Caught between life and livelihood, ordinary people, especially the poor, migrants, labourers, construction workers, daily-wage earners, hawkers, vegetable/fruit sellers, their women and children were the worst-affected, as they were left to fend for themselves and had resigned to fate.

The reported mishandling of the pandemic and its fallout during the first two waves not only disrupted normal life, but also caused untold misery to millions of people due to extended lockdowns and slew of restrictions, ostensibly, to contain the virus spread.

If the extended lockdown and Covid-induced curbs during the pandemic’s first wave from April to December 2020 affected the ordinary people most, the magnitude of the second wave and its rapid spread from April to July, 2021 dealt a body-blow to their livelihood, as the prolonged shutdown badly hit the economy, especially in the informal sector where thousands of jobs were lost.

The initial lockdown, imposed suddenly with just a four-hour notice on March 23, 2020, brought all activities to a standstill. Suspension of public transport and ban on movement of private vehicles stranded people for days.

When restrictions were eased and travelling was allowed by air, train and road, thousands of workers and migrants rushed to their native places across the state and country by whatever transport they managed to get amid the pandemic, as life was dearer than livelihood in the absence of work/jobs.

As the saga of Covid events and developments unfolded, veteran photo-journalist K. Venkatesh of Bengaluru, hit the road with his digital camera to capture vividly the hardship, suffering, misery and agony the ordinary people have undergone in the battle for survival through his lens.

With an eye for detail and uncanny ability to detect the unseen, the ace lensman drove through the tech city to chronicle the moments such as the eerie silence that gripped its empty roads and highways, offices and markets, bus stands, railway stations and airport during the first lockdown when movement of people and vehicles were not allowed for over a month.

Stringent enforcement of the lockdown turned a bustling cosmopolitan into a ghost city, as normal life was paralysed and lakhs of people were not allowed to stir out of their homes to prevent the infection from spreading.

As the contagious and communicable disease turned the state capital into an epi centre of the pandemic, fear of getting infected tested the patience of its citizens, as they never faced such a grim situation.

Even as life was limping back to normalcy months after the first wave abated and people were coming to terms with the harsh reality, second wave struck and swiftly spread across the city, causing an unprecedented health crisis.

As the number of positive/active cases surged, government and private hospitals ran out of beds, oxygen, and ventilators, leading to hundreds of deaths daily. With more patients succumbing to the virus round-the-clock, crematoriums and burial grounds were stretched, as ambulances lined up with more bodies for last rites. Due to acute shortage of space in the city, civic authorities were forced to set up crematoriums on the outskirts for early disposal of Covid victims.

When tracking, tracing, and testing became the norm, people queued up in long lines at state-run and private hospitals to check if they were infected by the variant or free from its symptoms.

With the roll out of vaccines across the southern state in mid-January, 2021, thousands of people piled up for hours at government and private hospitals for the jab to develop herd immunity.