Kavita Awaasthi (HINDUSTAN TIMES; March 22, 2020)

After a trip to Florence, Italy, last month, Juhi Chawla and her family flew to Austria, earlier this month, as her daughter, wanted to spend her spring break skiing. Right before they decided, Chawla asked her family if they should be travelling as many cases of Covid-19 (Coronavirus) were reported around the world. “But everyone insisted, so we landed in Zurich, Switzerland, on March 12,” she shares.

“After reaching Austria and skiing for a day, we learnt that Austria will be shutting the resorts by March 16 as they found a few people infected in the country. Meanwhile, some of Jay’s (Jay Mehta, Juhi’s husband) other friends joined us, so we decided to stay for two days and then leave. But the next day, while we were on the mountain, we heard that the resort would close that very day and if we don’t leave, we would be stuck there. So, we packed and left for Zurich as we couldn’t get any flights to London (UK),” says the actor.

They stayed the night in Zurich, flew to London the next day and hoped to stay there for a while. But a day later, they heard that India would be closing its borders too, so they had to either leave the UK in two days or stay there till March 31, when the situation would be reviewed.

Chawla says, “Once again, we were panicking as I am the only Indian national and the rest of my family has OCI (Overseas Citizenship of India) cards. I have never seen this kind of scenario, where whichever country we left was shutting its borders. The last seven-eight days of my life have been crazy. We were just running from one place to the next. In the UK, we applied for visas to be fast tracked and the officials were kind and helpful. There were other family members and friends, too, who needed to get back to India. On the flight, we filled a form giving out details of the places we had travelled to in the past month. At the Mumbai airport, officials checked every form and as we had been to Europe, stamped us - Home Quarantine!”

They were later whisked off to a doctor, who explained to a group of similarly stamped people, how to conduct themselves at home over the next fortnight. Chawla is thankful they managed to return to India on time as things are serious back home.

Praising the government’s efforts to tackle this outbreak, she says, “What was clear was that our government is trying hard to help everyone and protect us as far as possible. Huge respect for all the officials on duty.”