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Poor Babu! He seems to have escaped SARS in China but was attacked with lousy jokes about the infection when he was here in Chennai on a month’s holiday.

“Babu, you are in Chennai? I will meet you if you do not have SARS,” says a friend; “Are you sure you have left behind in China what belongs to China?” says an acquaintance…

Daya Babu (29), who qualified in leather technology in Chennai, joined a Hong Kong-based company in China in November 2001. In Guangdong. Yes. The same province where the SARS virus is supposed to have originated from.

Babu lives in Hengli town in the district of Donguan (which was where the first SARS case was traced to) in Guangdong province. “Since the Chinese government itself first tried to hide the epidemic from the world, we did not know anything about it. But the Hong Kong media went full throttle because it is the closest to Guangdong (just an hour’s train ride) and SARS spread wildly there. Then the Chinese government traced the infection to Donguan where a farmer went to a doctor with the infection. He died, but passed on the infection to the doctor who carried it with him to overcrowded Hong Kong and the rest is history,” says Babu.

But he is amazed at the way the Chinese government then set about containing the virus. The virus threat came around March-April and by June-July China was able to tell the world that it has cleaned its stables.

“I work in a leather chemicals company that employs about 50 people. But there are hundreds of huge units in Guangdong – from leather to electronic to plastic units – that employ up to 4,000 people. These are mostly migrant labourers and are put up by the company in dormitories. Even a day’s labour lost would mean huge losses. This was one of the reasons why the government put a strict system in place,” Babu explains.

The government issued a circular first asking the companies not to allow the staff to go out unnecessarily after working hours. Every employee’s temperature was checked while he entered the factory and when he left it – every single day. Though every town has a general hospital – where treatment is not free but as expensive as Indian private hospitals – anyone suspected of SARS was quickly sent to the hospital that had been earmarked to handle the infection and the person quarantined.

“There is a lot of entertainment beyond the factory walls – like the kind you find in Hong Kong, but much cheaper. But all weekend shows were cancelled in such places while the infection was around. There was a dip in traffic from Hong Kong and it was only the entertainment and food industry that was affected by the outbreak of the SARS virus,” says Babu.

Was he scared? “There was panic all around. Even if you had high fever or cough you felt scared and scared others also. All one has to do to get SARS is be in the same room as the infected person…I could not get away and so had to stay on. I tried to play it down with my folks in India. My Chinese bosses, who continued to commute between Guangdong and Hong Kong every week, as usual, were very supportive and gave me a lot of confidence.”

He also found all the Chinese faithfully following the government instructions. They would patiently fill out forms even at railway stations, which was compulsory. There were infra-red thermometers to check body temperature everywhere – even in malls. “Though we were not supposed to leave the dormitories, I would go out – with the face mask on. The security man was a little scared of me,” grins Babu, who is tall and well-built, and adds, “See, that is the difference in mindset between an Indian and a Chinese.”

Babu has not picked up much Chinese (“except to say ‘nihao’, which means hello or how do you do”) since his company, agents for an American chemical company, deals mostly with American and British leather companies where English is spoken. He had the luxury of a translator for some time.

“I understood what mass production is only after I came here. There are tanneries that turn out 4 lakh sq ft of finished leather in a day. And they adhere to the American standards of effluent treatment,” says Babu with great admiration.

The Bengal goat kid leather is special for its grain structure and is imported in great numbers from India along with buffalo leather. The leather comes from India, is fashioned in factories in China and the products are sent back to Europe and America. “China gives us a good price for our leather than other countries. Most European shoe factories have moved out to China for the cheap labour but the leather still comes from Chennai and Ambur,” says Babu who now plans on coming back to India for good and putting all his experience to good use.

What he earns there is his savings as he is provided meals free at the dormitory (which is actually a luxurious flat). He likes the food but sometimes cooks some Indian food, which the chef there certainly does not rate very high, for himself.

Breakfast can be three boiled eggs and boiled corn, or bun and cakes, or even conjee (that is the Tamil kanji that has been exported to China, probably by the British) that can be very filling (Babu manages to coax the chef to add milk to his kanji). Lunch is rice or noodles along with meat which could be chicken, pork or beef. Different varieties of greens (keerais) are a must with dinner and lunch. “Snake and rats are not part of a regular meal. There are people who eat these meats. The chicken and pork here do not agree with me but I relish the frog meat,” laughs Babu.

S Chitra