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