When police officer Surinderjit Kaur lost her husband, Charanjit Singh, to Covid-19 in Delhi, it is obligatory upon each one of us to feel a deep sense of loss. There is no other way to save our inner humanity. She is a senior police officer, an assistant commissioner of the Delhi police, who had risen through the ranks. He was a businessman. Their young son is settled in Canada. By all accounts, this was a family which represented the Indian middle-class dream. World Sikh News brings this incredible story from the pen of the ace journalist with the humane touch -SP Singh.

EACH ONE HAS A STORY OF LIFE  -the beggar you see everyday at the street corner, the man helming your grocery shop, the cobbler you pass by near your office, the paanwallah, the attendant in your car park, the boss you hate, the colleague you admire, the canteen guy, the juice seller outside. They are all people, and all people have stories. The ones you listen to carefully touch you, the ones on which Bollywood makes movies live with you longer. The ones you do not get to know also make up the world, maybe someone else’s world. Human beings are made of stories.

But there are more layers to the story of this family, far wider and deeper than just a family losing a loved one to a deadly virus. Thousands are suffering that fate. Thousands more will. And we need to take each death personally. Very very personally. No one’s life is less precious.

These stories are dying. All these people made our world, and that world is dying. And sometimes, it is by dying that a story comes alive for us. A story that was always there. A story that we had not heard. A story that had so many layers. A story that came to life for us only and only when a man died.

Ask a young child to draw a picture of a police officer and nine times out of 10, the kid will draw the picture of a male officer. The normative image often exposes our hidden or not-so-hidden biases. If the image of a family during Covid-19 times that comes to our mind shows a police officer bravely venturing out every day because duty calls, and shows a spouse who stays behind and takes care of the house, then you can bet that it is the male head of family who goes out and the woman who stays behind.

Also, the permanent connection between the man and the designation of being the head of the family underlines yet another ingrained prejudice of our times, corona or no corona.

That’s why the story of ACP Surinderjit Kaur is more educative for us, for our children, and for our times. She’s devastated, full of regret and blaming herself. Surinderjit lost the love of her life, the father of her child, the only man she would come back to after days good, bad and ugly in her job.

She was out because she was an officer in uniform on duty. Charanjit was home because he was a caring spouse and was taking care, was not venturing out because death lurked outside. Death still knocked and came inside.

And Surinderjit Kaur thinks she was the one who brought death home.

What do you say to her? What do you tell her son? What do you tell her family?

***

“My husband didn’t step out of the house when the lockdown started, but I went out daily because of my job…I will never be able to forgive myself,” Surinderjit said on Tuesday, June 16.

Charanjit Singh was 54. He passed away on Monday, fighting Covid at a Delhi hospital.

“My husband didn’t step out of the house when the lockdown started, but I went out daily because of my job…I will never be able to forgive myself,” Surinderjit said on Tuesday, June 16.

Surinderjit joined the Delhi police as a young officer. She was a station house officer, dashing in her uniform, adamant on proving herself, often spending 24 hours on the road, still more chalking up 36-hour shifts.

At home, her husband, a businessman, invariably doubled up as a mother to their little kid. He would look after the household. Surinderjit would often miss family functions and the husband would mark his presence to make up for her absence.

Their life seemed good to those outside because it was a beautiful story of a young couple bringing up a child in a home that has its routine everyday problems, issues, love, dreams, and conversations about a rosy future and, very often, about the kid’s favourite ice cream.

It takes years for a family to build a life; to progress inch by inch, to make career moves step by step, to see a son growing, graduate high school, go for higher studies, and finally make a move to Canada.

Surinderjit is 57, due to retire in a couple of years. For long hours into the night, the husband and wife must have been talking about their future. They had planned to join their son in Canada and even had a date in mind — 2023. Imagine that just a couple of years before her retirement, and with possible immigration plans, how detailed and how long those conversations must have been in that house in Lajpat Nagar.

And then, the novel coronavirus exploded on the scene.

Every Covid death that we read about has all these stories behind it. And remember, we’re not reading about every Covid death; they’re not even publishing every Covid death. Instead, we read a number, a statistic, every day, which doesn’t destroy us deep inside. It doesn’t make our heart go thud. Meanwhile, we go about our lives, washing hands, sanitising packets, disinfecting surfaces.

All that Surinderjit needed to say was that her husband was coughing a little bit, and she would have been told to stay home. All that she needed to say was that she was running a slight fever and no one would have insisted that a 57-year-old officer must report for duty.

But that is not the stuff Surinderjit Kaur is made of. She had been a front-rank fighter in the streets for years, and she was not going to take a step back and hide behind a door lest Covid finds her.

A month ago, Covid found Surinderjit. She tested positive, and her husband followed suit. Within hours, her 80-year-old father also tested positive for the virus.

***

Now, please pause here. Think of the conversations each of them must have had while at hospital — of course, with one’s inner self only. It wasn’t possible to have a conversation with one’s spouse, with one’s son, with one’s parents. What must those conversations would have contained? How many times would the mortal fear of death pulled down morale? How many times must one have pictured a loved one dying?

All that Surinderjit needed to say was that her husband was coughing a little bit, and she would have been told to stay home. All that she needed to say was that she was running a slight fever and no one would have insisted that a 57-year-old officer must report for duty.
But that is not the stuff Surinderjit Kaur is made of. She had been a front-rank fighter in the streets for years, and she was not going to take a step back and hide behind a door lest Covid finds her.

Every Covid death that we read about has all these stories behind it. And remember, we’re not reading about every Covid death; they’re not even publishing every Covid death. Instead, we read a number, a statistic, every day, which doesn’t destroy us deep inside. It doesn’t make our heart go thud. Meanwhile, we go about our lives, washing hands, sanitising packets, disinfecting surfaces.

In Indraprastha Apollo hospital, both husband and wife spent some time in separate wards. His oxygen levels plunged. First, they saw each other on video, until that was no longer possible. He said he would send WhatsApp messages, instead. Soon these messages started coming. Details of bank accounts, details of deposits, a lot of financial stuff. This was real.

Why, she asked. Why are you sending me these details?

“Because you would need them,” he said.

This is death talk between people who loved each other all their lives, saw each other every morning and every evening, year after year, decade after decade. And they could not see each other; time was running out. He could not afford to write long messages detailing how much he loved her; how when he was young, he was so taken in by his dashing wife in a uniform; how when their son was studying at school and they would play good cop, bad cop, he would often want to be the bad cop so his wife could remain the good cop that the son could confide in.

These, and a million other tales from innumerable years.

But Charanjit’s words and messages were dictated by oxygen levels, reduced to dry texts on data, money and property, not love and dreams and ice cream in Canada. The hospital’s sterile atmosphere, and the stench of sickness and death hanging in the air allowed limited conversation via phones.

On May 26, Surinderjit came home. She had recovered. Charanjit did not. He never did.

***

There are many details we’re skipping: video calls, beeps from ventilators, the ghostly shadows of doctors and nurses in PPE kits, Surinderjit’s visits to temples and mosques and churches and gurdwaras, praying that her husband would come home. Her regrets that though he’d stayed home, he had not been safe, since she hadn’t chosen to stay home, too.

Instead, she had chosen to be a warrior. Because someone needs to patrol the streets, someone needs to keep things under control, someone needs to keep the country running, someone needs to tell people to stay indoors.

This video provides a peep into the remarkable persona of
police officer ACP Surinderjit Kaur

That someone has to be outdoors.

When India hosted the 2015 “Trafficking in Persons Conclave” in Ranchi, organised by the US consulate, Calcutta, and Delhi-based NGO Shakti Vahini, Surinderjit Kaur was one of the four Super Cops selected from all over India for leading the fight against this modern-day menace.

Surinderjit Kaur moved from Punjab to Delhi as a child, was brought up in a conservative atmosphere where girls are discouraged from going for higher studies. She could not go to college, felt trapped, but doggedly pursued her education through distant learning programmes. A Master’s in Hindi and a diploma in office management under her belt, this daughter of a constable nursed a dream. Her dad wanted her to learn stenography and find employment in some office; she wanted to be on the road, setting wrongs right.

And one day, she achieved her dream: she donned the uniform of a sub-inspector and eventually became to be known as one of the toughest, helming Delhi’s notorious Kamla Nagar Market police station. Goons in that area did not know how to deal with a woman officer who’s tough and yet humane.

She made dealing with human trafficking a tryst, and was instrumental in the rescue of 15 girls on her very first assignment. “I couldn’t take it. I started vomiting. I realised that this was something I was going to go after and monitor the way these cases were being registered and investigated,” she told The Telegraph.

But she was a mother, too, and knew what young rescued girls needed. She took interest in their lives, helped marry off some of them, kept track of others.

It is such an officer who has lost her love on duty. How many times media coverage of deaths due to Covid-19 brings home to us the person behind the name, the human being behind that number? Reading about how many died on a day and how many were found positive is making us immune, desensitised, dehumanised to the pain, the suffering, the agony of others.

It is such an officer who has lost her love on duty. How many times media coverage of deaths due to Covid-19 brings home to us the person behind the name, the human being behind that number? Reading about how many died on a day and how many were found positive is making us immune, desensitised, dehumanised to the pain, the suffering, the agony of others.

That’s why we need to delve deeper into the pain of others to save our souls.

On Tuesday, June 16, their son watched his father’s last journey through a video link, from the ambulance right till the entrance to the crematorium. In normal times, they would have allowed you a few more steps inside, but then, there’s a pandemic in the air. And a video link allows you to watch only so much.

A man who laughed, told jokes, loved his wife, raised a son, nursed a million dreams, had died.

He was not a number; he was a story.

Cry for him, please — and for every man, woman and child that we lost to this virus. They were not numbers. They were stories.

Cry for every young or middle-aged man and woman who lost a job in these tough times; they are not numbers. They are stories.

He was not a number; he was a story. Cry for him, please — and for every man, woman and child that we lost to this virus. They were not numbers. They were stories.

Cry for every child who went hungry since our politics cannot match the size of our problems; they are not numbers. They are stories.

Cry for every step of a millions taken by my countrywomen and men as they walked to their villages because our politics and establishment left them in the lurch; they are not numbers. They are stories.

Cry for every child who played around the dead body of his mother because he or she still has to grow up and find out what actually happened; that kid isn’t a number. It’s a kid who’ll someday tell a horrible, horrible story, and your kid might listen to it. Stories travel, and they travel a very long way.

They will find you, or your children, or their children. Covid may not find us, but stories will.

Cry because we are living amid all these corpses of stories dying.

They aren’t numbers. They are stories.

Cry for every child who played around the dead body of his mother because he or she still has to grow up and find out what actually happened; that kid isn’t a number. It’s a kid who’ll someday tell a horrible, horrible story, and your kid might listen to it. Stories travel, and they travel a very long way. They will find you, or your children, or their children. Covid may not find us, but stories will.

Cry for that woman whose story might one day inspire your child to draw a picture of a woman police officer.

That day, thank Charanjit Singh, say a prayer for the stories you let go, and write a thank you note to Surinderjit Kaur.

SP Singh is a currently working-from-home senior journalist, whose wife ventures out in uniform, often spending a day or a night at an international airport, incessantly worried that she might end up bringing the virus home for her husband.

Courtesy Note: A version of this story was first published by Newslaundry on June 17, 2020, with the headline ‘Stories, not statistics: A Delhi cop comes to grips with losing her husband to Covid.’ It appears here, courtesy that portal.