Article content
The city was in a different place last summer when the Ottawa Ethnic Media Forum’s second volume of COVID-related essays, stories and poems went to press. Infections were down. Hospital were empty. The end of the pandemic seemed at hand.
Advertisement
Article content
Its title? COVID-19 Chronicles Part 2: Road to Recovery.
“We thought we were,” says Jagjeet “Guddi” Sharma, president of the Ottawa Ethnic Media Forum and the driving force behind the books.
“The title was decided way back in July and August so there was no way we could change it. Next time we’ll have to make it more general. We’re still on the road to recovery, it’s just a little longer than expected.”
The book is a followup to last year’s COVID-19 Chronicles: Reflections on the 2020 Pandemic , which last month won the print category in the 43rd annual Canadian Ethnic Media Association Awards for Journalism Excellence.
The 93-page Part 2 features 41 essays and poems, most of them by ethnic writers, immigrants or New Canadians.
Advertisement
Article content
“We wanted to give people a voice and an outlet to express their feelings,” said Sharma, who contributed some of her own poetry to the collection.
In Lab Rat, she describes the feeling of being trapped by the lockdown order.
“We’re all stuck in our homes,” she said. “I go down a hallway, then I go left or right. It’s like I’m a lab rat stuck in a maze.”
One of the most compelling stories comes form Shailish Kapadia, who writes about flying to India to visit his father who was critically ill in hospital with COVID-19. At the time, India was in the grips of a fierce wave of the Delta variant. More than 400,000 new cases and more than 500 deaths were being recorded each day and the country faced critical shortages of bottled oxygen.
Advertisement
Article content
After more than two harrowing weeks in hospital, his father eventually recovered and Kapadia returned to Canada.
“Always remember: Our parents don’t expect expensive gifts from us, but all they want is our love and time,” he writes. “If you are reading this, I just want you to wish your mom and dad a healthy and strong life. Make it a point to call them every day. What we are today is due to their unconditional love, blessings and sacrifices.”
In her short essay, A Year Ago, Kathy Tang recalls how what once seemed normal — dance recitals at the National Arts Centre, haircuts and concerts — seem impossibly far away during the pandemic.
“A year ago, around this time, I did not know what PPE, PUI, N95, or ARDS stood for,” Tang writes. “The term ‘long hauler’ only made me think about truckers.”
Advertisement
Article content
One poem by Ranjit Devgun is printed in Hindi, untranslated. It describes how difficult it was to celebrate Holi, the Festival of Colours, during a pandemic.
“He describes the desperation of the situation: Not being to interact with people. Not being able to throw colours. Not being able to hug or kiss,” Sharma said. “That’s something that’s very relevant for the South Asian community.”
Another immigrant, Bill Fairbairn, describes being ill as a child in the United Kingdom and how another medical advancement — penicillin — saved him from a Scarlet Fever infection. Fairbairn, now 86, writes of seeing parents visit their quarantined children through hospital windows, not unlike the window visits at his seniors’ home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He then recounts all the illnesses that have been brought to heel by vaccinations: “Diphtheria, scarlet fever, polio, influenza, measles, chickenpox, mumps, smallpox, tetanus and more,” he writes. “I, like thousands of others, had two COVID-19 virus shots. How about you?”
Copies of COVID-19 Chronicles Part 2 will be available at the Ottawa Public Library and at the North Grenville Public Library. Copies can also be purchased directly by contacting Sharma at [email protected] for a cost of $20. All proceeds will go to the Ottawa Heart Institute.
