Representative image
GREATER NOIDA: Harveer Talan lies in the dappled shadow of a neem tree, on a wooden charpoy. On another cot next to him is Ompal, about half Talan’s age but too ill to speak. Both have Covid symptoms. Talan (67) has been running a temperature for a week. The fatigue and body ache are punishing – he barely manages to plod his way to the tree from his house and spends the day in the open-air ‘sick bay’ in a febrile daze.
At Mewla Gopalgarh village in Jewar – the Greater Noida region now synonymous with the international airport that is to be built there – this neem tree is part of a ground that serves as a ‘clinic’ in the morning where villagers who are sick gather for medical help. Assistance comes in the form of pharmacists and compounders, sometimes hospital staffers, and very often quacks.