It was during the first wave that my parents got infected with Covid-19. My father is a bank employee, and he had not taken a single day of leave in months, even during the national lockdown. Bank employees are rarely regarded as Covid warriors but they put a lot in their jobs. My mother, a retired government employee and now a full-time housewife, also got infected.

I was the third person in the house, but fortunately I was not infected. It allowed me do the household chores.

It was a time of great uncertainty and fear. We figured out the basic problems of staying in isolation such as how to get food (from friends and relatives initially and then from a delivery service), where the garbage would go (we just collected it in a big bag), what to do with the dog who is used to going out twice a day (a relative took him to a dog creche).

Since our family was the first to get the disease in our residential society, a middle-class row housing in the National Capital Region, we also experienced extreme reactions. Some neighbours called and offered unconditional help but other people spread rumours and tried to restrict entry to the people who were bringing us essentials.

Fortunately, both of my parents recovered quite quickly. They recently got their second vaccination shots.

This is a photo series I made while taking care of my parents. Conversation through the camera is unique: one does not need to talk very much, or sometimes, to even talk at all.

Being home through the four months of the lockdown was also the longest time I had spent at home after being away for ten years for higher studies. It was an emotional rollercoaster. In the end, it brought us all much closer.

My heart goes to people who are not privileged enough to have enough space for isolation, for the ones who faced a lot of hardships and the ones who have lost their loved ones.

The authorities, apart from putting a poster outside our house declaring us a containment zone, added my parents to a WhatsApp group where they had to give their oxygen concentration readings and heart rate twice a day. It was also like a peer support group with other positive patients in the area.
After four days of being locked inside the house, Nugget, our dog, was sent off to a dog creche.
Our system of getting no-contact groceries from deliverymen.
Everything that entered the house was sanitised. The vegetables were soaked in water for half an hour.
Because of a lot of misinformation in the initial days of the pandemic, some families had asked the security guard to not let people bring us food. Eventually, they realised that this wasn't necessary..
All three of us wore masks at home.
My mother during her spell of isolation.
My mother's Covid kit included various medicines, an oximeter, TV remote and her spectacles.
After 15 days, my parents were tested again. We were surprised that the man assigned for testing by a private lab was not given a PPE kit. He only had a helmet.
Soon after my parents tested negative, a team was sent to sanitise the house. The technician job told me that he visited many homes every day and that some of his teammates had contracted the virus and died.
My father's first trip after he recovered was to the dog creche to retrieve Nugget.
Nugget was glad to be home.

Nipun Prabhakar is a documentary photographer based in Kutch and Delhi. He works on long-term projects dealing with Asia’s most vulnerable communities on intersections of ideas, artefacts, built environments and folklore.