2020 has been a year that has been notorious, a year everyone wants to wipe off the calendar for eternity. Which is true for sure ….. a virus with spikes created havoc across the globe travelling silently in peoples mucus, killing in millions, devastating families, separating families and loved ones and shutting the society down like no other event ever before. In the world full of Instagram and global economy who could have imagined a situation of such isolation … with airplanes sitting on the tarmac for months. Suddenly our world shrunk into our four walls overnight.
I am alive and I am grateful that my family is doing good so far. But once I went past the pragmatist state and the panic state, I settled down and allowed my life to flow along. And I am changed person now.
One defining moment for me in this pandemic was the day when my father who is 94 hadnt returned after a short errand he went for. I went to look for him in the neighborhoods and I found him standing in a long queue outside a grocery shop which had opened after the shutdown. I asked him what are he was standing in the line for and he said, don’t know, will check what is there when I reach the store. I was baffled. Me a generation who lives online and has easy access to stuff, was shell shocked. So silently stood with him …. And I felt the silence and a sense of anticipation in the air. Slowly Baba started saying how during the WWII there would be enormous shortage of everything and when they saw a line, they stood in without knowing what was being distributed or sold at the end of it. It could be coal or rice or bread or sugar or blankets. Tears filled my eyes … he still felt he has to take care of the family and when he saw the queue in front of the store, he stood in. I understood at that moment the extent of the panic, worry and apprehension people felt with the sudden unknown situation they faced. My fears like a cloak dropped off my shoulders. I held his hand and we bought his favorite biscuit, rice and “muri” when our turn came.
Slowly, I found that each day I went out with measured steps to the bazaar without any hurry, watching what was happening around me. I chatted with the vendors and discovered how much struggle they are going through to get the simple wares for us. I realized how little we need in reality.
I was able to hear sounds of birds around me and look for them out of the windows. I sat in the verandah with my tea cup sinking in the silence that was broken with an occasional conch shell or a mother scolding a child somewhere. I finished my office calls and then cooked a nice hearty simple meals which we all enjoyed thoroughly. I spent hours lying sprawled on my bed listening to my son’s music, rants and ideas …. I continued to discover parts of him .. and he me I guess. I went running in my neighborhood and over a few days had people call out to me from their balconies and windows happy to see another human being. I made connections. I noticed who was distressed and who wasn’t. I could offer help without them having to ask.
The clutter slowly de cluttered itself from my mind …. wants, expectations from self and from others, demands, social norms, boundaries that has got created over times, the hurt accumulated over years, the grief of lost dreams, the pain of losses of loved ones … brought the realization that I am alive.
I found ……….. Stillness.
Meandering Dialogues 