actress soundarya jayamala is currently pursuing her bsc in zoology at swansea university in wales she was on her way back to india when the covid19 pandemic caused the country to close its borders forced to return to the uk and now living away from home soundarya spoke to us about the experience so far excerptswhat was it like when the pandemic started spreading in the ukwe heard about the coronavirus but were not afraid initially by midfebruary social media started buzzing with news about this global pandemic and we heard that one of our professors was a victim of the virus till this point we were not informed by the uk government about the severity of the situation and people were still moving about they had stopped testing sick people and nhs was only advising us to selfisolate and take paracetamol if we had any symptoms when panic struck people had emptied shelves to a point where we could not find even basic grains in supermarketstell us about the ordeal of trying to get back homei planned to get home to be with my family while flights were still available bur universities took a lot of time to adapt and bring in fair assessments to our degree scheme we were concerned about not being able to return for our exams but things got worse and we were informed on march 21 that on march 22 india would close its borders we got a green signal to leave the uk on the last flight out to bengaluru via dubai but upon arrival at dubai we were told that after we took off from london india put students particularly from the uk on the nofly list the airlines couldnt help us and return tickets were priced extremely high we decided to wait for the embassy to rescue us we had on masks and gloves but there was no social distancing decorum people were lining up almost next to each other the airport was like a refuge as there were hundreds of people whose flights were cancelled that day they were sleeping on the floor all over the airport and the seats were all taken we were sleepless for over 24 hours and at 8 am the embassy came to our rescue and put us on a flight back to london that evening i then travelled back to swansea on a fivehour train and have been in selfisolation since what is the situation in swansea nowmy best friend a kuwaiti national whose borders are also shut is helping me with food and supplies now the panic buying has stopped and we are getting essentials delivered people are obeying the rules and staying inwe students have a whatsapp group where we check up on each other none of us is showing symptoms and feel blessed that we were able to reenter london at leasthow is your mother copingmy mother like many other parents was in a state of panic and fear she appealed