The Newly Vulnerable

We looked at how senior citizens are coping in the pandemic by finding comfort in old, carefully managed routines in a new and uncertain environment.

This year, concepts like curfews, restrictions on movement and self isolation have suddenly been framed as an act of civic duty, an act of love, even. Morality has turned measurable: in curves, which we were encouraged to flatten, and in lines— keeping a six feet distance from one another is now basic etiquette.  

We’ve heard plenty of advice on precautions that one must take for the sake of the elderly, but much less about the experience of being a senior citizen living through this time. So we wanted to hear from older folks. Do they fear Covid? What has this pandemic been like for them? Did acknowledging the risks that come with old age bring with it a fresh sense of vulnerability?

What follows is an essay cautiously pieced together from shoots directed over video calls, voice notes, the occasional socially distanced and sanitised visit, emails and phone calls. We spoke to older people living in Goa, the first state to go into total lockdown and then declare itself Covid-free in April.  It also recently became the first state in India to have two percent of the population test positive for the virus, after opening its borders to tourists and allowing businesses to operate as per usual. With fresh cases everyday, the healthcare system has been stretched to its limit. Every household has been coping with the pandemic with their own set of precautionary measures. 

While almost all of our interviewees spoke not of fear but of feeling a need to not inconvenience their younger family members by falling sick, there was also an unmistakeable sense of resilience in all these generously shared stories.

Christabelle Menezes, 75 and Stanley John Menezes, 78

Since their local parish closed down, the Menezes’ have been attending church services all over the world, through videos and zoom calls.



For one whole day, soon after the pandemic and ensuing lockdown was announced, Christabelle and Stanley were stunned. They thought the coronavirus was hanging outside their window, lying in wait for them. “Can you imagine, we were this scared back when there were no cases in Goa?” Christabelle laughs. There are currently 40,400 cases in the state, but the borders are open and businesses seem to be running as usual. 

Quickly, a team of people from their housing society came together, made a few phone calls, and soon, the baker, coconut seller, and vegetable vendor were all driving into the colony. A WhatsApp group would announce what time a truck would arrive, and with what supplies. People would line up with their money. “It was actually fun,” Christabelle says. “It felt exciting. One time, we even got ice cream!”

After some weeks, though, the pair decided they couldn’t keep hiding in their apartment forever. After all, they were living on their own. They felt they needed to rely on themselves once again, not on their friends and neighbours. By making streamlined shopping lists and organising the list based on the geographical location of each item, they have created a system which helps them avoid the number of times they have to make a trip to buy supplies. This new discipline is something they intend to keep up with long after the lockdown. “We are never going to go back to this frivolous way of going out at any time to buy potatoes, or whatever!” Christabelle tells me over a phone call.

Covid has been a lesson to the world in “going back to basics.” She and Stanley are learning to live as they did in the old days, making do with much less. “It has become easier to splurge, the mentality of ‘that person has it, so we can have it’  has grown on people over the years.” she says. 

Another positive for them is that they are able to attend very good church services from all over the world, since their local parish closed down. Faith has been an anchor for them, and their religious beliefs have become more valuable since the lockdown. Christabelle feels that at this stage in her life, she is preparing for the end; her final spiritual journey. “When problems come, I turn to Jesus for courage,” she tells me. 

The couple look forward to their early morning walk. For Stanley, a series of exercise videos tailor-made for seniors has been especially useful. Being able to see their kids and grandkids over video call also helps maintain a feeling of closeness to their family, making an otherwise lonely time feel bearable. Disciplined and down-to-earth people, Christabelle and Stanley say they want their interview to give older folks practical ideas on living well during these times. They say it’s important for people to have a routine that keeps you going and helps you stay positive. Knowing that you have things to look forward to every day helps a lot. 

Leela Madkaikar, 60s

For fruit vendors like Leela, life and business must go on, pandemic or not.

We happened across Leela on a rainy day of walking around a half-shut Panjim city. She was leaning against an arched doorway of the old “Loja Carmota” shop building in the heart of town, twirling her umbrella now and then, and looking out onto the street. Small, neat heaps of chikoos, bananas and apples lay at her feet. Although at first hesitant to do this interview, she eventually acquiesced, perhaps more to humour us than because she thought there was a point to the whole exercise.

Leela has been working as a fruit seller since she was twelve. She cannot remember her exact age, but presumes she is in her 60s. Although the lockdown forced her to stay home the first 3 or 4 months, she has resumed working again as she’s the sole breadwinner in her family. 

“We are destined to die from the time we are born,” she said with a laugh, when we asked her if the Covid-19 virus scares her. “So, what’s there to worry about? Besides, I don't have the option of worrying since I have a family to feed.”  Although she was abrupt with her words, she assumed a light, if not wry, tone of voice with us. Occasionally, she would flash a lovely smile from beneath her umbrella. After a while, she seemed to have had enough of our questions and the camera, so we said our goodbyes, lingering to buy some fruit just as an excuse to spend a few more minutes with her. 

Milagrina (Milly) Menezes, 66

Milly Menezes has taken the time to revisit the place she grew up in and restore her ancestral home.

“I am lonely in lockdown in a place which is always in lockdown,” were Milly’s first words to me when I paid her a visit at her home on the tiny island of Divar, an 8km ferry ride away from Panjim. Covid doesn’t scare her much—she’s been fortifying her nostrils with mustard oil for years. According to her, “This is not the first viral infection that’s in the air. We have to get used to this new lifestyle.” 

Milly’s experience of this pandemic is a curious homecoming story of a lady returning to live in the house she grew up in, after spending years at sea and in big cities. This year, she decided to give living in Goa a chance. In January, she booked a one way ticket, something she’d never done before. 

She strikes me as the sort of person who never lets a limitation define her, instead finding clever ways to overcome them. Her open vulnerability, when presented through the filter of what I quickly recognise as her characteristic bluntness, turns any anecdote she tells into a good story. 

Over the years, she has gradually pared her old ancestral house down to a scale that better suits her modest needs, while the overgrowth of weeds and woody plants grows denser and spreads wider through the large open space that surrounds the house. 

Milly’s evening schedule is where her capacity to overcome a challenge reveals itself most artfully. She is unable to fall asleep in the old house, scared of the darkness that creeps into her street when night falls. It is a street full of empty ancestral houses and the occasional garden overwhelmed by foliage.  

In the beginning, her strategy was to switch her days with her nights. She would turn all the lights on when darkness fell, and the reflection of the bulbs in the glass window “made the whole house look like a lit up palace.” She would turn on the TV - any channel would do - then ease into her daytime chores of cleaning the house. When the first, crisp light of day streamed through the windows, she would finally retire to bed and wake at noon.

Milly has gone back to sleeping at night, though, instead preferring to manage her loneliness by spending the night at her cousin’s, who lives up the road from her place. “There’s always so much activity there!”, she tells me.

Familiar with isolation, the people of Divar island are long used to taking care of each other.

Marie Vitor, 82

The ‘village mynah’ of Divar island finds solace and comfort in song and old routines.

Not much has changed for Marie Vitor since the lockdown. She was already housebound thanks to a bad leg preventing her from walking much. A songwriter, singer and ropesao (cane chair weaver), she lives alone in her mother’s house, beginning her day at 7 or 8 AM with a cup of tea and some bread. 

She knows some people are very scared of the virus, but she feels that God and Our Lady are there to help her. Her only real exercise is when she goes out to her garden to pluck jasmine flowers to make a garland for her altar, a morning ritual popular among devout old ladies in Goa. Then she does some cleaning, which she has to do herself now that the maid has stopped coming. Afterwards, she either sits near the window facing a narrow, gravelly side street, from where she listens to old Konkani songs on the radio, or she sits by the other window, facing the main road, where she looks out and observes passersby. She often breaks into song spontaneously. The songs are mandos and dulpods, typical Goan folk songs, composed by her over the years. 

Her sister, Regina, lives nearby, and often checks up on her.  They speak on the phone every night, especially now that Regina visits less often because of Covid. She would prefer it if Marie Vitor came to live with her, but the old ropesao feels, “suppose something happened to me there, then people will say, “Oh she went to her sister’s house and died there!”” She would rather be in her own home. 

Marie Vitor remembers how when she was a girl, her mother used to beat her sometimes, and she would run out onto the road and cry loudly. Somewhere in between the screaming and crying, she would begin to sing at the top of her voice, causing the village parish priest to remark, “our village mynah has started her singing.” She would sit up in a tree and sing her made-up songs, not knowing what she meant by them. She says her music is a gift from the Holy Spirit. 

She showed me a notebook full of her songs, forty years worth of compositions, handwritten in pencil and pen. Her songs are about village life, the sea, the sun, and her faith. I asked her if she would sing me one, and she obliged. A thin, old-lady voice filled the air, the intonation precise and sharp, the melancholy melody slightly unnerving to listen to, as all good mandos and dulpods are. She seemed at ease like this, lost in her own clear, rising voice, alone again with her memories.  

Sashikant Salekar, 78 and Asha Salekar, 73

Long walks are now restricted to the terrace but with books, technology and cooking shows, new ways of living have also been found.

Sashikant and Asha Salekar used to begin their day early, going for an early morning walk past the fields near their home, stopping on their way back to buy vegetables and fish at the market. They would walk twice a day. Since Covid-19 struck, they now take a brisk walk on the terrace of their apartment building for about an hour around sunset. 

Sashikant finds these restrictions on moving out slightly boring and is often frustrated by the situation, even though he is grateful to have his daughter stepping in to attend to his urgent work. Asha Salekar however, seems to not mind the disruption to her routine too much. She enjoys learning new recipes from TV shows and the internet, reading Marathi literature on Facebook (when she was in college, she had wanted to write poems), or learning to crochet through video tutorials. It is only when she reads accounts in the papers about how old people who catch the virus have a slim hope of recovering that she worries.  

But Asha’s nature is jovial on the whole. She doesn’t follow strict rules on what to eat or do, but tries to balance between control and letting go when it comes to such things. Mostly, she relies on her intuition and understanding. Having never had any serious health issues, she only asks God to grant her death while she’s still in decent health, without giving much trouble to those around her.

Mithila, Asha and Sashikant’s granddaughter, is a source of hope for them. “I find courage in her words,” Asha says. “I also always have faith in God. I have faith that he will make everything right eventually.”

Dr. Usha Desai, 81 

Dr Usha is not deterred by the ways in which her age makes her vulnerable to the virus.

Dr. Usha’s tree appreciation walks, which she conducted with her friend Renee Vyas, were her main passion before the pandemic. They kept her busy, and though it was hard work, she found joy in doing it. When the pandemic was declared, all of that came to a standstill.

Dr. Usha had always worried about what would happen if she could not do these walks some day because of some physical disability. Now that fear has gone as the pandemic has taught her that she can find joy in other ways. In the early days of lockdown, when she found herself alone in her apartment in Mumbai, and busy with having to cook and clean for herself, WhatsApp became a constant platform for staying connected and learning with her friends. Being able to learn throughout the pandemic has helped her cope with the attendant difficulties of living alone. Butterflies, abangs, bhajans, recipes, the Cucurbitae family – Dr. Usha’s learning has been varied and involves engaging in long discussions with her friends via WhatsApp.

On the 6th of July, she found herself travelling to Goa from Mumbai to be with her family after her niece had a major surgery. Packing up her house and going to the airport all by herself was quite difficult. “There’s always a little tension when you are traveling in Covid times”, she said, but the fact that she made the trip made her feel good about herself. 

“When you’re old and you do something as small as that…” she laughs. “I got a lot of encouragement from my friends.” 

Since she’s been in Goa, her family has not let her do any chores, so she spends her time  listening to music, singing bhajans from her childhood, but mostly, reading. She is reading Gathering Moss, by Robin Wall Kimmerel, and rereading The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle, which “is like a Bible to me.” Sometimes, when “an emptiness inside me makes me go blank,” she does Sudoku. 

Dr. Usha seems to have a cheerful, accepting approach to the highs and lows of life, but I suppose that’s normal when you’ve lived as long and deeply as her. “I think more than anything, the fact that you are alive and you are loved should be enough reason to continue living,” she tells me. 

Of late, Dr. Usha has also been going for nature walks near her home but doesn’t walk for more than 20 or 30 minutes. “I really feel in my bones that I have become weaker than what I was,” she says. Still, she loves sitting alone and not doing anything, simply looking at the trees.“Suddenly, a golden oriole will come and sit on the coconut tree and my mood changes. I don’t know how to explain it, but these kinds of miracles go on happening if you remain present in the now.”

Written by Francesca Cotta

Photography by Suyash Kamat

Concept and Creative Direction by Meera Ganapathi