My sentences are infirm this evening, so I resort to writing a ‘listicle’. To serve its purpose, I compile a list of the things I’ve gotten used to during the lockdown. I refrain from speaking of any “lessons learned”, for that would reek of moral highhandedness.
I’m terribly afraid of the imminent end to this surreal phase of lockdown. Seventy days into uninterrupted social isolation, there hasn’t been a day I haven’t relished this phase as I would a long-awaited meal.
Here are some things that I am now used to:
1. The News
My morning routine entails a prolonged liaison with the news that surfaces on my smartphone screen. The habit has immunized me against headlines that apprise me of corpses found beneath a collapsed building, hapless migrants mowed down by a freight train, thousands rendered ill by an industrial gas leak, and wholly devastated towns following the wrath of a super cyclone. There’s a video of a plane crashing minutes before it lands, when the passengers were finally so close to returning home. There are clinical images of a pavement bookseller whose sole possessions have perished in the deluge. There is a migrant girl who has covered the boundless distance of 1200 km on her bicycle, with her ailing father riding pillion. There’s growing disillusionment and sheer mayhem in the face of the crisis that incapacitates life as we thought we knew it. The news feed refreshes every other second, and it goes on.
2. Nature
Fuzz: It is supposedly remarkable that my face looks ‘nice’ despite the crisis that has rendered beauty salons an inessential service. As a tribute to self-reliance, every few days, I strip my facial skin of its spurts of hair growth. My body, however, is allowed to tell another story. Without an audience, the layers of old skin on my limbs, shrouded in dark tendrils of hair that have forgotten the pain of being uprooted relentlessly, are beginning to feel at home. In hiding, I can choose not to conform. In hiding, the insurmountable standards of physical beauty don’t apply. In hiding, this is nature.
Flora, fauna: Flowers bloom with aplomb, as birds, bees and butterflies of sundry shapes and sizes frolic delightedly, bedecking with their magnificent flight the bluest sky I have ever seen in Delhi.
Food: There are greens thriving in the backyard—greens that end up on my plate. The greens that I felt like I was forced to eat when I couldn’t access the more fancily presented food. The greens that I now believe I am fortunate to eat, each time the maiden bite of every meal floods my mouth with a burst of flavour.
Clean air: I have lived in Delhi my whole life, but never before have I breathed air this clean. There’s still a pesky someone in the neighbourhood who routinely sets their trash ablaze, releasing an acrid smell that lingers in the still, sultry air. Even this is the purest that Delhi has breathed.
Quiet: Among all senses, my most heightened one is the auditory. This anguishes me deeply, because I live in a city that is heavily reliant on the effect of sounds. We are a great population, forever jostling for attention by yelling and yelping, only for our cries to be drowned out by the deafening sounds of traffic, construction and commotion. During the lockdown, I have been greeted by a quiet that I had never before dared to imagine.
3. Home
For as long as I can remember, I have used the place called home to seek refuge from the onslaught of necessary performance acts (i.e. social obligations) that give me the semblance of a reasonable human being. In the recent weeks, home has become a space that I have liked getting to know. I have taken my time to explore the contours of every corner. For once, I find myself seated (somewhat) at ease, not fearing the intrusion of an unexpected guest. For now, home feels like what home should.
4. Isolation (Social)
Social isolation is, perhaps, the underlying theme of all that I have gotten used to during this time. Rarely have I experienced something as freeing as the complete absence of social obligations. This is not to be confused with the need to connect with others. A good conversation continues to be the order of the day. This happens most selectively, sans the clutter that surrounds a meeting—whether that is for work or for leisure or for the confusing in-between.
5. Attention, affection
Quarantine video calls are convenient, purposeful, amusing and liberating. To these customary virtual meetings (with friends and family), I present only a part of myself—the one that makes time for the ones she loves, the one that deserves affection and attention. These meetings assure me that I have the best friends who have chosen to spend on me their freest time ever. When they gaze out the window, or into their screens, they think of me.
6. Privilege
Groceries (read: an assortment of gourmet foods) arrive at my doorstep, as it gets unbearably hot and unpredictably dangerous to be outside. In any case, I haven’t been outside ever since I returned from Norway more than two months ago.
7. Endurance
Speaking of privilege, we are a people with carefully drawn personal boundaries that you (yes, you) are bound to overstep in some way or the other. In isolation with the ones we love, we witness the countless ways in which we fail to keep away, fail to show up, and misunderstand, mistrust and mistreat each other. Every day, as we sleep and as we awake, we endure these transgressions that continually shape and reshape our relationships. Because there’s nothing else in the world that we’d rather endure, and nowhere else in the world we’d rather be. That’s family.
8. Fearlessness
In the time of coronavirus, we wax eloquent about the invisible virus that inflicts lasting damage. But, I, on the other hand, have never felt more fearless than at a time like this.
a. For this I credit Delhi, the city that has been particularly hostile to, well, everyone, but especially so to its women. Ensconced in the safety of my home, I am no longer at the mercy of the danger that lurks around the corner. The virus does not discriminate. It is therefore more, but also much less, dangerous.
b. The next time I have an ache in my chest, and I feel like I can’t breathe, they might actually listen to me. My symptoms might even tell them a little story about my pain, and I won’t simply be deemed a loony hypochondriac. At a time like this, the perils of living with health anxiety have been validated.
This is no redressal of fear, but in any case, the lockdown won’t last forever. We’ll find better answers when we need them.
9. Surveillance
This pandemic has evidently created new styles of governance. It has prepared a blueprint for the government to monitor its citizens under the guise of tracking the virus. You will be summoned again to your window to make a show of clapping your hands and of lighting a lamp. What’s there to refuse, spoilsport! Who’d have thought that this microbe would become an aide to the despots, who can now lynch and laud as they please, tell you to stay home, tell you to get out, and prescribe even the contents of your phone. Forgive me, for I don’t use a smartphone—I’m digitally detoxing, you see. But, you, TikTok addict, must download the Aarogya Setu app.
10. Emotional curves (that can’t be flattened)
Some days, I wake up not wanting to wake up. Some days, I wake up to the sound of a sordid soap opera playing on the neighbour’s TV. Some days, I wake up wanting only to guzzle some fresh cold brew. Some days, I wake up enthused to write lists such as these. Some days, I wake up simply because I want to wake up.
11. Darkness
Last year, I switched to blackout curtains in my bedroom. They cost me a fair bit, but they play their part in keeping the heat stranded outside my window. For now, they’re also keeping the world waiting outside, while I crouch on the inside, with bated breath, veiled in a shade of darkness.
Until the lockdown lifts, I hope to rejoice in its ennui and in the countless ways that it has set me free. And while I do that, I carry the heavy burden of guilt that causes those on the margins to suffer because of it. As if I were the one to will the lockdown in place, as if I were the one to will the virus into this world, as if I were to one to will it into my mind, and then into yours.