Covid-19: The Reawakening

1pm EDT : 
 

My mom on phone : How is the current situation in Toronto?

Me : Not bad. Longo’s is still open and the husband was smart enough to stock up extra hand sanitizers prior to the outbreak. In short, we can’t complaint. 

After wishing a peaceful night to my mom in India, I happen to stumble upon a mutual contact on my Instagram who had been following me for last couple of years. Somehow not by intention, but the follower went unheeded. It is only now that I followed him back, I nearly jumped out of my skin. This takes me back to my India or to be precise, Mumbai and airline days when an old acquaintance of mine was a struggling model, and an aspiring actor in Bollywood. He later was associated and friends with many top model turned actors from the industry. It so happened that the husband and I also watched one of his movies recently on Netflix where he played a second lead only to our findings in a week’s time that he is dead now. Though I never followed or worshiped this actor, he was a familiar face and extremely lovable for his remarkable fitness and dancing skills more than his acting potential. He had put an end to his life back in December, 2019, which was all over my news feed yet I failed to notice it. Not that I knew him closely or personally, but the whole idea of a life being erased from a common circle of people is painful. And what makes it more shocking – his demise wasn’t owing to a tragic accident or some prolonged ill health but suicidal. To infer, the average human life is relatively short. The most jovial and smiling heart could be fighting the deepest and darkest personal battle behind closed doors and the world might not even have inkling. Despite this extended isolation and the subsequent boredom that might be distressing a lot of us, life haven’t come to a pause for many as opposed to the countless lives lost due to this deadly disease. And this is what it took to realize that we have yet another day to wake up to.

The camera of my mind is cut to the fading sun towering above the skyscrapers of an unusually quiet downtown Toronto while I stand still at the railing of my balcony. The next thing that my eyes catch the sight of is this high-rise opposite to us which were still under construction when I left the city last year for my India visit. When I returned, just in time for my birthday this March and we weren’t still anticipating the prolonged lockdown, it was ready to go. The structure was right there for last two years, growing little by little like a baby, but I never really had a chance to stop by and observe how startlingly brand new it looked. It was mesmerizing to see that it stood tall amidst all the chaos but somehow escaped my eyes until the endless roars of the stadiums were disrupted. How the bustling train stations on a Monday morning, the crowded concerts every week, the packed pubs on a Friday night and life in itself had to come to a halt in order for us to spot these tiny details. 

5:00pm EDT:

Lying in a bed of incertitude I am penning a note to myself: this lull phase is neither a curse, nor the echo of a conquering pestilence, but the whispering of a greater force. This agony is a reminder of the cosmic prowess that has made the mighty kneel down and we are just pygmies If we are to evade this truth. It’s time to loosen the threads of our latent insecurities, prejudices and avarice. It’s time to fall in with the rebirth that has never been easy but is happening now. It’s time to acknowledge this global health crisis and what is actually in our control. It is to surrender between this panic and trust. It is to accept this imposed breakaway from the old “normality” and the indirect and positive consequences that this catastrophe could usher in. It is solely our vulnerability as well as our fortified inclinations that will decide how quickly we could shift to a safer ground. And when we do, what are we going to do with a renewed life and a newborn world? 

Sometimes this silence baffles me. Watching and learning through my formative years how the relationship between mankind and nature is always unyielding, I have often craved social distancing in an overpopulated world. There have been times when I have desperately looked for ways to hide and only be available for my family and close friends. Now that we are all making an effort to listen to how the world sounds without music, festivals and choirs, we have become more sensitive, more circumspective and more human than ever before. Nothing has changed, other than an invitation coming along our doorstep urging to heal, to breathe, to ask questions and most importantly, to be responsible. 

Feels like it’s been ages I checked with the pregnant girl at my nail salon and her exceptionally caring mother in law who would make her delicious “Nachni Laddoos” (Red Millet Jaggery Balls). How I wish I had the girl’s personal number to ask when is she due and how’s she coping with all this. The trauma and anxiety that a new mother must be going through during this quarantine is unimaginable. The fact sheet tells, during March 22 and April 4, hospitals in New York have screened more than two hundred expectant women for the virus and 15% of them tested positive for COVID-19. 

8:00pm EDT:

Dinner is done, trying to be productive and have my computer spring cleaned. Time to go through unnecessary files. Good old memories popped up and a sudden thought to check on an old domestic help who made my maidenhood life easy. Sometimes when I do my “bartan” (dishes) now, I miss this chatterbox and how she would slip into her sob story and leave the tap running. Ever since the lock-downs were announced across different parts of the world, the domestic abuse reports have also rapidly shot up. “Roopa” bai was no exception but just another victim to such insane and “intimate terrorism”. Every time I tell my husband how tranquil our floor at 3am on a Sunday morning has turned into, the other side of the world must be making it unbearable for Roopa to keep her body and soul together. Envision the howling of her drunkard husband followed by the helpless wailing of my old familiar face that would show up every morning all smiles with a big red bindi on her forehead. Why haven’t I thought of her all these years? Why is this yearning to protect the defenseless now when all I can do is only pray? Thanks to Vonage and Face time on my cellular device that allows a virtual travel across oceans. Thanks to life for granting some time for extra “thanks-for-calling”s and “I-love-you”s from those who are at the highest risk for getting affected by this pandemic. Sometimes, as human as we could be, with all our idiosyncrasies, we get caught up in our own minds and refuse to take note of any signs – big or small, showing us that we are one step closer to something better. 

Social media is like a bazaar full of buffoons. It can lambaste bigwigs such as our honorable screaming carrot demon for an entirely derelict nation under his (mis)governing. But it can also portray life through a commoner’s diary with colorful jokes and memes for a good measure of laugh. One such hilarious representation that is making a hit off late is the miseries of dating couples under the lock down. As a matter of fact, significant number of weddings and engagements have been called off or postponed. The uncertainty of “when are we meeting” is unfathomable. It is not so easy to empathize with someone craving for a touch or missing how they briefly made love in the kitchen when everyone was brought to their feet as the Raptor won NBA. Simply because your situation is starkly contrasting, possibly better or worse because you might be either expressing gratitude for having your husband/wife and partner confined with you beneath the same roof or you might be hysterically choosing the bathroom as the only bolt for freedom where you could use your phone for once without being surveiled. 

I made up my mind last week to consider this as our midyear holiday. I know the husband most likely thinks I’ve gone bananas, but don’t the visits from one room to another with a bunch of chores outlined for the day make it a full circle of a Las Vegas trip? Cooking with what are available sounds just fine but it never hurts to decorate the inside of the fridge literally like a tropical bar, and voila! I can bend the day to my desire reading, writing, binging on “Paranormal Survivor’ and sipping on that Strawberry Mojito. God bless all those mamas and papas running laps around the house catching up with too many adventures of Winnie the Pooh! 

11pm EDT: 

My elder aunt has a strangely sweet and humorous tune playing when I try to reach her. Even her phone services are now alarmed with the enormity of this world wide disaster. It never misses to remind you to wash your hands, wear a mask and maintain physical distancing. As she wishes me on a Bengali New Year’s eve, she’s like “It’s strange how we are embarking on another year my dear, and this change has offered us so much to contemplate.” 

I can’t believe how apt those words were. In last four weeks’ self isolation, my inner self has been more contented than I felt in months. The feeling is pretty surreal when you can remain low key and constantly connect with the voices inside your head. Through my prayers and my meditations I have been etching out my own silhouette and meeting my alter ego every day. Why have I never ever tried discerning the profound helplessness of caged animals in the zoo? Why haven’t I witnessed how promptly the Mother Earth is capable of regenerating when the collective human interference seizes? Oh heck, I missed so much, including the revelation of how incredible my other half is with his baking techniques. At least my occasional dark chocolate cravings can now be looked after. The vegan way of course!