They don’t appear on the country’s pandemic bulletin board, and thereby hangs a tale. A man in his 70s walks back home from the dead in West Bengal; a 52-year-old in Himachal Pradesh is the lone infection-free man in a village of 42 people where everyone else got infected; a British health worker is giving the cat a run for its many lives, surviving dengue, malaria, COVID-19 and a bite from a king cobra.
First off, a case of misplaced “reports”. Septuagenarians Shibdas Banerjee and Mohini Mohan Mukherjee were admitted to a state-run hospital in North 24-Parganas district, about 20 km from Calcutta, on November 4 for Covid treatment. Mukherjee became critical and was shifted to a Barasat hospital on November 7. But the first hospital sent Banerjee’s papers instead to Barasat, and Mukherjee became Banerjee in the medical records. When Mukherjee died on November 13, Banerjee’s family was informed of his death. The Banerjees “identified” the old man, the body was cremated and the family prepared for his last rites, scheduled for...
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