Samikhsya Bureau
It was a late spring-time afternoon in Bhubaneswar. Few visits to shopping hot spots in the city revealed a deafening quiet at many of such places like shopping malls, big retain outlets and inside the railway station as well.
Shop owners and care takers at such locations, all wore a look of askance and a quite few of them worried. “ We have to be here to elk something to support the monthly rent at least” rued one of them at the huge mall near the railway station.
In few of the most visited shopping spots like, right from the Reliance mall, down-town DN House, the scenario is more or less same.
A fear in the air for the deadly virus and a sense of melancholy when it would end. Getting inside such places present a feel of a zombie movie.
Shoppers’ paradises turned to become haunted by something which has brought down the footfalls of buyers drastically.
And this has lent an edge for the roadside vendors, including the small and medium eateries, to make hey.
A walk into the railway station after buying a platform ticket @Rs.50 was as much dismal as the scene inside.
Most of the platforms were sparsely populated after a chain cancellation of trains caused by a fall in occupancy. People have obviously become conscious and have decided to avoid traveling by trains where social distancing is just not possible.
The routine announcement of train schedules have also reduced and the people there squatting on the benches look a forlorn lot.
It is all about the heat of the COVID-19 which has abandoned an eerie tranquil in many places in the city even.
