Society in Navi Mumbai doesn’t step out, even to buy essentials amid coronavirus lockdown

A housing society in Nerul, which was once bustling with children playing in parks and senior citizens enjoying their evening walks, wears a deserted look since

A housing society in Nerul, which was once bustling with children playing in parks and senior citizens enjoying their evening walks, wears a deserted look since its residents went into complete quarantine.

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The Jay Balaji cooperative society, Nerul, which consists of seven wings and 200 flats with over 1000 residents, enforced ‘zero contact’ over the past few days. This implies that no resident is allowed to meet a person who is not a family member, speak to them or co-ordinate with them, except for over messaging applications.

“We have never seen the society this deserted before. No children are in playgrounds, there is no hustle and bustle of people. It is grim to be living like this, but it’s for our greater good,” said Sangeeta Bal, a resident.

Even for essentials goods and services, the orders are placed on the society messaging groups and Archana Lokeshwar, the chairperson of the society, combines all the orders and forwards them to the respective vendors.

“We have set up a mechanism, wherein all the essentials are delivered at the gate by the vendors and our security and house-keeping staff pick it up, sanitise it and place it outside the door of the respective house. Then a message is sent on the group, and one by one members from each house can pick up their orders but not together,” said Lokeshwar.

A team of 15 volunteers and around 11 security staff help Lokeshwar in this task.

To take the zero contact initiative a notch higher, the society has collectively decided that any household, who has a person visiting them from outside, won’t be supplied with essentials for 10 days.

“The self-quarantine is put in place to ensure that people can manage to do basic work on their own, and no carpenter or a plumber is called in. It is to minimise outside contact to prevent spread of Sars-Cov-2,” said Mugdha Moghe, a resident.