It was too dark along the path, the trees blocked
the scant remains of daylight. I trembled with fear. There were bushes,
anthuriums and hues of green, all drowned in the thicket of black. There were
sounds too. Rustles and loud swishes. And the sounds between the thicket grew
louder and louder. It was like someone standing with their heavy feet not ready
to move, deeply digging their feet into the ground. I know someone was close.
Much powerful. I picked up my pace but faltered after 3 steps. With the wobbly
knees, I got up and sprinted. Not only me. Everyone hotfooted. Yet it’s shadows
wouldn’t leave us. It is not going to leave any of us I deciphered. Like a
hound, it will track down with our scent and attack us. One at a time. No. It
is not that soft. It will take lives in mass. And it will become hard to
breathe. Some will lose themselves, finding impossible to see what lies ahead. And
for some, the suffocating isolation will break their last straw. What will
happen in isolation! What will happen if isolation bang doors of each of us!
Too dreadful to think. Everything felt like a sinister call.
The clock chimes. Its only 7 am. I wake up with
a start. With a blur of my dream that I saw last night. Not a dream but a
nightmare. And it thwarts my attempt to sleep anymore. I switch on the
television, consigning the nightmarish thoughts of the night to the back of my
mind. Ignoring the loud ringing of a telephone in the drawing room, my eyes
remain glued to channel 152 on my TV. News flash. Novel Covid – 19 claims 16
lives in India. Grazing my forehead, I certainly become aware. The powerful
creature that I saw in my nightmare was none other than this deadly virus.
10 days hence. PM declares lockdown for 21
days.
In a matter of few days into the 21 day
lockdown, life changes. Dramatically. A new perspective emerges. Reflections of
life become vivid.
Life in this 21 day lockdown post the breakout
of global crisis called Corona has placed us in a parallel universe where we
are left to our own devices, with our smartphones! Literally to run our
four-walled life. Even before the crisis, the phones controlled our life but
this is different. Different because its an only source of communication amidst
the chaos that is running deep. The source which acts as a machinery to book
vegetables and groceries online, send unlimited forwards and dig deeper by
reading the reports and statistics from various data agencies give a peep into
a life, far and beyond the doors and windows of our mainstay. The gravity of
situation dilutes with the forwards, memes and jokes that are in bad taste,
often leaving us overwhelmed and with a spinning headache. There are lives in
danger and the families whose loved ones are kept in isolation units have lost
connection with each other. The grim situation continues to haunt us yet there seems
to be no socket of cure to plug our hope.
Amidst all this chaos, there is also a universe
that co-exist and thrive. If PM orders us to stay indoors else, we will go back
21 years, he clearly did not seem to know that people actually have stepped
back much more than 21 years in this lockdown phase. The family time is back
with exchange of new thoughts and ideas.
The video call has more than 2 members
joining in and giving the conference a new light. College friends suddenly try
to come up with a convenient time to con call even though all are spread across
the world living in different time zones. Leading to a celebration of a virtual
reunion.Tea time spent with kids and partners replace cubicle gossips and
watercooler conversations.
Kids. Oh, kids are the stars of the present. They
have designed their world according to their parents’ zoom calls and kitchen
demands. The garden time is replaced with gardening and watering the plants,
diving into a world of books, and ably assisting mothers in making chappatis
using a rolling pin. Playtime gets extended with grandpa and grandma joining in
to play lego and decorate the doll houses.
Board games are back and counting is
taught to preschoolers using ancient mancala. The mothers’ of ICSE and CBSE
kids whose subconscious ached and longed to introduce their kids to Montessori chose
to live their dream by homeschooling and getting their kids do household chores
in the name of Montessori curriculum. Gone are the days when it felt annoying
to see the knick-knacks from the toy basket hidden in some inaccessible place.
Now, the rules are relaxed and the tempers don’t fray even if parents stumble
upon a toy car when they pass from one room to another.
Distant cousins call up
and hit the nostalgia button, sharing anecdotes of the times lived together and
of those times without. The recipes are shared via chat groups and visage of
what’s cooking in the kitchen takes precedence over others. If social
distancing is the buzz word outside one’s roof, love blossoms and bonding
develops under one’s roof. This is the parallel universe we wanted to see and
experience.
If the
dead rivers and the seas get a chance to take birth again, to breathe and the
birds get to chirp and sing their morning glory, even our feelings which were
dead are reborn in the middle of these 21 days, pushing our hearts to chirp
again. Somewhere we have found our lost baggage from the carousel of life. The
baggage consisting of feelings, humanity and unconditional love towards our
family and our neighborhood. And when this lockdown period is over, I hope we
march ahead with this heavy baggage. May the items in this baggage guide us in
our future and every walk of our life. I am pinning my hopes in the mankind.
May the hope shine.
(This is a record of the podcast for Spinayarnindia where storytellers were asked to narrate their message of hope)
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