Week 29

 I think I skipped a couple of weeks as the weekly blog update moved from the end of the week, to the start of next week, to the end of the next week.

No, I counted again and somehow the numbering is correct. A small detail in a world where infection numbers have gone beyond counting. The official number of people who have died because of the virus has crossed a million. The unofficial numbers, the number of those who are sick, the number of those who have lost loved ones, the ones who have lost jobs or homes or just everything are all numbers beyond counting.

Why? Because this is the way nature works. This has happened a hundred years before too. Evidently all our inventions and technologies and communication tools were not enough.

We may find a way out in a few months (or years). Or the weeks would continue to grow more and more difficult for more and more people. Or maybe, like it did a hundred years ago, the virus may grow weaker and nature may give us another chance. Or maybe, the way the world is moving, we would end up self-annihilating and there would be no on left for the virus to infect.

I keep trying to think optimistically and this is what I come up with!

Let’s settle for realism instead.

So taking into consideration all the predictive modelling, I have been trying my best to let go off the old normal and make my peace with the new one.

Decided to outsource chapatis as the first step of acceptance. Have worked out a contactless delivery and payment model. The next on the list-a dish washer? No, my survey says that’s still too much work. An Instant Pot? No, you still need to do all the planning and cutting and chopping and prepping for 21 meals in a week. An extra pair of hands? A magic wand? 

We need something more than realism here!

Week 28

The official count is 55L infections. We had been so terrified when we were about to touch 500! The country was in lockdown and all those who could, stayed at home.

We took on as a challenge. Asked the maids to stay away. We told ourselves we could do this for our safety, for our family, for the nation. We cooked like never before and competed on social media to prove it. Those who couldn't, posted about the bottles they painted, the flowers they grew, the books they read and every Netflix series they binged on. That flood of posts has dwindled to a trickle now. Everyone is tired now.

Nobody thought this would last so long. Three weeks was fine as a challenge and then maybe a couple more. But six months on and now we are resigned to months or maybe a couple of years. Most people have called back their maids while many are making do with ready-to-eat stuff or dal-chawal. How long can you keep your MasterChef cape on? Especially when you have to focus on keeping the mask handy, and the face shield and the sanitizer too.

I am tired too. Very tired. Of waiting for some good news (stopped myself from using the word positive that's the scariest word now). Tired of food-talk, cooking, cleaning and well- of not knowing.

I am anxious too. About the whole uncertainty of when this will be over. What happens if we need to travel for work again? What's going to happen to the school term? To college admissions? When would be able to travel safely again? To meet friends and family with the scare of exchanging viruses? To go out for a movie or a meal without feeling apprehensive? To get the house help back-safely?

Of course, I am grateful too. Of the fact that the family could get together before the travel restrictions. That we are together for so long after so many years. That we are learning so much together. And that we have been able to stay safe.

This is after 6 months of staying at home. Wonder what would I be writing after another 6 months?

Week 27

I didn't write the weekly update on the weekend as I was coping with physical and mental exhaustion. Stress playing havoc with my cycles or perhaps it was the other way round.

I had to speak to a doctor.

Do you have extreme mood swings, get irritated over small things? The doctor asked.

Was she mad?

I have been cooking 3 meals a day for 4 people, every day, for the last 6 months. That with an ever increasing workload at office, blurring office and home timings, no cook, no househelp and then there are grumbles about food!

Irritated?

Maybe it was diplomacy or just empathy. She didn't probe any more about my moods.

I checked with the family too.

Irritation? Did they too think I was heading towards early menopause?

A long silence and meaningful looks later, the younger one cleared her throat. Not at all, Mom. You were always like this.

Nothing to do with the lockdown!

Into that heaven of normalcy

I wrote this in response to a 100 word Parody challenge on Momspresso, but it's actually a heartfelt prayer.

Where the mind is without fear,

 of a virus lurking around,

Where breath is free

and masks no longer abound;

Where we can travel and greet,

friends and strangers without fear;

Where we no longer reason over

how to sanitize the sanitizer;

Where we get breaks from dreary routine,

the house help comes every day,

Where we can step out of domestic walls,

and children go out to play;

Where a cough or sniffle does not

set alarm bells ringing;

Where being positive is

again a good thing;

Into that heaven of old normalcy,

my Father, let the world awake.

Image by Quang Le from Pixabay

Week 26

 Yes, another week to be thankful for.

Another week when ripples came closer, but we were safe and sound.

We had other challenges-cabin fever from the sense of being in house arrest, grumbles, and sulks. And we pulled along too. We were all so busy through the week and so tired at the end of it, that some of the quibbles got sorted out because didn’t have the energy or time to fight them out.

Good old hard work in the form of work from home, college assignments, school tests and no house help, does more for family peace than lofty words.

News came of my aunt who is very sick. I don’t know if I will get to meet her again. That is what this situation has done. Torn apart all sense of control, of predictability, of reaching those who are far away. It is a challenge to stay thankful as all the life we’ve known for all our lives is being altered beyond recognition. And all we can do keep up with the challenge, is to keeping learning, keep adapting, keep growing. No wonder we are tired.

India has reached the 2nd spot in the world tally, with no signs of giving up on the race. A feeling of inevitability permeates the society and it’s a tough challenge to stay safe and sane. Quite a few are giving up on the safety in the effort to stay sane. I’ve given up on sanity even before this began, so thankfully that’s one less challenge for me to face.

The new week has rolled in. Our tasks continue.

So do the prayers and the hope that the healing will start soon.

 

 

 

 

 

What I Wished For

I was one of the early proponents of flexible working hours/working from home, a decade and a half before 2020 coerced the whole world into accepting the norm-ready or not.

This was what I had been arguing for over the years. We shouldn’t be wasting so many hours commuting through the dreadful traffic. We could save so much of our productive time, energy and money. The environment could be saved from so many toxic fumes. The company could save on the real-estate cost.

While the whole world stood to gain, women trying to manage the home and jobs together, stood to gain the most. 

At home, I could do tasks in parallel. Run the washing machine while I reviewed a document. I did not have to settle for a maid who could come before 7:00 AM or schedule deliveries only over weekends. I would know what the kids were up to. And use the time I would have otherwise spent on commuting, in walking, chatting with friends, taking breaks. My life would be so much more convenient. 

Or so I thought.

Facts, I didn’t account for:

• Since I was working from home, and I was at home all the time, the corporate equation implied I could work all the time. And that took care of all the time I saved from commuting and some more.
• The convenient timings for the maid and cook ceased to be relevant when we had to ask them to stop coming altogether.
• The clothes would need to be dried after the washing machine completed its run. By that time work would have piled up higher than the clothes pile.
• The doorbell and the pressure cooker would follow Murphy’s law of ringing/whistling right when I had to unmute myself on client calls.
• With the whole family working from home, there would be always someone who would be hungry in between meals.
• For breaks, I would have to make my own coffee and clean the coffee maker too.

And a dozen other realities that are popping up everyday to remind me that I should have been very careful while wishing for this!

Week 25: InVerse

 

This week too was like the ones before.

The caseload increased even more.

With no controls in place and no cure;

there are no facts to reassure.

People are braver than ever before,

Since for safety they cannot be sure;

they have decided to just ignore,

the danger till it abates on it’s own.

They are hungry, tired or plain bored.

They’ve gone back to lives as before

The governments can’t control anymore

So it’s each onto their own,

To do what they can to ensure,

Safety for themselves and their home.

And to hold on to prayers and hope.

We Are The World

 

A nostalgia video was doing rounds on WhatsApp showing the snippets of the original album, along with current images of the singers.

My daughters peeped in.

Oh, I know Michael Jackson!

Hmmm, I’ve heard this name too.

Oh! So this what Bruce Springsteen looked like!

And then the questions:

Wait, what are they singing about? 

Is this about 9-11? 

1980s…. was there a pandemic then also?

They were singing about making a brighter world in the 80s and then we went on further with the climate mess to generate more famines and floods, and then came global terrorism, and then the current pandemic.

Damn. What would they sing about the world today?

Week 24

 I almost didn’t write this post.

What is the point? Of recording yet another week of just the same. Logged in each morning for office, logged out by evening and headed to the kitchen, and then did the grocery and cleaning and yet more cooking on the weekend.

This is not what one writes about. We write about adventures and highs and sometimes about the lows. We write about change, about the new. And this week was the same old. We remained at home, the virus graphs remained the same, we had the same arguments, the same discussions and it ended the same way.

But maybe that is a wonderful thing. Not having to not deal with new changes on top of everything else. Staying at home and doing the same thing may not be much to write about but it is such a blessing too, to be together and to be safe.

Let’s see what the weeks ahead are like. And hope and pray for the best.

Across the Bridge: InVerse

I long so much to go, across that bridge.

I can’t see much, because of the mist,

But I know it has to be better than this.

A world of peace, love and bliss.

Freedom from the struggle here,

full of hatred, stress and fear.

The sun dips low into the gloom

I leave as darkness begins to loom,

A new day begins on that shore.

I start walking, with new hope.

Dawn breaks and the mist drifts apart,

I look ahead, leaving behind the past.

I see another woman, beyond the stream,

Walking across, with the very same dream.

Crocheting Words: InVerse

 

Early this month, I had to send a dozen Rakhis. Usually this is a mini shopping-expedition for me. But this time I didn't want to step out.Thanks to YouTube and lots of left over yarn I managed to crochet some decent Rakhis in tiny pockets of time. 

That made me attempt the same thing with words-writing in the small pockets of time I can sneak out with just a hundred words to go. That’s all I can do to keep alive my favourite song, given the reality.

I too have a dream, a fantasy;

It gets stolen by reality.

It is that which takes control,

As I try to manage the home,

To juggle with office meetings

And all the tasks in between.

To struggle with family time,

And get a bit that’s mine.

I work harder, the dream I stall.

But still fail to do it all

Fatigue then begins to creep,

and I can’t help falling asleep.

The dream is cancelled for today

But I will get back to it one day

That’s a promise, or perhaps a fantasy.

For now, I cope with reality.

Week 23

I remember the childhood experience of watching a flood in Kolkata. The street had become a river. A man with a boat would come with essential supplies. My grandmother would negotiate from the balcony, a bag tied to a rope would go down with the requisite cash and come up with the bread, eggs and other miscellaneous stuff. It was pretty exciting for us.

We were safe on the first floor but the grown-ups would still look down and frown. The water level was still rising! It must have entered the garage. Another hour of rain and it will flood the car’s engine. There would be lots of hypothesis and predictions about how much damage it would have been caused, when the water would start receding, what the government should be doing and when would life get back to normal?

I don’t remember but I’m sure my mother and aunts would have stretched to keep the house running ‘as usual’ even though supplies were limited and unpredictable, the maids had no way of coming and the waters were still rising.

I am the grown-up now.

The house is running as usual but outside the numbers are still rising ominously and we have no idea when it will end.

When the virus scare started, I was just thankful that everyone had reached home safely. I was excited about having the family together and not having to commute to office everyday. Not having help for cooking and cleaning would be tough, but between the four of us that was one inconvenience we could manage.

None of that has changed.
Just that excitement is changing into exhaustion with each passing day. The adventure has become blasé and the newness has become routine.

From trying new recipes and competing on social media, it is becoming a task to even think about what to cook for the next meal. Is it just because I am missing my house-help so much? Partly, yes. Office work has scaled considerably as everyone has adapted to the work-from-routine. Now we are expected to be online all the time since we are working from home and we are at home all the time. Trust the corporate world to twist the logic every single time.

The kids’ school and college have adapted to working online-and they are inundated with online classes, assignments and of course the miscellaneous things that take up your time when you have access to your own laptop and Wi-Fi.

So the time for housework and the interest level have dipped considerably. The amount of work remains stubbornly unchanged and each week I end up feeling more tired than the previous week. And hope that the next week will come with some good news.

 

Week 22

 It’s been 21 weeks since we stopped going out to work and the girls came back from school and college. I counted today to track the time as another week got over and yet another began.

When it all started we though we’ll be back in a few weeks, a month or maybe two. Now we have no clue.

The statistics continue to grow. The government has exhausted it’s resource, the people have lost their patience and the pressure seems to keep growing work-wise, household-wise. And as we crib about these on video call with far-away friends and family, the horrors keep unfolding across the globe.

Lebanon is covered in mounds of ashes and scars in the aftermath of a horrifying blast. A plane bringing home stranded Indians crashed in Kerala the day before killing a dozen. The rest of the state is pulling bodies out of landslide wrecks. Assam and coastal Karnataka are flooded and so are large parts of China. And in the months before we saw two cyclones, an almost-war situation in Ladakh and devastating locust attack which wiped out hundred thousand acres of crops.

Is the world coming to an end? Yeah, maybe someday. But this, a lot of us may survive. And then they will look back and tell the stories.

How will my family remember this spell? At the time when they all had to live with their mother’s paranoia, when the neighbourhood kids were yelling and playing, all their mom did was procure a cycle and get it furnished. When all their friends were chilling, their mom got them to help with the cooking and cleaning as theirs was only one of the few flats now calling maids or cooks or ordering takeaways.

I probably am overdoing the safety bit, and that still may not be enough. And the other may have more fun and still remain safe. Things may look very different when we look back and I would probably look like the paranoid hypermom.

But then, looking around, looking ahead, this is who I am, and this is what I’ll have to continue doing. TIll the world starts to heal. And we have no idea when that will happen. So I have to continue with what I have: hope, and faith, and prayers.

Mother Grinch

“All the flats have maids coming in.” My husband keeps reminding me whenever I moan and groan about the extra housework. It’s for my sake as much as his own that he wants the cooking and cleaning tasks restored back to the paid house-help.

“Let’s decide by next month.” I put off the discussion. The one month became four and more, but the statistics underlying our decision only get worse and we all continue to pitch in with the washing and scrubbing. The girls have responded wonderfully. Sharing the load on all tasks while missing out on their time for ‘chilling’ and not complaining-much.

They miss meeting their friends. Actually meeting and playing with them. Especially since they all continue to play and call them. Their parents believe it is safe because there has been no case within the society-yet.

I pray they are right. And yet I refuse to take the chance.

My elder daughter has made her peace with the situation, more so because she doesn’t have that much inclination to go out and mingle anyway.

But she felt bad for her kid sister.

“All her friends are playing. She is not taking their call because she will have to tell them she can’t come and play. She knows you will not allow her.”

“But she hasn’t even asked me.”

“Yeah because she knows you will say no.”

I feel sad as my younger one insists she is fine. That she knows it is not safe to go out and mingle even when Badminton is the one of things she misses most in the current situation.

Maybe the other parents are right in letting their kids enjoy their childhood, and I am the one who is wrong, worrying too much about the worse-case scenarios. What if it is actually safe and my kids are missing all the fun because of my fears?

But knowing all the risks involved, can I take a chance? What if one of them is a healthy carrier? What if that fun can make my child ill?

I steel my heart and say no. The kid nods in sad understanding.

I feel so sad at her brave acceptance. I wish I could have made her happy. But given the choice between keeping her happy or safe, I had to choose the later.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay  

A Changed World

My daughter and I went out for a drive today.

Actually we took a cycle to a repair shop. A routine task that seemed so much like an adventure. That is what four and half months of living in a tower does to you.

Driving in Bangalore traffic has been my favourite crib for years. I drove a car after four and half months today.

The change was spooking me out!

The car felt strange and wobbly. No, I had not forgotten to drive. One of the tyres had slumped in, bearing the weight of the car that barely moved for weeks. So I had to go and the tyre fixed too. Another human to interact with! That human too wore a mask and moved away as I stepped out to check if there was a puncture. In this altered planet we are all so afraid of each other.

It took some time to get used to, but the change was everywhere. People stood further away from each other. They pulled their masks on when they saw others approaching, they handled cash gingerly, and they were all conscious that the invisible enemy could be lurking anywhere. More than half the shops were closed, the ones that were open, had hardly any customers. This in a locality filled with pubs, cafes and restaurants, where there was sometimes no place to drive, let alone park on a weekend afternoon.

The world had changed so much in a few months.

What had not changed were the roads. Piles of garbage had been dredged out and placed right next to the drains, for the next shower to take them in again. A third of the road remained unusable because of the unfinished surface after the previous digging and the next strip of road was roped in for new digging.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. - Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, around 200 years ago.

The Old Normal

When it will be the old-normal again?

But what really was that?

A world where I was free to meet and hug my friends,

But how often did I do that?

A world I could go wherever I wanted to.

Just when was the last time I did that?

A time I wasn’t so scared of loved ones falling sick or dying.

But wasn’t that always a possibility?

Oh yes, I had a house-help and a cook.

That definitely feels like a necessity.

But, is that really what I am worried about?

I have learnt to cope, so not really.

It’s just the fear that’s new,

And all I need to stop being so scared of it all,

To keep the faith and believe,

This too shall pass,

And the new will become the old again,

As it always has.

 

 Image by Alex Strachan from Pixabay 

Just where is the silver lining?

Since I like reading data from random and not-so random sources, my husband often asks me for a summary of what’s happening. Especially with the coronavirus situation.

Nothing seems to be improving. The cases rises everyday, and there seems to be no respite possible for months ahead.

That must be because we are testing more everyday, he tries to be optimistic.

But in terms of test per population numbers we are far behind and still have the highest numbers.

India is almost at 11 Lakhs! Karnataka’s growth rates are the highest, the mortality percentage is highest and Bangalore is out of doctors and hospital beds, there are queues at the crematoriums.

There must be some positive news somewhere?

That is what I too look for in the numbers everyday, but..

Well number of recoveries are good in Rajasthan…

And most of Europe since to be recovering and going out for picnics on Sundays.

And then from what we know, even the Spanish flu waned in two years even though no one found a cure. And we are done with more than six months…damn how do I find hope with the existing data!

Maybe we need to look beyond the data which shows only doom. Look beyond the fear that this will never go away.

Look for hope that this too shall pass, sooner with modern medicines and breakthroughs that can happen any moment. Hope in human resilience and in nature healing itself. Hope in staying safe through the worst of it. Hope in something changing in the world for the better, once all of it is over.

That is the most optimism I can channel up at the moment.

And gratitude that we were safe today.

Perspective

Yes, I know we are lucky we can decide to stay locked in and indulge in Netflix and trying out YouTube recipes and play games while waiting for the world to return to normal.

We have a lot of blessing to count.

Yet, is it just me, or others too who feel like the pressure of too much forced optimism.

Not discounting my blessing but I do miss a lot of perks of ‘normal’ life.

My maid and cook to begin with.

With the office work increasing as more projects go online and me not wanting to take risks with house-help or get food delivered, there are days I want to throw a tantrum like a toddler, roll on the floor, kick the air and scream.

And then I get a call from our old cook.

This guy had worked for us for a couple of years and now I call him only when the kids are home for vacations. He had a full-time job at a guest house and cooked for a few other families in the neighbourhood. Because the events of 2020 had started unfolding before the vacations, this year, I did not call him to work. I had still been keeping in touch with him.

In early April when we were hoping to win the war in 21 days-he sounded fine. The guest house has closed for visitors. But he and a couple of other staff-members were holed up with sufficient supplies. He was not planning to leave for his native place in coastal Orissa because of the risk of catching infections during travel, and then exposing his family to the risk, in a situation where they didn’t even have a good hospital nearby.

By Mid-May, he sounded worried. The guest house was being reopened. His employer wasn’t taking enough safety measures. His other cooking jobs had dwindled.

Then came Cyclone Amphan. Back home, his family’s fields were destroyed. They would have to write off an entire harvest. He lost his job at the guest house and had to move to a rented accommodation. I offered to help even at the risk of offending his self-respect, but he said he would let me know if he was absolutely unable to survive.

He called to say he had gone back to his native place because he was no able to meet his expenses in Bangalore anymore.

I stopped cribbing about my lot.

Locked Down Conversations

Our life is reflected in our conversations. And the most happen on social media. Especially when you are facing a crisis like no other.

Conversations on the apartment WhatsApp groups which are always a mix of everything from spirituality to politics to outcries over dog poop spotted near the garden, coalesced around the ‘new virus’ in the early days.

Shared concerns consolidated over the lockdown and then with the increasing relaxations began the heated debates on the apartment WhatsApp groups.

The debates continued over what was legal, necessary, required or out of bounds for the management committee’s remit. What emerged were the multiple corona-personalities within a seemingly homogenous group of neighbours.

To begin with, there was a big group which believed in securing everything that could be secured, restricting anything that was non-essential for survival.

The differences emerged with differing perspectives on defining the ‘essential’

If milk could be delivered why not newspapers?

Read your papers online. There are a zillion channels for getting news.

All of those increase screen time. The health hazards are higher.

Higher than a possible corona-outbreak?

WHO has said newspapers are safe. <10 links, 3 infographics, 5 videos>

Why are we discussing this in the official group?

This information is important.

Stop drinking milk. Switch to a plant-based diet. <6 links, 3 infographics, 4 videos>

Why are you over-reacting? < 10 videos from doctors (a couple of dentists too) explaining it was perfectly safe to get the disease and how to treat yourself >

Maids were essential, cooks too and of course food deliveries.

Why not other deliveries then?

Look at the increasing numbers. <20 links>

Stop alarming people.

50 more messages on what should be posted (or not).

In this age of mass-enlightenment via social media, hyper-democracy, shaky political alignments and a desperate economy the government had to give up on trying to make people stay indoors. The RWAs had to give up on not letting people in, and the WhatsApp admins had to well, just give up.

Doesn’t that reflect the whole situation around us?

 

 

And the world was changing

It seemed like I had stepped into a boot camp for soldiers about to set off for war. The stage was set with military precision for the adventurers just back from their travels across rural Maharashtra in public buses and trains.

The kids who came back in just 10 days, landed in a different world surrounded by masks men and women.

Expecting to run off to their ‘houses’ and exchange stories of their adventures with the rest of the school, gobble down the familiar grub in the dining hall and work out the cramps of their long journey with a rowdy game of basketball, they were under arrest. Sequestered in guest houses, they were not allowed to meet anyone else in the school and were allowed one call home.

Like the other parents, I was waiting for the call, excited to hear her news, already practicing the argument to get her home at the earliest.
“The school says you can come home any day after 11^th. Shall I come on 13^th?”
“Can you please come on 11^th?”

The world was changing indeed.

The school, which always welcomed all visitors like family had firmly roped off the entry to restrict visitors to the guest house. Although they had made all arrangements to make us comfortable the unprecedented arrangements that minimalized all contact and ensured that we left as quickly as possible, meant driving back with a sense of disquiet.

I had been to the medical shop yesterday. There had been so many other people there. Wouldn’t the people behind the counters be likely spreaders?

I was afraid to hug my daughter.

What else was going to change?

 

The Early Winds

Early Vacations

Think of any time before 2020. How would these words sound?

It was early March.

The country had a handful of declared cases. There had been no covid related deaths. It was still a disease which had infected a few on their trips abroad. If they were quarantined and treated, the whole scare would go away in weeks. (oops, do I sound like Trump?). Well, that’s what most people thought at that time. We (and definitely the leaders) should have known better. But that’s another story.

I got an email with the subject “Early Vacation Announcement” and jumped in glee!

My younger one was coming home early! I walked out of the work area to make a few excited calls from the office corridor. The logistics were a bit complicated. I had a planned trip to Mumbai just before the pickup date but I wasn’t going to let that dampen my excitement.

Vacations were the only time I had with the girls. I planned menus like project plans. Shopping trips, eating out, movies, trips all had to be condensed within these fleeting time frames.

In the five days before I had to pick up the kid, the world kept changing faster every day.

I started reading every data, every research, every rumour. Fear started dampening my excitement and caution replaced optimism. The day before the trip, there was news of one person testing positive in the office complex 500m from home. I dashed out to buy masks and sterilizers even though all experts in YouTube videos insisted they weren’t necessary.

The virus was here, I would rather be called paranoid than risk my kid falling sick, I was in full hyper-mom mode.

Three and a half months later. I am getting hyper every day.

My Dida's Granddaughter

I loved my grandmother. Like most people do.

But a lot of things she did made no sense to me. She was paranoid about ‘eto’ a word in Bangla for which I could not find the English equivalent. The main concept was that some food items were considered untouchable. Cooked rice, non-vegetarian food being top of the list. You could eat them with relish, but if you happened to touch them you had wash your hands before touching anything else, otherwise all you touch becomes ‘eto’. 

As a kid spilling rice generously over myself at mealtimes, I remember my mother hauling me to the bathroom after meals and hosing me down before I could go into any other room and contaminate toys, books and even bedsheets. 

A newspaper on the breakfast table would be ok only if everyone had bread, butter or jam. An egg on the same table and the paper would end up in the dustbin. 

We cribbed about it, made jokes, protested as teenagers, and looked back at those incidents as fond memories as we grew older.

As for Dida, she ignored our ‘new-gen’ logic, refused to argue about the beliefs of a lifetime and continued to wash her hands between touching onion and the potato, and a hundred other times. At one point her nails had to be bandaged due to fungal infection from constant wetness.

CIRCA 2020

My fingertips feel itchy and my palm feels scaly.

Today was weekly fruit-vegetable-grocery supply day. I am being extra careful ever since known corona virus cases were reported in the city. I have watched a dozen WhatsApp videos on sanitizing stuff from the virus. I have also read the recommendations from CDC and WHO but they have been changing their stance so many times that I refuse to trust them completely. I make my judgement based on good old instinct and mother-sense and a combination of all that I read and watched.

Everything is soaped and washed now-not just my hands. My family tried to help in the first few weeks but I somehow feel that nobody can sanitize things as thoroughly as I would.

They think I am paranoid.

I refuse to argue about this. I continue to soak and scrub and wash every object that comes into the house. Soap, bicarbonate, sunlight, sanitizers-everything I can use, gets used to the maximum.

The newspaper is restricted to the corner sofa-read and stashed away before it gets trashed or hosed down. The family cribs, jokes, sulks and protests. I am not sure if they will ever look back at this time as a fond memory. 

I probably will not. At the end of each ‘supplies’ day, my back hurts, my knees ache, my hands feel scaly and itchy. But I am not giving up.

Because after all these years, I understand my Dida.

Then and Now

 The peak is peaking every day.

The last one month has been a month of ‘highest growth’ so far. Wishing there comes a day when we are not talking of infection numbers but the economy, education, or sports this way.

What started with looking on Worldometers like the display board of Olympics with China at the top and then started looking like the Football World Cup tally, now has the U.S, Brazil and India as the top three. There has been no event like this ever before.

And since there is no logical way for the numbers to come down in the near future, it seems like we are destined for the top in this gory game we never wanted to play.

Nobody is talking about ‘flattening the curve’ anymore, the curve has left lakhs flattened. The governments are now talking about Unlock phases because there are just too many numbers to lock down.

Social media conversation at its most well-meaningfulness has shifted from that country, that state, that city, that containment area, to right here. The WhatsApp forwards about ‘how to prevent’ became ‘how to treat’ and now ‘what to pack if you have to go into quarantine/hospital’ and ‘make your Will’.

All who were tracking the numbers and growth rates with the intensity of checking cricket scores don’t see the point anymore.

The ones who braved the three-week lockdown, and stayed in for another three, are now out in the park, jogging like never before.

Those who argued vociferously on WhatsApp groups to keep the maids and helpers away, 
now have a horde coming in every day.

The virus is here to stay, they now agree.

Que sera sera, whatever will be will be.

We just hope there is a future to see, Que sera sera

 

The Calm before...

Late February

It was vacation planning time for us. We matched calendars to plan the best possible time and then ideated on the destination.

My only requirement was a place where I could just plonk myself in one place and just spend time with family. No hiking, surfing and definitely no cooking and cleaning. The elder one wanted to go to a beach. My husband voted for Cambodia. The younger one didn’t want a long holiday. I wanted to go to Jaipur or Goa. The universe was probably laughing at us.

After much deliberations we realized we could not book any tickets until March end because of various meetings and tuition dates yet to be finalized.  We decided on driving to Coorg.

Last year, by this time I had already blocked 2L in tickets and bookings. Maybe it was the universe nudging us helpfully.

On the last day of February, Jo left for a school trip across Maharashtra.

News started coming in of the virus reaching India.

It was just one or two people to begin with. Then a few of their families. Then the people they visited. Some of them even went across their hometown hugging long-lost friends and family. Some invited their friends and families and neighbours over. The virus spread across the map like an animation in a horror movie.

Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad…Bangalore. Social media provide all the news in graphic detail. The new virus had arrived.

The kids were supposed to reach back on 8^th March, and then have 3 weeks of school before the vacations started. I was ticking off each day with a prayer for them to return to school safely and go back to the normal routine.

They reached a few hours later than expected but everyone was safe and healthy. ‘Normal’ however was going to become our most longed for dream over the next few months.

 

Prologue: The New Normal

In late January, a colleague came down with cold and fever. She was back at work in a few days but the cold turned into a hacking cough and refused to go away.

“Keep sipping hot water” the usual tips and discussions started.

“Take steam”, “Try Homeopathy”, “No, I think you should go to a doctor, you probably need antibiotics”.

“There is this new virus in China...” “Oh don’t scare her, this is just due to our office AC”

Her cough was cured after a course of antibiotics.

The discussion about the ‘new virus from China’ kept intensifying. WhatsApp forwards and YouTube videos started flooding us with medical jargon and statistics.

Everyone knew the name Wuhan by February. Conversations were dominated by data, the gory fascination of watching a trickle turn into a deluge, the flood turning from China into Europe and Asia. The rest of the world started talking about Italy and Iran and South Korea with growing fear and also with a tinge of smugness.

We were still safe, we kept reminding ourselves, smirking at people wearing surgical masks at bus stops.

Wasn’t the virus still far away? It was just another one like the MARS and the SERS which touched a couple of countries and went away.

Unfortunately, this virus kept sweeping aside conventional wisdom and international boundaries with complete disdain. While we were laughing at WhatsApp videos of people in other continents stocking up on toilet paper for the next decade, the trickle started appearing right at our doorsteps.

Lock down: Three months and counting

Yes, the government ‘set us free’ almost a month ago, but my lockdown continues. Because my concerns and priorities are different. And because frankly, it hasn’t been that difficult for us to remain locked down.

Both my husband and I have been able to work full-time with the bonus of not having to commute through the traffic, and even travel across cities. Once they got over the frustrations with learning through the box, the kids continued with their classes online. As a family living across different states most of the time, we were thrilled to be together, grateful to be safe.

Learning to cope with the new normal had its unique challenges. I kept thinking of recording the lockdown experiences in a blog. 

But then, besides my usual excuse of no time, there was also a strange feeling holding me back.

A mix of guilt and regret. Guilt at having a good time when people were losing jobs, homes and loved ones. Conducting cooking experiments and enjoying family meals when people were dying trying to reach home. Regret at not being able to do anything much to help. I donated to a charity but looking at the sheer number of people setting of for distant homes in worn-out slippers, clutching on to their meagre belongings, that amount was a tiny drop in a bottomless ocean.

There were also the special challenges we faced as a family living together, locked down with just each other and no other face to face interaction with any other human being.

Some days were great fun, some were.. let’s say not so fun.

They were certainly a first in many ways, so it would be a shame not to record them.

Let me start with the last 3+ months and then try to record the present too.

The Best Laid Plans

I plan. It helps me feel that I am in control (of whatever).

I need to make plans otherwise I get caught up in moments and land miles away from where I needed to,
And a lot of times, unexpected things happen, situations change and so do plans. So, I usually have a plan-B and even a plan C for worst case situations. This approach has worked beautifully for work-related projects, managing household inventory and investments and even holidays. With people, the plans need to be a lot more elastic, but the overall idea usually worked.

And then came March 2020.

Campus closures and travel bans. Kids at home with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The whole family at home, the maid at her home, and all the office work to do. Flights cancelled for vacations on which now we anyway don’t plan to go. And I don’t even know what to plan for.

Priorities changed.

I have started checking Bigbasket and Amazon Fresh to see when they are restarting deliveries more frequently than I check Facebook or email. Instead of cribbing about work, I am thankful for jobs that are allowing us to go about ‘life as usual’.

Instead of planning for the future, I am living in gratitude in the present. Thankful that the family got to move together before we got locked out and doing my best to help those who could not. And instead of waiting for holidays and vacations and big-ticket purchases, am just waiting for the days when a safe cure is around to combat this fear, and we can get back to the routine, humdrum, boring old life.

And getting my maid back? I certainly have renewed appreciation for her work, but I would not fear her leaves so much any more. Of all the things that have given me confidence, learning to manage with limited resources, without maids, while keeping kids occupied and doing justice to my job among all this mayhem are the topmost.

I am grateful we have been able to cope well so far and hope the same for all. Sharing my prayers for those still in peril and fear, and hopes for a world that heals soon.

A Win

There are days when I feel that I have tried to do many things, but none of them have really worked out great. That maybe I should stop stressing myself out and just have fun.

There was one particular moment this month when I was seriously questioning myself.

Why am I persisting with a blog that no one reads anymore?

Why am I slogging on weekends trying to learn writing fiction when it doesn’t come naturally?

Why was I painstakingly breaking my head and my shoulder trying to write stories for a competition when none of them had been good enough to be in the top ten of any month of this writing season?

Shouldn’t I accept the reality and my limitations and set goals that were more real, more achievable?

My phone rang. The number displayed looked like a call-center one, but since I was not doing anything else I answered. The lady confirmed my identity and then told me that I had been shortlisted for Upamanyu Chatterjee’s writing prompt and requested me to be online when they declared the winners on twitter and Facebook!

The timing made it seem like the universe hugging me!

I logged on right after 1.00 pm. Didn’t seem to look too eager even to myself.

The 10^th winner had already been announced. It was not me.

Last season, I had been at 9^th position for one month. No, I was not 9^th either.

I was sweating when I realized I wasn’t even at 8^th.

After they declared the 7^th position, I signed out.

I was not putting myself through this tension. It wasn’t like an exam I had to pass to get a degree and a job. 

Maybe, shortlisting didn’t mean top ten. Maybe that call was a mistake.

I started preparing lunch and then heard a beep. I had forgotten to sign out of twitter.

I was at Number 3!

It felt like something out there reached out and told me that the time and effort I had spent wasn’t all in vain. And that I needed to keep going, keep writing.

Giving up-Not

Isn’t creating targets and deadlines for something you are doing for yourself self-defeating? Why stress yourself out, force yourself to do something which you love doing anyway?

Because otherwise I’d never do the thing I love to do.

I wrote non-stop in December in January, almost writing the same number of posts that I had written ever since I started this blog, ten years ago. Yeah TEN. I started it as a stress buster and because I liked putting words together and watching stories emerge. I became a part of a group who enjoyed reading each other’s words and that kept all of us going.

And then other things took over. It wasn’t that life got busier, it was always crazy, but I am not sure why the habit just broke. I made a few full-intentioned but half-hearted attempts to get back but couldn’t get back. No one was reading my posts anymore, so there were no commitments to uphold.

A promise made me realize, I could write regularly (even if it wasn’t always sensible or coherent). Managing time was stressful, so after the 2^nd month, I decided not to make a commitment anymore. To write only when I had the time and the story. And I didn’t write anything for the next half a month.

Everyone may not need them, but I have realized I do need a clock to run, even if I am not running in a race.

So here’s another valiant attempt at keeping the blog going, even if there is no set direction. A post you start with just keying in the words and hoping time would just appear.

Done

I blogged every-day for two full months! Missed one day in January but managed to make it on every other day. Some days I barely put together some sensible sentences, on some days, I got carried away by my own stories.

A week into the 2^nd month, I was flying on adrenaline. If I could force myself to write regularly, why not exercise and diet. So I added two more resolutions to my day.

And pushed myself to become thin and a writer over the next three weeks.

If you have about my old history with exercise, you already know what happens next. 

Monitoring my weights on the electronic weighing machine did not make a difference-it would move up by 800g after every weekend. I would walk faster and longer in the evenings and skip the samosa and eat the sprouts instead. My bones would be creaking, all the joints would keep screeching and squabling. Google fit would give me the heart points to cheer me on but the weighing machine would show that all I could accomplish was lose those 800g by Friday. And I was so bored of eating the healthy stuff that I had to binge on biryani on the third weekend and I refused to check my weight after that.

I realized that I was just as bad as keeping resolutions as ever.

I could stick to blogging, because in spite of all the moaning and groaning, I was happy writing. I was happy venting out in words. I was happy revisiting places in my mind and sharing them with the world. 

I am happy when I get to play with words and that is why I will continue writing. Not because of another challenge of the month, but just because I have more stories to tell.

It won’t be every day for sure, but just whenever I get the chance.

I just hope some of you keep reading 😊.

Day 30

Just two more days to go for the January blogathon.

How was it for me?

Really tough-there were days I had force myself to log in at the end of the day, fighting sleep, fighting the urge to not look at a computer screen after the full day staring at one, and fighting the urge to let it slip, for just one day.

I had long days at work. Days when I had to optimize family time. And I was driving through what is now officially the world’s no. 1 city for traffic congestion.

And there were times, I went through the mechanics of writing, but wrote without putting my heart into it.

Really satisfying-I learnt yet again, that when we can do no further, we still can.

I relived the satisfaction of typing one word after the other and see a story emerge. Sometimes, a story surprisingly different from one I had intended to write.

I cherished the satisfaction of putting a mental tick on a challenge I set up for myself. And I loved re-experiencing old travels, of flipping through old photos, feeling the chill of the winds from the snowy mountains in Nubra valley or feeling the tug of the kite-string slipping through my fingers as I wrote about Sankrant.

In reliving old memories, I also re-discovered a lot about what was more important for me-reflecting, remembering, sharing and writing yes, venting too.

I know very few people read my blog now. Swaram was the only one who would regularly post a comment to let me know she was there. But I still felt connected to many more as I shared my posts for anyone to read. Thank you to each one who took out the time to read anything that I wrote.