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Abraham, his wife and six other members of his family are thought to have caught the virus from his youngest son, Moncy Abraham, his wife Remany Moncy and son Rijo, who arrived in Kerala from Italy at the end of February.

About a week after the trio arrived Abraham and Mariyamma, who was suffering a mild fever, both tested positive for the virus and two days later, Abraham fell seriously ill.

The doctors did not want to take any chances so they moved the elderly couple to the more advanced Government Medical College Hospital at Kottayam, 58km away from their home.

Two days later, Abraham suffered a heart attack and was put on ventilator support for a week. During that time, all Abraham could do was think about his wife.

“I was not scared to die but I was scared to leave Mariyamma alone,” Abraham said.

Lying on the hospital bed, Abraham thought of the many deaths he had witnessed in his long life. The first was of his father, when he was just two years old. Much later, he witnessed the death of his 19-year-old son – his first child – who was suffering from liver cancer.

“But I never gave up hope,” he said.

Instead, he relied on the same “strong willpower” that had helped him recover from every other crisis in his life. “Even this time, I realised that I cannot give up so easily, so I fought back,” he said.

Being a coronavirus patient, he was not allowed to meet members of his family, even after he was taken off the ventilator. For a while, he felt restless because he could not see his wife, who was initially admitted to a different ward. “My wife used to ask the nurses about me – if I had tea or meals or the medicines on time. And I used to keep a check on her through them,” he said.

“Later, the doctors and nurses realised that it was better to keep both of us in the same room than answer our questions. So they moved us to the same ICU,”Abraham said, laughing.

As soon as they had their adjacent beds, they held each other’s hand.

Abraham said the hospital staff took good care of them and won their hearts. He wants to thank them personally once the lockdown is over.

The experience changed his perception about government hospitals in Kerala. “I never knew that our government hospital staffers are so efficient. This experience was an eye-opener for me at the age of 93.”

Abraham had been admitted to hospital only once before, about six months ago when he was found to have cirrhosis.

A teetotaller and non-smoker, Abraham said he had never had any other medical complications.

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Both Abraham and Mariyamma returned home on April 3 after testing negative twice.

They have since returned to their old routine. He gets up at 5am and makes black coffee for himself and Mariyamma and the pair listen to Malayalam music together. They eat simple food – rice, tapioca, fish curry and jackfruit.

Later in the morning, sitting in an armchair on the balcony of his one-storey house, Abraham listens to his youngest grandson Rijo, 26, a radiologist in Italy, read regional Malayalam newspapers to him. He hopes to attend Rijo’s wedding next year.

He has another wish: He wants to celebrate his 100th birthday with Mariyamma by his side. “If the two of us could recover from this disease at this age, we could have a few more innings together,”Abraham said.

He pointed out he was 19, and Mariyamma 14, when they married in 1947, and they have been together ever since. “The way both of us fought the coronavirus together, it reminded us that we are inseparable parts of each other,” he said. ■