For 42-year-old textile engineer Asitabha Purakayastha, a massive heart attack was just the beginning of his woes. A few days later, he suffered heartache of another kind. On April 28, he was diagnosed with SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and his wife refused to have him at home while the hospital workers at Kolkata's AMRI Apollo agitated to discharge him. Purakayastha soon became the pariah of Kolkata. He was not alone.

FIRE FIGHTING: Anti-SARS yagna in Delhi

With victims ranging from a farmer in Punjab to a truck driver in Tamil Nadu, the dreaded new Chinese virus has gone desi with a vengeance. With the number of confirmed SARS cases shooting up to 20, India had one more addition to a long list of diseases. The biggest casualty of SARS, however, seems to be reason. When the second confirmed patient in Kolkata, Radheshyam Gupta, was admitted to the Infectious Diseases Hospital, many of its staff, including doctors, refused to report for duty.

In Pune, the worst hit with 13 confirmed SARS cases, Simon Peter Alhat had to deal with about a hundred frightened neighbours. He along with his 11 family members were quarantined after his nephew Stanley D'Silva was confirmed with the disease two weeks ago. Although the state Government has given Alhat a clean chit of health, his neighbours have not. "We really don't have a choice but to live with them," says a neighbour of Alhat, "but we are angry at the Government for putting us in this position."

The Maharashtra Government swung from one extreme to another. Mumbai's first confirmed SARS patient, Bhaskar Murthy, was discharged from the hospital and even allowed to fly to Delhi before his test results were confirmed. Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj has since announced that designated SARS hospitals should not discharge patients until they got test reports. Authorities in Pune have now quarantined 50 people. In Siddharth Hospital, where D'Silva was treated and nine medical staff have tested positive, fear is palpable. The 21 quarantined patients have no idea which of them is struck. A weary 22-year-old nurse says, "Luckily I am not married. The nurses who have children and family are crying all day."

PATIENT WAIT: Elumalai (right) at the Christian Medical College, Vellore

Fear sometimes borders on the ridiculous. In Delhi, amid traffic fumes, a group of masked sadhus held an anti-SARS yagna to ward off the evil. Add to it the confusion about whether India has SARS at all. After reviewing a high-level meeting on May 1, Swaraj declared that "as on date, India can be called a SARS-free country as none of these cases fall within the purview of the who definition". The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines SARS according to clinical symptoms-fever, bodyache and X-ray showing pneumonia in the lungs-along with whether the patient has visited a SARS country or come close to a SARS patient. None of the Indian victims fits this definition though they have tested positive for the SARS virus in a DNA-based test, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Although who points out that "laboratory test result criteria for confirming or rejecting the diagnosis of SARS remain to be defined", its website has a contradictory statement: "Positive PCR results are specific and mean that there is genetic material of the SARS virus in the sample."

A person of Indian origin has died of SARS in Singapore but most Indian SARS victims appear remarkably resilient, raising theories about Indians being genetically more resistant to the disease. "It could be more acute in certain ethnic groups," says immunologist Narendra Mehra. Many are asymptomatic. Some showed mild symptoms and recovered. None of them have shown pneumonia patches in X-rays. At Vellore's Christian Medical College, Elumalai, 44, Tamil Nadu's first SARS patient, is a picture of normality but for the mask he wears. "I feel good," he says, "but bored and lonely."

If the Government's confused handling of the situation is any indication, Elumalai will find himself with plenty of company.