KOLKATA: Going back to campuses in Pune, Puducherry, Manipal and other places is seeming like a herculean task amid pandemic. One has to keep the Covid negative report handy, done within the time period stipulated by the respective state to which the student is headed. If you land up without the report, you are tested at the airport and till the report comes, you are prescribed a quarantine.
Concerned about the safety of their children, most parents are not only travelling with them, but are also taking a 15-20-day break to stay put and settle them in. Hotels are being booked after much screening for Covid safety for the duration and parents are insistent that their children stay with them till they are satisfied about the sanitisation and other precautionary measures on respective campuses. Some are even renting flats to keep their kids away from crowded hostels.
Sanjukta Chakravarthi, who is from Darjeeling, has just returned to her hotel management school at Manipal, but not before she spent sleepless nights with her parents over the Covid test report. “Darjeeling is not equipped to give the RT-PCR test report the same day. So, we had to take her to Siliguri in the wee hours of the day she flew out to Mangalore, got the test done and kept praying that the report comes before she landed at the airport. Otherwise, she would have had to get the test done at the airport and would have been quarantined till the reports came,” said Sunirmal Chakravarthi, her father, former principal of La Martiniere for Boys, who’s currently a hotelier in Darjeeling.
Indrani Chattopadhyay, vice principal of DPS Ruby Park, decided to take two weeks’ break from work and travel to Pune with daughter Baidehi, a post graduation student at the Pune University. She had to screen hotels to be booked for 15-20 days so that she could stay there with her daughter. Later, a notice reached her that the re-opening of the campus was delayed and students will be given a fresh date. “We are extremely worried about the safety of our daughter and have decided that she will stay outside till we are sure that the campus is absolutely safe,” she said.
Students said that for 10 months now, they have done online classes from home but it’s just not enough. “We saw a notice from the Puducherry government that from January 6, all institutions would reopen and we are awaiting a notice from our university,” said Priyashmita Nandy, who is doing her postgraduation in chemistry at Pondicherry University. Research scholar Bittesh Barman, her senior, has been called to the campus already and his tense parents are in touch with him.