"The narcissism of bourgeois life is concealed in normal times by good manners but becomes obvious in moments of crisis. When I discovered I was running a temperature one afternoon late last month, my world shrank to me. The middle-class Indian's ability to quarantine painlessly via digital payments, vendors at the gate and an inherited gift for social distancing induces an expectation of immunity. I couldn't believe that I had a fever after the endless handwashing, the monotony of hour-long walks up and down a short driveway, the double-valve N99 masks I wore when I ventured outside. Having barred virus-bearing people and limited the intrusion of the outside world to things, I had systematically sanitized those things. I remember scrubbing the polythene surface of shrink-wrapped prawns with Scotch-Brite and Pril and wondering, but only for a second, if I was going too far.