The Uber driver evicted from home and left to die of coronavirus
Rajesh Jayaseelan found himself homeless and sick in London with Covid-19. His widow tells his story.
www.bbc.co.uk
The last time Mary Jayaseelan spoke to her husband Rajesh, he was about to be hooked up to a ventilator in a Covid ward.
Rajesh was being treated in Northwick Park Hospital in London, the city where he worked as an Uber driver for most of the year. Mary was 5,000 miles away in their family home in Bangalore, India, with their two young sons. Until that point he had repeatedly told her he would be fine, that he was feeling ill but she was not to worry, he'd get better - at 44 years old, he was young and otherwise healthy.
But on that call, he broke down and admitted: "Mary, I'm feeling a bit scared."
Rajesh Jayaseelan died the following day.
Rajesh and Mary got married on 24 February 2014, and rented a home in Hulimavu, south Bangalore, that they shared with his 66-year-old mum. For most of the year, Rajesh rented a room in Harrow, north London and drove an Uber vehicle in the city. He'd work from late in the evening to the early hours of the morning - the busy hours - so he could save enough money to spend a few months with his family in India.
He enjoyed working as a driver, although he didn't realise that his precarious gig economy job would leave him vulnerable in the global health crisis that would later emerge.
"He'd been living in London on-and-off for 22 years, and would come back to India for a few months at a time," Mary says. "He loved London. He always used to talk to me about how beautiful London was, and so clean. I've never been to London, so he would describe it to me."
Although the virus had reached Britain, at this point Rajesh wasn't too worried. Shops and restaurants were still open, people were still going into work and then going out. For everyone, including Uber drivers, it was business as usual, and not much changed for another month.
Then March came around, and the virus was passing from person to person within the UK. The number of cases - and, by now, deaths - was increasing every day. People were told to self-isolate for seven days if they had any symptoms - even mild ones, such as a fever or a persistent cough.
On 23 March, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown lasting an initial three weeks, meaning that most businesses would close, and people would only be allowed outside for one form of exercise a day and for essential trips to the shops, unless they were considered "essential" workers.
Like many Uber drivers, Rajesh continued to work at first, but he quickly developed flu-like symptoms and had to stop. His last job was on 25 March - a drop-off at Heathrow Airport.
His symptoms became much worse, and he was admitted to the hospital with dehydration. While there, he was tested for the coronavirus.
It came back positive.
Staff told Rajesh to go home, self-isolate, and to come back if his symptoms got worse. He did as he was told, and went home to his room. But things were about to get even worse.
"The landlord sent Rajesh out of the house for something, and when he came back the landlord had changed the locks, so he couldn't get in," Mary says. "He tried knocking on the door and asking the landlord to speak to him, but he wouldn't open the door."
His landlord didn't know about his positive diagnosis - but he told him that, as an Uber driver, he might bring the coronavirus back into the house, and that it wasn't a risk he was willing to take.
With nowhere else to turn, Rajesh was forced to sleep in his car for several nights.
"He had no food in there, nothing to eat at all," Mary says.
At this point he called his friend Sunil for advice.
"That was the last call he made to me," Sunil says. "He didn't go into details about what was happening to him, but because I work in the NHS, he was asking me questions like 'How safe are we', 'Is it better to go to India'… things like that. He was asking me if I knew any routes, if there was any possible way he could go - he wanted to go to India and be with his family. But by that time there was a complete lockdown in India too."
Sunil told him the best thing to do would be to stay at home, not to work, and to look into the financial support for self-employed workers the government had just announced, or the 14 days' assistance offered by Uber.
Rajesh agreed, and explained he needed to find a new place to live because his landlord said he was high risk. But, Sunil says, he didn't say that he'd already been kicked out: "He may have been embarrassed."
Rajesh then went back to trying to call his landlord to plead with him to let him stay. There was no answer.
After days of searching, he eventually found another room in a shared house in Harrow. The new landlord made him pay £4,000 upfront - money he didn't have, and Mary says he had to borrow.
Once Rajesh was back indoors, he didn't want to risk being evicted again. He hid himself away and avoided contact with his new landlord and all the other tenants, not even daring to try and cook a meal for himself. His health became worse with every passing day. The only social interaction he had were daily phone calls with his wife, where he would alternate between reassuring her that he would be fine, and crying.
It was during one of these calls that Mary noticed he was struggling to breathe.
"He was wheezing a lot in that room, and every day it was getting worse," she says. "One night I told him to go to the hospital. He didn't want to call an ambulance because he didn't want others there to know he was ill, in case he was evicted again."
Rajesh drove himself to the hospital, despite being severely out of breath. When he got there he was diagnosed with pneumonia.
"The next morning he called me from the hospital for a video call - but when the children saw him they started crying because of how ill he was," Mary says. "He turned off his video, and told me he didn't want them to remember him looking so unwell." They would speak only a few more times.
On 11 April, the doctors caring for Rajesh called Mary and explained that he was in a critical state, and they didn't think his condition would improve. They arranged a video call for her and the children to see him one final time; he was unconscious. He died two hours later.
