I am facing a lockdown, for the first time in life. It has done a lot of changes:
My mother, who always thought she has my back, is paranoid for the first time. For starters, I have never ever seen that woman paranoid. She is independent, fully financially stable, takes care of the whole house all by herself, takes the decisions, she can come home from work at 9 in night, wash her face and wrap a saree again to go to the market because, I wanted brinjal fry and we have run out of brinjals - that woman is shaking and calling every day and asking me if there is some way I can come home. She is a healthcare professional and she knows the better - I guess we all ditch logic for the ones we love.
My father - a fiercely liberal man who can make some phonecalls and arrange for eggs for my home in Delhi, sitting in Durgapur, Bengal is helpless. Last time he called me, he spoke about how much he hates the Government. He spoke about his helplessness because what if I run out of satinisers now, how will he arrange. He spoke about how he thinks we will get a cure soon - how can humans reach the moon and still not come up with a cure. Crazy! But most of all, it makes him mad to think he doesn't have the option of arranging a ticket for me to go home. Classic dads!
My grandmother smiles the most when I call. When I video call her, she cries the most, too. She wants to tell me all that she knows - how in the recent storm, the neighbour's tree fell on our terrace, how she wants to play ludo with me but she can't find the dice, how badly she wants me to go home and cook for her. This woman who spent all her life either feeding her kids or her grandchildren, and now her grabdchildren's dog, has no clue where to put her anger. But she wants to - so she cries. She wants me to 'video casette' her every night, because she can hear my voice and see my lips moving. God I miss her and how! I ardently remember, everytime my grandmother used to cook fish, she'd smell of this stench of fish from her saree. I'd be asleep by the time she'd come to lie down beside me, and the stench would wake me up. I, who can't take that stench and also didn't want to hurt her saying that, would tell her to play ludo with me instead. Afternoons, I'd let her win. Night, she'd win it herself. My grandmother, who spend all her life feeding kids and her grandchildren, waits for me to go home and cook french toast for her. She says, 'Your mother makes them fine, but nothing like you.'
I, stuck in an unfamiliar city that's slowly settling on me, try to take things one day at a time. The affected cases crossed the 20,000 mark. I made a mental note recently, the day the official records show 4,000 deaths in India, I'll lose faith. I'll finally settle for the fact that India has officially come to the road to Italy.
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I can't stop dreaming though. Sometimes my work gets tougher than usual. I cry more than I work, on days. I live for the weekends, I love for the time outside work, I can't think of shutting my laptop when I start to work. And I can't stop dreaming. This other day, I had a major daydream attack - it's a thing.
I was writing a story, and in the middle, I couldn't shake off a scene from the hills. I kept walking in the cold studded roads of Lava, extremely uphill, panting, the snow-cold air hitting my face, my teeth shivering and flushing my face of the cold red, I kept walking uphill. I was out of breath, I could see the Buddhist colourful flags swaying in the wind from far, some dimly-lit souvenir shops open on my both sides, like the smell of rain on a summer night the smell of pork thupka kept hitting my nostrils, I kept walking uphill.
I can't stop dreaming of Kolkata. My well garbaged lanes, the vegetable vendors screaming out the rates, the sun hitting the top of your heat and making the sweat drip from your eyebrows, men and women pushing you out from the sidewalk, the rickshaws blaring their honks, the cars stuck in a jam, I kept walking. Through that vegetable market, the smell of well crushed wheat from a nearby mill hit my senses, the traffic signal gets more confusing, the buses come and stop right next to me, I kept walking.
I can't stop thinking. I can't freaking stop dreaming in this pandemic.
(Rest for another day..)
(Rest for another day..)
