‘Isolation never bored us’
Veteran of pandemics recalls how world has changed
At 98 years of age, Shakuntala Patnaik has lived through a lot. Two World Wars, the freedom struggle, and many health crises including the plague and small pox. “None of my generation felt bored or depressed during quarantine,” she recalls in a conversation with this newspaper.
“India never had dangerous diseases… they all came from foreign lands,” say Shakuntala, who lost her husband in 2000 and has been living alone since. Her three sons and a daughter, all have
Plague was spreading rapidly. Army families were put into quarantine and ration was supplied by the Army.
— SHAKUNTALA PATNAIK, recalling how administration handled the outbreak of plague in 1930s
retired. “I am healthier than my children,” she says, adding that she has 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
She has an observation for the present generation: “They have lost the thread of family bonding, which is why they feel suffocated at home during the lockdown.”
Her first pandemic experience was when she was in fourth class, during an outbreak of the plague. “It was spreading rapidly. Army families were put into quarantine and ration was supplied by the Army.”
When she joined college, there was a smallpox pandemic. “The only treatment was to wear white clothes. Turmeric was applied on the infected areas and patients had to sleep on neem leaves. Those not infected were made to take a bath with water boiled with neem leaves.”
When she graduated from Maharani College, Bengaluru, World War II broke out. It was her father’s wish that she become a doctor and she went to study in Patna. After struggling for two years in conditions too hostile for women, she returned home. Between 1939 and 1940, tuberculosis had spread in several parts of the country. Shakuntala was in Madras, where she saw isolation hospitals coming up. “Houses were cleaned and disinfected with cow dung.”
In 1944, she completed teacher training from Rajahmundry and joined the Maharaja Parlakimibi Girls High School. She married Dr P.B. Patnaik, a professor of mathematics at the Presidency College in Madras in 1946.
After India got independence, he joined the Indian Statistical Institute and subsequently, the Planning Commission, as one of India’s earliest statisticians. When Andhra Pradesh was separated from the Madras Presidency, he became director of Bureau of Economics and Statistics.
When Dr Patnaik joined the United Nations in 1963, Shakuntala joined her husband along with their daughter and younger son. They were based at Jakarta.
A flu epidemic broke out there. Once infected, patients began dying in seven days. The family, along with others, were shifted to an island called Sulawesi where they were quarantined for six months. She had two of her children still back in India and to communicate with them she had to write letters or visit a post office to book an international trunk call. Sometimes, after waiting for hours, she would get lucky and get connected.
In 1971, after retirement in Taiwan, they returned to Hyderabad. Dr Patnaik died in the year 2000.
Speaking of the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, “Fear has escalated in public minds because of the communication access. Along with information, misinformation has spread and creates unnecessary paranoia.”