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.