is not the enemy. That we don’t need to lock down people. And we realize that every passing day. We don't stigmatize the sick. We don't contact trace and publicize data to target people. We don't want to shoo away nurses from our communities when they return home from work. We keep our hearts and doors and gates and streets open. This is not just a battlefield where the essential workers have to get into and suffer. We must collectively, and selflessly fight this virus. All of us may not be essential workers. We sure are essential combatants. We share the pain, not isolate the pained. That is what makes New York, New York.
The calamity is upon us. There is no sense of false pride. No sense of arrogance. We needed no curfew to maintain social distancing. We care for the living, as we always have. We are the ones who keep the subway doors open for someone running down the stairs even as that’s illegal. We offer help to the needy even when that’s illegal. We swipe our tickets to let someone else use the train for free even if that’s illegal. We don’t turn in cab drivers and restaurants workers to authorities after knowing they don’t have or forged paperworks. We do not value papers over people. We do many things that are illegal but which are perfectly humane. Because this city is driven by compassion. Not strictures. With love we stay indoors. Not by lockdowns. The world outside doesn’t understand that. It probably won’t.
But that’s alright.
This week is the most trying of them all. For me personally, its a time to reflect and to feel grateful for so many memories that I treasure and which, in turn, define my emotions. My parents who have enjoyed this city in its full bloom have gifted to me my most precious moments to cherish. Walking the streets with my father who enjoyed our moments of togetherness over coffee cups, or witnessing the innocent joys of my mother relishing the New York pizza slices - both of whom are hoping for and thinking of New Yorkers even as they themselves remain confined to their home in India where also uncertainties loom large. My daughter who has enjoyed every moment in this city, in all forms of weather, being greeted by New Yorkers of all kinds, who would get a free donut or a free candy when she would enter a store; the kindness of this city’s people have always been unceasing and always will remain memorable.
The working class of this city who struggled to make ends meet and yet never paused before pouring their hearts out will always stand out. That class of people is grieving today even as they continue to show up outside. While many of us with access to a remote monitor can afford to work from home, the working class that comprises essential services sector continues to brave the risks. The garbage pickup staff, the folks who unload groceries and medicines to keep the supplies on, the store cashiers, the public laundromats at every corner, the veterinary care, the mass transit workers, the mail delivery workers, the hardworking reporters bringing to us the latest news - they continue to work tirelessly and more than ever. And most of the working class overwhelmingly remain black and brown. And most of those hospitalized are black and brown. And most of the fatalities too, because most with pre-existing conditions are also among the poorer people of color. And those very conditions are what this virus is taking over first.
New Yorkers are sacrificing themselves. Whether we call them heroes or warriors matters little. They are dying. And we are counting the numbers. The tally of states where New York comes at the top, or of nations where the United States appear looks like an Olympic list of medals. In place of Gold, Silver and Bronze, there appears Confirmed, Critical, and Deceased. No one wins in this. Even those of us who will eventually survive this ordeal would have lost a part of us. We could not help those who cried in pain and died in pain. Most of us could not even see them in pain. We could not offer them a funeral. It will be a pain that will remain for a long long time. Within me, it will remain always. When it had happened to China, then I was grieving. Not imagining if it will affect our community the same way. But because death brings sadness. Whether the death is of a Chinese national or of an American citizen, that matters not. When people die, it is time for tearful goodbye. When they die in thousands, how do we react? I am not numb. I am crying. I will try to be not numb. Because when we get conditioned to deaths, we lose the reason for living. New York will not get conditioned to this tragedy. We will always remember and mourn who we have lost among us. And yet more importantly, we will treasure the living.
This phase shall not simply pass. This will have to define us.
