Dosa to fish: An isolation ward offers rich meals for coronavirus patients

Breakfast at 7.30 am with dosa-sambar, two eggs, two oranges, tea, a litre of mineral water; fruit juice at 10.30 am; lunch comprises two chapatis, rice, fish fry, thoran (a dry side dish), curry, curd, a litre of mineral water; tea, biscuits/banana chips/vada at 3.30 pm; appam and vegetable stew, two bananas and a litre of mineral water at dinner time. No, this is not the menu at a tourist resort in Kerala, but the food that is being served to local residents in the isolation ward of the Government Medical College, Ernakulam, in Kalamassery, where coronavirus-infected people have been quarantined. Foreign tourists in the isolation ward are served soup, fruits and two boiled eggs for breakfast; a helping of pineapple juice at 11 am; lunch comprises cheese sandwich and fruits and the dinner menu is toasted bread, scrambled eggs and fruits. The kids' meal includes milk as well. Also, breakfast is served with a newspaper to quench their thirst for news and analysis.

Show must go on

The Parliament’s Central Hall, where former MPs and journalists hobnob with current members and ministers, was deserted on Tuesday because of the coronavirus scare. The MPs, cutting across political lines, hoped the government would think about proroguing the session once the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh had its floor test. Questions were also asked about the absence of Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Muraleedharan, who is also the Junior Minister in the external affairs ministry. It was conveyed that while he was tested negative for the coronavirus, he is in self-quarantine at his residence. Meanwhile, the parliamentary committee on transport, aviation and tourism, at the behest of Trinamool Congress' Derek O'Brien, has asked the aviation and tourism ministries to appear before it on Wednesday to brief the MPs about how they are faring in the face of the coronavirus. Calling for an early end to the session, O'Brien said that the average age of the Rajya Sabha is 64 years, which puts most MPs in the high-risk category.

Akhilesh's inspiration

Samajwadi Party chief and Lok Sabha MP Akhilesh Yadav visited a Hanuman temple in Delhi on Tuesday, a day considered auspicious by devotees. In the run up to the Delhi Assembly polls in February, not just Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal, but several of his party colleagues had visited Hanuman temples, and had replied to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s cries of "Jai Shri Ram" with "Jai Bajrang Bali". Later, AAP legislator Saurabh Bharadwaj had said invoking Lord Hanuman had helped his party counter the aggressive Hindutva of the BJP. AAP had won the polls after asking people to vote for performance. In recent months, Yadav has adopted a similar strategy. He has stopped talking of issues considered "divisive" and spoken more about the development work his government carried out between 2012 and 2017. Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh are due in 2022.