Across Kerala, people remained mostly indoors on Sunday in response to a call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to observe a janata curfew from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. as part of a countrywide attempt to rein in the COVID-19 outbreak.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had backed the proposal and requested citizens to use the interim to disinfect their homes.
‘No miracle cure’
Mr. Vijayan tweeted: “There is no miracle cure yet. Wait for science to do its job. The virus does not discriminate based on religion, nationality, or dietary habits. We have to fight this battle. Not enough evidence to claim it will go away in summer.”
Urban centres were quiet, with the roads devoid of traffic and pedestrians. Public squares and parks seemed devoid of life.
So did malls, sporting venues, and cinema halls. The sound of vehicle horns and people, the omnipresent notes of urban life, seemed supplanted by an ominous silence.
Television news channels carried the images of deserted cityscapes to lakhs of living rooms throughout the day. The panorama seemed bleak and almost the same everywhere. The metro cities of Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, and Kozhikode appeared desolate.
Sunday Mass
The gates of the St. Joseph’s Metropolitan Cathedral in the capital remained shut.
The clergy celebrated Sunday Mass without the usual crowd of parishioners thronging the aisle. The nearby Palayam Juma Masjid and Ganapathy Temple remained sealed.
The triad of shrines adjacent to each other is celebrated as a symbol of Kerala’s secular spirit.
The signature tea stalls on sidewalks in the capital were missing. The situation was no different in other parts of the State. The shutdown was perhaps most evident in Kasaragod, the northern district that reported a slew of COVID-19 cases.
