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.

Comments