AES... A Pallid Shroud

A morbid stain, spreading across the map. The vectors are unknown, the symptoms many...a silent army of assassins at large.

- Damayanti Datta

There are two children and two sets of parents on every bed. Young mothers cradle limp children. Fathers fuss over immobile babies, barely visible through a maze of tubes and masks. Many more lie on the floor, with parents frantically fanning them to beat the stifling heat.

Nurses and doctors run around. Machines blink and glow. high-pitched wailings hush the crowd, sometimes, as little bodies swathed in white are carried out. Or “Wapas jao (go back)” protests ring out as TV anchors or ministers float in and out. But only for a moment. There’s no time to grieve or get angry. The clock is ticking on very sick children.

Time is running out. The shocked nation watches, as heart-wrenching images and stories of suffering from ground zero—Muzaffarpur district in North Bihar—flash across newspapers and television screens. Children are dying like flies every day. A mystery killer is claiming little lives in the blink of an eye: 9 children by June 2, 50 by June 13, 136 by June 20, 170 by June 25. Some 700 children have already been infected across 16 districts in less than a month. Stark statistics are on the wall: it has killed over 60,000 across India in 2010-16, nearly 50 per cent of those who were infected. There’s fear in the air. Hundreds are fleeing villages. The chamki bukhar is running faster and it is winning the race, they say.

Fear without a name