Category: Musings

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Musings

Notes from Kerala: Running during COVID

By Shevlin Sebastian 

Every day, at 6 p.m., I set out from my home in Kochi for a run. In these coronavirus times, I have marked out a route that runs parallel to the main road. For a few days, the cops, in khaki uniform, were stopping cars and two-wheelers but they left the individuals alone. 

I have started running after a decade. During those years, I was swimming. But the pool, where I swim, is closed. The lifeguard has gone home. The club is shuttered. There is a lone watchman in a blue uniform standing at the gate and saying, “Nobody is here.” 

In my mid-fifties, it takes time for my body to move. The legs are stiff, and movements in the arms are negligible. But around 300 meters into my run, a miracle happens. My body shakes off the lethargy, my legs start moving rhythmically, and soon I am gliding across the road. A younger version has taken over. Or maybe, my muscle memory has asserted itself. 

It is a beautiful route. There are large trees with overhanging branches on either side.

Most houses have lawns in front where red and white roses bloom. In some homes, there are vegetable patches at the back. In the concrete jungle of Mumbai, you may have to pay crores of rupees to enjoy this. But in Kochi, these are the houses of middle-class people. How lucky we are!  

Over the rasping of my breath through my open mouth, I can hear birdsong. No longer are auto and car horns and the groaning exhaust of ill-maintained lorries the dominant sound. When I run, I no longer have to look at the road, as no vehicles are coming from the opposite direction, just a stray white dog who looks at me with mournful eyes as if asking, “Where have all the people gone?” 

But they are there, inside their houses, and outside too. 

I see a woman picking up a large blue bedsheet from a clothesline on the terrace of her house. I see a thirty-something woman, in a white nightgown, standing at the door, holding a sleeping baby, with a white headscarf, in her arms, and looking curiously at me. On another terrace, a woman is watering her plants, placed on the parapet, a row of red pots, using a green hose. “Nice colour contrast,” I think. 

On this hot, April summer day, with more than 95 per cent humidity, perspiration starts to drip down my forehead. My breath is rushing out, like water from a burst pipe, through my open mouth. Incredibly, at this moment, I think of my mother. 

Last night, when I went to meet her, she said she was thinking of her father. She said the entire family had gone to the St. Alphonsa Pilgrim Centre at Bharananganam (75 km from Kochi). “My father was about to fall into a deep pit, which was hidden under a canopy of weeds,” she said. “But at the very last moment, he bent and saw it. He said that St. Alphonsa had saved him.” 

It is a big family — many brothers and sisters. A few are scattered all over the world. Three have passed away. Her parents are both dead. Their house has become a private college. Where my grandfather used to sit in a low armchair, a short, squat man, with silver hair and a bald brown patch at the top of his head, in a large hall, where the tick-tock of a large black clock on the wall could be heard clearly, now college students come and listen, with drooping eyes, to the drone of a teacher, who looks bored and sounds listless. He’s been teaching the same syllabus for decades. 

As my mother spoke, I realized that she is an orphan. She can never meet her parents anymore except in her imagination. And in a matter of years, I will be an orphan too, as my father is now 93 and my mother is 83. What would life be like without parents? A friend, who lost his parents, told me that you think of them more when they have passed away rather than when they are alive. 

I run faster and expectedly I can feel a pain in my lungs, as my body tells me to slow down. And so I do. 

I am depressed. I have lost my job in the print media, and my 38-year career seems to have come to an end. What do I do now? Owing to the virus, the economy is at a standstill. And so am I. 

I have a daughter and a son in college. Early marriage, but late parenthood. Two miscarriages roiled my wife’s equanimity. But finally, after nine years of marriage, and several treatments at various fertility centres, God nodded and the babies came. But now, how do I pay my bills, their bills, our bills? Thankfully, my wife has a good job as a counsellor in a college. So, we won’t starve. 

Unfortunately, we have a bitter-sweet marriage. The pattern is one week of sweetness followed by three weeks of sourness. This routine has continued for a long time. “You are too self-absorbed,” she said. “I can’t handle it.” 

We have been married for 27 years.   

I partly agree with her. All writers go inside themselves all the time. You lose touch with the outside. You lose awareness of people and their emotional needs. Which woman likes that?

Since I have slowed down, my breath, through my wide-open mouth, has begun to go in and out easier. One day, there will be the last breath. Which day, month and year will it be? At what time? How old will I be? Who will be around me? Will I be in a hospital room all alone? Will my children be far away? In another country? Will they have any affection left for me? 

And will my wife be still around? Will she be staring at me, by my bedside, as I get ready to leave the planet; will it be a bittersweet moment for her? Sad that I am dying but happy for some crumbs of freedom after I am buried — free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I am free at last. 

And nobody will point fingers at her, which might have happened if we had divorced. These accusations could have been shouted at her by relatives or our children. But this is the smoothest way to freedom. The bugger died. Not my fault. 

I feel my legs starting to move smoothly again. I think this is a second wind. If I want, I can stop. But I know I can continue if I keep going in this steady manner. Now my body has become like a machine. Of course, it is an ageing machine. 

It was my friend Sanjay who introduced me to running. I was a frail boy with black-framed spectacles, who liked to read books all the time. A nerd. He lived two buildings away on a street beside a large park in Calcutta. I don’t know how we first met, but we were in our teens. He was 6’ and I was 5’ 5”. And he had a passion for tennis. He played it every day at a club inside the park. And to keep fit, he would go for runs on the perimeter of the park. He urged me to come with him. 

“I have never run before,” I said. There is always a first time, he said. So I asked my parents to buy me a pair of white keds, and they gladly did so. They did not like me staying cooped up inside the house all the time. A shy boy with no friends. 

But when I started running, it was a revelation. I had a smooth style. Always, from the very beginning, I felt that I was gliding over the ground. “Man, you are good,” said Suresh, who showed thumbs up to me. There was a reason for his appreciation. He ran in a heavy lumbering way. Of course, he was 85 kgs and this weight proved a hindrance. It came as no surprise that through the decades, he never liked running. 

But I am sure he likes his present-day life a lot. He is a tennis coach at a millionaires’ club in Florida. Through shrewd real-estate deals and stock investments, Suresh has made a pot of money. He lives in a gated community that has a clear lake, an amber-blue swimming pool, a well-equipped gym and a gleaming black Mercedes Benz in his garage. But he has stayed in touch. Calls me once a month. Has retained his Indian accent and simplicity. When in the mood, both of us speak in Bengali, as a nostalgic tribute to our Calcutta roots. A Rajput and a Malayali speaking in Bengali. That’s the beauty of a syncretic India, now under furious attack by fundamentalists who are unwilling to accept that the people they demonise have a soul just like them. 

I am running steadily now. Three elderly men, in white and multi-coloured lungis, stand around, keeping the social distancing norms (Kerala has the highest literacy rates in India, so they know the rules) and chat about the hot weather. I go past. They pause to look at me. May make comments about me after I have gone some distance away. It does not worry me at all. But what I am worried about is the state of my knees.   

A decade ago, fearful that my knees would take a hit since I was always running on tarred roads, I shifted to swimming. And this turned out to be even better than running. Gliding through the water, every muscle getting a workover, especially the lower back, always a point of weakness for sedentary workers, the sense of rejuvenation I felt when I stepped out of the pool after a 45-minute session. There was nothing to match it. My brain became soaked in dopamine.   

And the moment my head hit the pillow, I was out, like a knockout blow to the chin by a professional boxer. 

But now, in the times of the virus, I have to rely on the good old legs but the dopamine that seeps out is a trickle, like the flow of water in a river during the middle of a drought. Still, something is better than nothing. Be happy.  

In the end, I stop running and take out my handkerchief and wipe my face and neck. And keep wiping it as the sweat continues to flow. I walk and walk, till I finally reach my home….an oasis as well as a battlefront.   

Shevlin Sebastian is a journalist based in Kochi. He has published around 4500 articles over 30 years, most of them feature stories. He has worked in Sportsworld magazine, (ABP Group), The Week magazine (of the Malayala Manorama Group), the Hindustan Times in Mumbai and the New Indian Express in Kochi and in DC Books, Kottayam. 

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Musings

Life in Times of Corona

By Devraj Singh Kalsi

Her multiple complications turned worse around the time the first case came to light. During her last medical check-up, she was diagnosed with aggravated problems related to heart, liver, and gall bladder functioning. Hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, and cataract left out as routine and manageable disorders. She heard the doctor warn her of fatal consequences if angioplasty was not done immediately. She chose to bypass it with a smirk that offended the doctor and he prescribed three new tests at his specified diagnostic centre to locate more illnesses residing within her. 

Two months later, she heard the doctor had passed away. She was curious to know how his untimely end came. This is when she heard about COVID-19 for the first time. It sounded more like a prescription drug to her rather than a life-threatening infectious disease. When I simplified it with corona and explained what it was and how it was caused and transmitted, she grew interested in the pandemic, sneezed all of a sudden and asked: Can I get it? It was like —Am I eligible for it?

As the elderly folks with co-morbidity are at a higher risk, I urged her to practice social distancing. She did not get it, so I asked her to stay six feet away from people. She took this opportunity to cancel her scheduled blood pressure check-ups and blood sugar tests for a month.

She bombarded me with several questions. I searched online for the best answers to update her. From her facial expression she was not happy to learn that it came from China. Her xenophobic mind began to function. She blamed the Chinese for almost every evil in the world. She wanted to see a pangolin on my phone. After a proper look at the poor fellow looking cute and innocent, she said with regret: What else do you expect from people who eat snakes and dogs? She had no visible anger for bats or pangolins — only for the wet markets in China. 

She began to create conspiracy stories with impossible plots and angles, and this assured me that my creative streak was most certainly derived from her. She was not any different from what others were thinking except the fact that she did not know anything about bio-weapons. 

She took advantage of the fact that I was not born when China attacked India. She dramatized a few episodes. I had no option to verify. Since her emotional investment was evident from her expression, I chose not to interrupt her flow and nodded without conviction. Pakistan and China were the two countries she loved to bash indiscriminately whenever she got an opportunity or a person who harboured similar thoughts. Somehow, she had realised over the years that my intolerance for any nation had not peaked yet.   

                                                              *

Every day, from morning to night, she pops fifteen pills. But today she decided to skip pills. Just like people skip meals for dieting. I did not know how to react. Should I administer those pills with a word of caution or just let her do what she wanted to do? It appeared she was confident heart attack was unlikely to be the cause of her death. She did what she wanted to do — flirt with death.  

I told her to wear a mask for safety and she opened the window to see whether the lady in the adjacent house was wearing one. When she saw she was not wearing it at home, she refused to wear it. She kept the mask and said she would wear it when I entered her room after coming from the grocery store. To show she was taking some precaution, she agreed to keep the bottle of hand sanitizer with her.  

Although I myself was not sure about many possible ways of its spread, I added them all for extra safety. I mentioned how it behaves on various surfaces, how many days it lives, how easily it kills. This deepened her worry. She wanted to know whether her relatives were safe. She called them up to find out.

Armed with the knowledge derived from me, she began to use words like pandemic and social distancing and repeated preventive tips. She observed behavioural change in her close relatives. Those who used to express the desire to meet her were quiet now. She sought umbrage because nobody had invited her. I told her that relatives will not entertain or invite guests for one year at least. She said most of these were fake invites and so there was no harm in extending them, just to make others feel good. I explained that people were unwilling to take any kind of risk. You never know which crackpot turns up with a burning desire to meet once trains start running on the tracks.

The virus shared many attributes with God. It was also invisible just like God. She kept reading the holy texts as usual. I told her she must realise death is not caused by God’s will. Even a virus can kill people and faith cannot save people from Corona virus. This posed a big challenge to her faith. She began looking for a line of defence: Tell me, who created this virus? It is also God’s creation.

For once, she did not blame China for creating it. Before I could ask her why she felt so, she asked me to repeat the symptoms. I told her the virus can live in the human body for 21 days or more without any symptom. Now she got really worried and scared. She wore the mask and abused the virus in filthy language without showing any mercy – much of it I did not hear and what I heard I cannot put down.  

Devraj Singh Kalsi works as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short stories and essays have been published in Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Kitaab, Earthen Lamp Journal, Assam Tribune, and The Statesman. Pal Motors is his first novel. 

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Musings

As History Unfolds

By Tehmina Khan

It started on Saturday, or perhaps even earlier on Friday, twenty-eight days ago, with tiredness and an odd tenseness in my body, which I attributed to stress. My husband returned to our home in Toronto from Pakistan on Monday afternoon and went into quarantine in our guestroom. Our COVID-19 days had begun.

By Tuesday morning, I had a sore throat, a dry cough, severe body pain, diarrhea, nausea and stomach cramps. I felt feverish though the thermometer gave a below average body temperature reading. My fever spells were followed by chills which set me shivering under a mountain of blankets. I made the terrible decision to get medical help.

I was worried because of COVID. The secretary at my doctor’s office asked me not to come in. My symptoms sounded too much like COVID and no one wanted to risk infection by seeing me.

 I called Telehealth and got bounced around until a nurse finally told me to get tested. Our closest assessment centre was North York General Hospital. This is where I gave birth to my son. This is where I had an uterine embolization and two surgeries a few years back. I associate kindness with this hospital. I am familiar with its corridors.

My husband was busy with a work-related call in the basement when I decided to walk the five kilometres to the hospital. I didn’t want to expose him or anyone else to my germs. The walk was slow and exhausting and the hospital I arrived at was not the place I was familiar with. They were construction workers erecting a pavilion of sorts outside the emergency department. The inside of the department looked like a scene from a war zone.

The doctor who finally saw me, spoke to me for a long while. He told me that while I was exhibiting all the symptoms other than fever (I had taken Tylenol before embarking on my walk), I did not meet their testing criteria. I was not over 65, immune compromised, or an essential worker. He was honest and told me that they do not have enough kits and therefore are conserving them for those most at risk. His last sentence to me before walking out was: “You are witnessing history unfold.”

I returned home and my condition continued to worsen. My husband and I swapped rooms. I was quarantined in the guestroom from my husband and two teenage kids. I was not bored. The trials my body was putting me through were relentless and left no scope for boredom. Around the two-week mark of my sickness, I had two days of feeling much better. I heaved a sigh of relief and announced my return to the land of the living.

But I was wrong, and I rapidly grew weaker. I became confused. I began spending much of my time crying from sheer weakness. As I felt my strength ebbing, I became convinced that I would not survive. At times, despite the layering of Advil and Tylenol, my pain was such that I almost wished for death.

My mental health lay in shambles. I could no longer read or write. I stared blankly at the same paragraphs trying to decipher the meanings behind the words. I felt I was a burden. I was unable to care for myself. People called to commiserate with my husband for being stuck taking care of me. I wanted to somehow magically return to my parents’ home in Karachi, Pakistan, and my mother’s care where no one would consider me a burden.

It is a strange thing to become dangerous to your own loved ones. My husband and I sleep in separate rooms. My children and husband use one bathroom, while I use the other. My family maintains physical distance from me. The last time I experienced human touch was more than three weeks ago. For the first two weeks of my husband’s return from Pakistan, our children did the groceries because both my husband and myself were under quarantine. I suffered guilt pangs knowing that we were placing our children in harm’s way in order to keep us fed.

Now, that my husband’s quarantine is over, he does the weekly grocery run. He and our kids also do all of the housework because I am unable to do more than take the few steps it takes to make it to the washroom.  People constantly call to tell me to thank God for His blessings. I wonder if they are simply trying to take advantage of my weakened state. They seem more interested in scoring brownie points with their God than in my well being because why else would you use this opportunity to intone God to a non-believer?

I eventually made a second trip to the Emergency department. It was a mistake caused by the burning in my chest. My family doctor the day before had prescribed an antibiotic and assured me that I should go to Emergency to get help if feeling worse. This time, I could barely manage the few steps into our car. I dissolved into tears at the hospital. I had trouble following the nurses’ instructions. They tested me for COVID. I was put on a drip and told that I was severely dehydrated. They did an EKG and a chest x-ray. Both were clear.

 By the time I left, it seemed that the attending doctor was just annoyed by my presence. She seemed to have decided on her own that my dehydration was caused by ongoing diarrhoea though I had informed her right in the beginning that my diarrhoea only lasted the first two days of my sickness. She lectured me on staying hydrated and sent me home where my symptoms continue till the present moment. My throat is still sore. My neck still hurts. The skin on my face and chest is red and splotchy. I still have bouts of nausea and dry heaving. My energy level is a bit better to the point where I was able to do a light housekeeping this morning, but even that bit of effort cost me, and so I am back to lying in bed. As for what is wrong with me? Who knows? But more importantly, who cares? We have all gone from being humans to just being statistics. Do you match these criteria? If not, please step aside.

This pandemic is the moment when we will reveal our humanity. Will we choose to overlook the ones who are easy to overlook? I don’t mean myself. I will be back to health soon enough.

I mean the ones who we have grown accustomed to overlooking; the people who were already struggling to exist. The ones who work multiple odd jobs and still barely manged to feed themselves. The ones who live in slums and have no access to clean water, decent food, education or health facilities. Others too, the elderly and the mentally and physically disabled who are not able to advocate for themselves. When we start to prioritize, as this pandemic will force us to do, who all will we choose to overlook?

 In our single-minded focus on COVID, we are neglecting all other illnesses and casting aside all other concerns. COVID is not the only health problem on the planet at the moment though it may be the only one on our television screens and while COVID is exacting its death tolls, shutting down the planet for a prolonged period will also exact a toll which we have not even gotten around to imagining as yet.

Tehmina Khan has her home in Toronto, where she lives with her husband, two children, and their dog, Luna. Mawenzi House published her collection of short stories, ‘Things She Could Never Have’, in the fall of 2017. She is currently working on retelling seven stories from ‘1001 Nights’. Her writing has appeared in the The Blue Minaret, ShedoestheCity, and The /temz/ Review.

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Musings

Rumination : Lockdown is a long flight.

By Sapna Agarwal

I haven’t travelled much recently but I remember when I was in the middle of a ‘hi-flying’ job (literally here) and had to travel internationally twice a month, the only good sleep I had was in-flight. This was unusual because most people I know cannot sleep well — especially in economy class.

The reasons I could sleep so well were many – the ordinary ones were that I was generally fatigued after my fourteen-hour job; I was not interested in the alcohol on board; I am 5ft nothing and could be comfortable in the economy class seat ( much to the envy of the Germans in Lufthansa flights ); the microwaved  food didn’t excite me so I didn’t need food breaks and hence loo breaks.

But the real reasons (and that is why I am linking it to the lockdown) was that I was mentally at peace since once on board there was nothing under my control.

I was blissfully devoid of FOMO – fear of missing out on the chance of utilising my time better. There was nothing I could do high up there – no clearing long pending tasks like visiting the bank, replacing my torn handbag,  arranging for a birthday party,  getting my car serviced — in general all the tasks that I postponed with guilt while on land. In air, I was at peace that for the next 22 hours everything could wait. Once I had mental peace, I could just roll up and go to sleep. It was magic. There were times when the air hostess ( Quantas and Thai in particular) would wake me up and insist I eat something instead of sleeping for 15 hours straight.

The other thing that made in-flight sleep so peaceful was that there was little my accident-phobic self could do to save myself in case of a disaster. I do not have the same peace of mind while travelling by taxi, bus or train. In a taxi or bus, I always keep an eye on the driver willing him to avert any head-on crash. In a train where I cannot see the driver, I am normally evaluating my chances of escape in case of a collision. But in a flight, it is binary – in the unlikely event of a crash there is nothing a hapless passenger can do. So, I could sleep in peace.

Now after many years the lockdown is giving me the same feeling — a calm, soothing feeling that there is not much I can do except wash my hands.

One — There is no urgent task I can complete because everything is closed and legitimately so.

Two — In case of a disaster, that is the deadly virus takes over the entire world, there is very little I can do.

So I’d rather say my little prayer, roll up and catch up on my sleep – peacefully.

Sapna Agarwal is a management professional and has worked in the corporate and education sectors for long years. She writes short poems and articles  mostly on current issues. She is a keen observer of human nature and how they react in good times and bad. She lives in Bangalore with her eleven-year-old daughter. 

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Musings

This is not a drill

Farouk Gulsara from Malaysia

 People, mainly the theistic type, are in a dilemma now. They are currently undergoing a test of faith of sorts. On the one hand, they feel they should not have been subjected through such a trial. Whoever had heard of man-made laws preventing believers from performing their daily mandatory salutations of the Divine Forces? Furthermore, at this time of calamity, if they cannot turn to the Divine for help, what else can they do?

 But wait…

Why did the Divine Forces ‘send’ such a test to us? Does He not love us so much? After all the cajoling over generations, and the importance that humankind had accorded to the divine forces all times, why are we continuously put to the test? Is it some kind of Divine Mirth for the amusement of the Maker and a testbed to gauge our devotion?

Why are the first spaces to be emptied all the places of worship? How can they be hotbeds for infection? Are they justified is asking, “My Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Has God ditched his followers stricken with COVID-19 by shutting down religious centres with no prayer meetings? Social distancing seems to be the only panacea for the pandemic. Perhaps He is telling us that blind faith does not work.

 Above all, intelligence and cognitive power would make us stronger as a race. Perhaps the answer would be, “I am here just for your solace. I cannot possibly change the trajectory of the Universe just because you cajoled me in prayers. Imagine the catastrophe that could cause to the others. I have other requests too, you know!”

 It has happened many times before…

 There was a time when worshippers were contented when their scriptures protected them from dangers of the pleasure of the forbidden fruit. They thought it was only the deviants who were at the receiving end of God’s wrath. So, when people like Paul Ehrlich came up with his magic bullet, Salvarsan, to treat syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease willed to punish the wayward, he received no accolades but instead, Ehrlich was pelted with stones, and his home was torched. He was scorned for siding with the sinners and going against the overpowering might of God.

All through our civilisation, believers took it upon themselves to symbolise the omnipotence of Divinity by constructing grandiose erections in the name of His splendour. True — these abodes have been useful to house believers and non-believers at times of crises before. These robust megalithic structures are of limited use as they are of restricted use to care for the homeless. They have been labelled as sites of super-spreaders and is out of bounds to worshippers and asylum seekers alike…

 We are left with the power of human intellect and science to overcome this as we have done many times. In years to come, this current episode would be just a fleeting moment in the annals of human history. Catastrophes, one after another, we have bowled over. Floods, famines, earthquakes, tsunamis, world wars — we have defeated all. This will add another feather to our cap.

We did not attain the status of the de facto spokesperson of the planet for nothing.

We shall overcome.

Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decides to stimulate his non-dominant part on his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, ‘Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy’ and ‘Real Lessons from Reel Life’, he writes regularly in his blog ‘Rifle Range Boy’.

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Musings

Hope in the Pandemic: Notes from a Wuhan Physicist

By Tao Wang from Wuhan

Keeping busy: Tao Wang at his home during the lockdown period in Wuhan, China. (Courtesy: Tao Wang)

I run a research group made up of more than 20 graduate students, and in a “normal” workday my job is to supervise and direct them on research activities related to opto-electronic devices such as solar cells and light-emitting diodes. I also teach an undergraduate course in polymer physics during our teaching season, with lectures two times a week. I would normally also go to conferences, although not every week.

The city of Wuhan and the residential compounds within it responded differently at different stages of the pandemic. At the beginning of the outbreak, normal life was not affected much as the number of infected people was low. On 23 January, Wuhan was locked down, with nobody able to leave the city; however, in the early days of the lockdown people could still walk freely outside their homes. This was soon changed so that nobody could leave their residential compound except those involved in essential work, as evidence showed that less strict measures were not preventing the spread of the corona virus.

Life under lockdown

During the lockdown, a lot of medical and other resources were sent to Wuhan, and many volunteers helped deliver groceries to residential compounds, assist the vulnerable, and bring food to doctors and nurses on the front line. At first, patients with mild symptoms were asked to return home and self-isolate – partly due to the shortage of hospital beds and other resources, and partly due to a lack of experience in how to treat a virus that humans had not encountered before. Again, this soon changed, as the virus continued to spread, clusters of infections appeared, and people with mild conditions developed more serious symptoms.

To deal exclusively with corona virus patients, Wuhan constructed two new hospitals from scratch in 10 days. Another 16 makeshift hospitals were also built, some of them in one day. Other provinces in China also sent many thousands of doctors and nurses to hospitals in Hubei.

This enabled health workers to collect and treat all patients in hospital and closely watch those who have been in close contacts with patients. The number of new cases reduced immediately with these actions, and this – along with a reduced number of patients in hospitals after their cure and discharge – helped to ease the crisis.

I have kept myself fairly busy while self-isolating at home during the lockdown time in Wuhan. Whilst we report our body temperatures every day to local health volunteers and try to keep our life free of chaos and panic, we also try to do some of the work we would expect to do in a normal time.

My students and I have online meetings every two weeks, during which we discuss some of the latest literature related to their projects. We finished writing and revising a few manuscripts, and I also wrote two grant proposals (it is proposal writing time between January and March in China). At the beginning of the new semester in March, university students in Wuhan were asked not to return on campus due to the outbreak of COVID-19, and all face-to-face lectures have been turned to online virtual ones. This minimizes the disruption to their studies, while also ensuring their health and safety.

Emerging from the epidemic

For the past 20 days, very few new cases of corona virus have been reported in Wuhan, and as of today the total number of corona virus patients is less than 500. So, after 11 weeks of lockdown, people in Wuhan were allowed to leave the city from midnight on 8 April.

Thanks to the great achievement of putting down a pandemic in about two months, people in “epidemic-free” residential compounds are now allowed to leave their homes, for example to do grocery shopping in supermarkets. A lot of commercial units have resumed functioning. The authorities are evaluating how to ensure public health and safety in these new circumstances, and when that is settled our students will be allowed to return to campus. I actually tidied up my office today, and I am waiting for our students to be back, which I am sure won’t take long.

With great efforts from people in every country, this extraordinary crisis will surely be overcome, and we will be back to “normal” life.

 But this new normality won’t be the same as the one that existed before. It is going to change our society in ways we haven’t fully anticipated. I hope the changes are positive rather than negative. We should live in more healthy ways so that we can share this planet with other beings, and that will require everyone to think things over after the disruption is finished.

I do see positive things in all nations across the globe: responsibility, selflessness, self-discipline, unity and resolve. As for positive things in my professional life, the lockdown gave me time to look back and think over what I have done in my research activities over the past few years, and particularly to evaluate whether they are as methodologically robust as they could be. I have some thoughts on that and will start from those once I am able to return to my laboratory.

I hope the rest of the world can get hope from my experience in Wuhan. If we stick to social distancing, wash hands and wear masks, this pandemic is certainly controllable.

This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to share your own perspective, please contact us at pwld@ioppublishing.org.

Tao Wang is an experimental physicist in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at Wuhan University of Technology in Wuhan, China.

First Published in Countercurrents.org

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Musings

Pause. And resume.

(A conversation on ‘hope’ between a mom and her 14-year-old daughter)

By Nidhi Mishra

Yesterday, someone shared with me a video by Serena Williams that went viral last year, where she is emotionally urging her little baby girl to grow up and take to a sport, ANY sport, but some sport. I remembered watching it together with my young daughter — in fact, many times over.

But, somewhere, during the repeats, I wondered what it was about this message from Serena that moved me so much. I have never really played any sport myself. I did inherit the family culture of an impeccable and exhaustive viewing of all Tennis grand slams, but it did not impact me any other way personally.

My daughter loved the video and gathered that I was trying to relay to her Serena’s message about the life lessons from sports. But seeing a tiny tear curl up in the corner of my eye, she figured it meant something more to me.

“Why are you so moved by this video?” she pestered, not happy that she was missing some point. The lack of a response from me made her venture to guess why Serena seemed important to me right now, while our lives seem to have come to a standstill.

Was it the daunting speed of Serena’s aces or the power of her backhand?

Was it the unmatched records of her Grand Slam victories?

Or was it the emotional appeal in the video, Serena trying to pack her life’s wisdom in a two-minute video, for her baby?

The answer I gave seemed terribly simple for all the flush of emotions I had been displaying.

“It is because she is a mom,” I said.

I could see my daughter had a loud “So what?” written all over her face.

“It is just that she is a mom,” I continued. “A returning mom. Doesn’t matter that she is returning to sport. It is the overpowering image of a mom returning to her life, reclaiming her life, the life she always knew before she hit pause. You won’t understand it. But every mom will.”

After some moments, my daughter replied, “You are right Ma. Yes, I get that it is hard. But I may not get HOW hard. I do understand now that when we talk of or watch Serena, it is not just her game.

 “I am conscious she is ‘getting back’ to her game, which is very different from ‘getting on’ with her game.

“It mustn’t be easy, after going through the life changing experience of becoming a mom. I don’t claim to know how much it means to young moms out there, but I do understand it means something. Someone to look up to. Someone like you, who pulled through. Some one who gives you hope.

“And I know what you will say now Ma, more than the game and the technique, Serena is sending out a message. As a mom. To another mom like you. And to any young girl like me, who is told there are so many reasons why women can’t take up the demands of a life-long career, sports or not. Well, there is one reason less now.”

There was something reassuring about hearing my daughter talk that way. It doesn’t take an expert to glean through and pick a few drops of hope from someone else’s story, someone else’s experience, however unknown their territory.

Now is not the time to convince our young ones that we have faced hardships. Now is the time to tell them that we lived through hardships and will do so yet again.

For now, I would only like to tell myself and all people out there, moms or not, working or not —

Many of us have hit pause before in our lives. And hard as it was, we always managed to resume.

There is no reason why we wont, this time.

Serena William’s video message for her little girl

Nidhi Mishra is an ex-banker who pivoted from a 10 year banking career to her passion for reading and luring others to read through her startup Bookosmia (smell of books). Bookosmia, a children’s content company has grown at a furious rate in the last two years, building an enviable bank of 270+ Intellectual Property, focused on bringing. She went to Lady Shri Ram College , Delhi University to pick up an Honours in Mathematics and a feminist flair on the side. An MBA from IIM Lucknow took her to a decade long career in the financial sector, finally quitting as VP, HSBC as she suffers from a (misplaced) sense of satisfaction and a drive to do something meaningful with her time. You can write to her at nidhi@bookosmia.com. Nidhi’s first children’s book “I Wish I Were” is retelling of an old Indian folklore in partnership with Parvati Pillai, ex-design Head of Chumbak received much global acclaim and is available on Kindle. 

Categories
Musings

Julie Felix: Singer, star-gazer and child of the universe

By Keith Lyons

There’s some wise advice that you should never meet your heroes in person, for fear of destroying their aura of invincibility. But what happens when you meet a childhood hero, the singer of a song which is still on rotate in the back-catalogue jukebox of your mind? This is a tribute to the great, late Julie Felix, a legend in her lifetime, who was more than just a bohemian folk singer who knew no borders.

Julie Felix

It is not easy to classify Julie Felix, who died the week before last, aged 81. Most of the labels don’t fit. Sure, you could tag her as a folk singer, as she had one of the longest careers in folk music, spanning more than half-a-century. The singer-songwriter was also a humanitarian and human rights activist, having been politicised in the 1960s and was active in peace and environmental movements. But to dismiss her just as a protest singer of yesteryear would be to ignore her much larger contribution.

Californian-born and raised Catholic (as a child she wanted to become a nun), Julie started singing at beach parties and coffee bars, then tripped around Europe, where she had a fateful meeting with Leonard Cohen on a Greek island in 1962. Arriving in the UK with just her guitar and duffel bag, the woman in her mid-twenties known for her strong voice and long black hair rose to prominence in 1960s beatnik England as folk music gained in popularity. She ended up spending much of her time on that side of the Atlantic, including a stint in Norway, dying peacefully in her sleep in a village north of London once rated the happiest places to live in the UK.

With Mexican, Welsh and Native American ancestry and heritage, the American, British-based recording artist was very much a global citizen who defied being placed in a box. Her passion for music was instilled by her father, a Mexican mariachi ensemble musician who played guitar and accordion, while her Welsh American mother liked the mournful ballads of Burl Ives — both her parents had Native American blood.

In 1964, even the British record label Decca Records didn’t know whether to place her debut album in the classical category for folk music or take the risk in marketing her music as ‘pop’ and mainstream. It was eventually decided she was a pop singer. That decision was a key moment in her career. She became a household name, TV star and Top Twenty recording artist. In the late sixties, perhaps oblivious to her Californian origins, The Times newspaper described the musician as ‘Britain’s First Lady of Folk’. She had an engaging voice and a charming manner, but never learned to read music. She put it down to being at the right place at the right time. “Fate whisked me along,” she said in an interview last year. And it was fate that led to me meeting Julie almost 30 years ago.

There’s a wise saying that you should never meet your heroes in person. Obviously, I chose to ignore that advice when I met Julie, my childhood hero of sorts.

I knew of her because she sang a song popular at primary school and on the radio, particularly on the New Zealand Sunday morning children’s hour show Small World where ‘Going to the Zoo’ was a popular request along with Spike Milligan’s fairytale ‘Badjelly the Witch’. ‘Daddy’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow . . . And we can stay all day!’ starts out with the catchy chorus: ‘We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, How about you, you, you? You can come too, too, too, We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo.’

The action song, complete with onomatopoeic animal noises, was a big hit at Nayland primary school, and it was a soundtrack on constant loop when we made a school trip to the nearby Tahunanui Zoo (now known as Natureland Wildlife Trust and more into wildlife conservation than a petting zoo), back before zoos became places to avoid because of their treatment and captivity of animals.

So, in 1992 I met up with Julie in the South Island of New Zealand and travelled around the Catlins area near Dunedin for almost a week with the legendary folk singer, hosted by Fergus and Mary Sutherland of Catlins Wildlife Trackers. At the time I was a budding writer, fresh out of post-graduate journalism school. As well as tagging along to write some stories for newspapers and magazines, I was quickly identified as the unofficial local guide, the fixer, and the fetcher. I was tasked with taking photos, opening wine bottles, and carrying her prized guitar. We hiked trails to spectacular waterfalls in the lush forest, visited panoramic coastal viewpoints, ventured into limestone cathedral arches, combed beaches looking for petrified tree fossils, and watched dolphins play in the surf.

At night, with no street lights, if the skies were clear, we’d go outside to admire the Southern Hemisphere stars with the Milky Way and its just-visible breakaway of large Magellanic cloud, and the constellations unfamiliar to Julie, such as the Southern Cross, or ones easily recognisable, such as Orion, which were differently oriented compared to night skies in Europe and North America. “This is where I belong,” she declared after a long session of awed gazing, “I am a child of this wonderful universe.”

On that adventure was the glamorous American health and beauty author, Leslie Kenton, daughter of jazz musician Stan Kenton. There was a little bit of tension on our sightseeing trip, as Leslie, former health and beauty editor at Harpers and Queen, and author of Raw Energy and The X Factor Diet was into raw food for vitality and longevity, while Julie was more into living in moment rather than her appearance, the future or order. She didn’t wear make-up, she dressed in comfortable clothes, and she enjoyed the occasional puff on hand rolled cigarettes. It wasn’t quite a reckless rock n’ roll lifestyle, more of a down-to-earth, unpretentious, good-hearted existence.

Julie’s habits were met with a disapproving look from radiant Leslie, who was three years younger — though it was health freak Leslie who died earlier, in 2016, aged 75, near Christchurch, having been charmed enough by New Zealand from that first visit to decide to move permanently.

The slight clash of personalities, Julie later confided to me, was mainly astrological. Fortunately, we got on well, possibly because I didn’t want to change her in any way, had no expectations, and I also shared Julie’s skepticism, about the virtues of coffee enemas. Though I must admit, I did hope that at some stage she would sing THAT song.

Julie would roll her eyes after another plea from Leslie to try a new-fangled supplement, recently-discovered treatment or life-changing product. “Where are we going to tomorrow?” she once asked me to divert Leslie’s attention, so she could go out for some fresh air and a smoke. “To the zoo,” I replied, hoping to subtly remind her of the song I wanted to hear her sing.

During the trip, Julie didn’t feel the need to impress, even though she had an impressive CV and contact list. She had become the first solo folk performer to sign with a major British record label, and in 1965 she was the first folk singer to fill the Royal Albert Hall – that same year she was the first ‘popular’ singer to perform at Westminster Abbey. She even had her own primetime BBC TV programme (the first colour series produced by the BBC), after being a member of David Frost’s satirical ‘Report’ team.

Her own series ‘Once More With Felix’ included guests The Bee Gees, The Kinks, Fleetwood Mac, The Hollies and Spike Milligan. Julie, with her dark, long hair, was often compared to (and sometimes mistaken for) fellow American and Californian resident Joan Baez. Even though she still had an exotic West Coast accent, a US passport, and sang songs penned by American’s Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon, she was once dubbed ‘Britain’s answer to Joan Baez’.

Among her contemporaries and friends were Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie (‘This Land is Your Land’), Dusty Springfield, Paul McCartney, Cat Stevens, Jimmy Page, and Leonard Cohen. She once opened for Dylan at the Isle of Wright Festival, later did a cover of his peace song ‘Masters of War’, and so liked the fellow Gemini’s music, she recorded a double-album of his songs. Julie was one of McCartney’s girlfriends, and it is said he sang ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ to her before it was first performed publicly. She is credited with being the person who taught Cohen how to turn his poems into songs. If you get the chance, there’s a Youtube clip of her singing with Cohen ‘That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1EJ-ITAcEU). It was Cohen’s British TV debut.

Julie was born in Santa Barbara, but couldn’t get her musical career off the ground in the US, so with savings of US$1000 in her pocket, and inspired by Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, she hitchhiked across Europe (meeting Cohen in Greece on the bohemian island of Hydra and lending him her guitar), and then found a bigger audience in the UK, where she stayed for decades.

She once got arrested at Heathrow airport for possession of cannabis and carrying more than the allowable amount of cash — that was more than 50 years ago.

She first came to New Zealand in 1971, singing to a record-breaking crowd of 27,000 at Western Springs in Auckland, urging Kiwis to reject conscription for the Vietnam War. But she wasn’t just a singer of protest songs, she had a deep concern for the world, the environment, and its people, particularly those less well off. As well as being a singer, social justice, human rights and peace were important to her, and she was involved in many initiatives, charities and humanitarian causes for women’s rights, refugees, and victims of oppression, including projects to end the military use of landmines in Third World countries, and as an ambassador in the Middle East and Africa for Christian Aid.

One of her most requested songs is ‘Deportee (Plane Wreck at Lost Gatos)’, about the mistreatment of migrant farmers, while her top hit was ‘If I Could’, best known as the Simon & Garfunkel version ‘El Condor Pasa’ which starts off with the ‘I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail . . .’ And of course, among a younger audience, she was the voice behind the ‘Going to the Zoo’ song, which featured in her second album released in 1966 (that song was also sung by Peter, Paul & Mary).

At the end of the week, with Julie rejuvenated from the New Zealand natural scenery and serenity, (and with better access to tobacco, alcohol and spicy, ‘well-cooked’ food), she had a concert in Dunedin, and I got to be her temporary road manager, carrying her guitar, the treasured one from her father. After the soundcheck, one of her devoted fans, who had met her two decades earlier during the anti-Vietnam War era, snuck into the green room, and pressed upon her a tinfoil containing marijuana that he’d especially prepared just for her.

There was a surprisingly large turnout, with an older audience of loyal followers eager to hear her voice again, which had gone a little dusky over the years (she was then in her mid-50s), similar to the vocal trajectory of Joni Mitchell, thanks to the nicotine habit. On some of her songs, everyone sang along. After helping her out (‘Keith, where can I get . . . ‘ she would ask), I thought perhaps she’d do ‘Going to the Zoo’ as one of the encore pieces.

So if you haven’t heard it before, or if you did a long, long time ago, you can still hear Julie sing ‘Going to the Zoo’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgCiE_tiyQo). It is quite a good song if you currently are in coronavirus lockdown with children to entertain or care for. It ends with this:

Well we stayed all day and I’m gettin’ sleepy, Sittin’ in the car gettin’ sleep sleep sleepy, Home already gettin’ sleep sleep sleepy, ’Cause we have stayed all day.

Listening to her sing, as I stood backstage, I realised why I liked her, and it was because her voice reminded me of a simpler time, when I was young, when things seemed more black-and-white. “This world goes round and round, green leaves must turn to brown, what goes up must come down, It all comes back to you,” she sang out Tom Paxton’s ‘World Goes Round and Round’. “People knocking at the golden door, they got plenty but they still want more, don’t know what they’re looking for, the world goes round and round.” She has also sung Paxton’s ‘The Last Thing on My Mind’. It was Paxton who wrote ‘Going to the Zoo’. But did I get to hear her sing that zany song? Nope.

The next day, before Julie headed off on her travels (she wanted to go bungy jumping over the Shotover River in Queenstown), she confided that she did sometimes sing ‘Going to the Zoo’, but the performance was usually reserved for a much younger audience. “Keith, I’ve been singing that damn song for more years than you’ve been on this precious earth.”

She took away a few pebbles and shells we’d found on our shore and estuary ramblings, and I made her a booklet of photos from the trip. After our time together, we kept in touch.

A few years ago, she said that when she sings live, she taps into a great energy, and it was her way of praying. “Music is like breathing to me,” she declared. In one of her most recent interviews, she said she missed her youth and the energy she once had but was grateful at being able to make music and share it with others.

She was still touring, recording and performing into this year, with an album released in 2018 of her own songs, and a schedule of concerts planned for 2020. She had even teamed up Mike D’Abo from Manfred Mann to do songs they’d performed together more than half a century ago, including Bob Dylan’s ‘Fare Thee Well’ with the lines ‘So it’s fare-thee-well, my own true love, We’ll meet an-other day, an-other time’ (see this from 1967 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsH0xPFbV0g).

She died on Sunday 22nd March, a couple of days after another 81-year old who had made a contribution in expanding the audience for a music style and making it more mainstream, Kenny Rogers, and on the weekend when the UK went into lockdown.

Julie leaves a deep legacy not just musically, but in her ideals, and how she strived to make a difference. She was both a product of her time, and ahead of her time, in wanting to make the world a better place, and being prepared to speak up, particularly for those without a voice. In a divided world, she saw no divisions, only an unrealised global consciousness, that we are all one, all children of the universe.

Keith Lyons is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor, originally from New Zealand, who has lived in Asia for more than a dozen years. His creative non-fiction, short stories, and poetry have been published in journals, magazines and anthologies around the world, and his work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He edited and co-authored ‘Opening up Hidden Burma: journeys with – and without – author Dr Bob Perival’ (2018, Duwon Books), and is currently working on a book about finding Asia’s last island paradise, the Mergui Archipelago.

Categories
Musings

Hope never dies; not even during the times of Corona

By Rituparna Mahapatra

This feels so dystopian. The world today. The television streaming clippings of people, suddenly thrown out of work and asked to leave, to go back to wherever; just leave. Isolation is the keyword, it seems. Lock yourself in your homes, if you don’t have a home somewhere; in a drain pipe, a hole, a box anywhere. Just leave they have been told. They have been let down by the cities of their dreams, the people they worked for, the world collectively. Can we do anything about it? Nothing! And we hang our heads in shame, in our living rooms.

Panic grips as I learn, in Italy the death toll has crossed ten thousand. I don’t want to know, but the WhatsApp forwards, don’t let me be. I have heard great leaders speak that they have everything under control, the fear on their faces, still visible. I don’t believe them. I look for the latest data on a live update on the virus, my finger going touching the names of the places, I had dreams of visiting.

I live in one of the most affluent cities in the world, we have been blessed with abundance. Food, water, electricity, shelter. our city is being sanitized I hear, and I feel protected. But then fear is not far behind, every time I get to know someone, who is not supposed to have stepped out of the home; is irresponsible.

The truth is, none of us is safe anymore, anywhere. Dubai, New Delhi, New York, Madrid, Rome, Paris; all of them vulnerable, and heartachingly weak in the face of this Pandemic. I try and think of something cheerful and look at a picture of our friends on my phone at the last house party.  So, we decide to meet online, the familiar faces smiling back to me from a computer screen. We laugh, chat and raise a toast. It feels like ‘almost normal’.  It will be a while till we get to hug them touch them, till then these smiling faces are good enough. I am thankful for them. This will be over soon. This surreal life that we are living in.

Our kids are attending school from their bedrooms, sometimes huddled in their beds; their identities shrunk to initials. Their beloved teachers are just faces attempting to cheer them up while teaching. They struggle to focus on solving that equation, while the pet dog lying at their feet is vying for attention. Dogs and cats are immune to the virus, I am told. You can hug them as much as you can. That for me seems to be the only silver lining.

I share pictures of my cooking with my friends, a beautiful watermelon and feta cheese salad, tossed with balsamic vinegar. I have stocked up well to cook exotic meals so that my family is not bored. I have planned our meals for days in advance, every meal promises to be a surprise, to bring a twinkle in the eye. While I bask and revel in my culinary and ‘disaster management skills’; a friend shares a picture of an old lady walking alone towards home thousands of miles away, since transport has been shut for the Pandemic. More pictures come in of people swarming, towards a place. A place that will be safe for them. Does such a place exist? What do these people know of social distancing? Social distancing is a privilege, for them.  I cringe, my stomach churns and I feel terribly uneasy. The privileges I have are the reason, I am devasted by them.

This — I am told is grief. Oh, is it?  If this is grief, then it’s good. I am relieved. My greatest fear was that one day I will be sanitized to all these happenings around me. The face of that old woman is going to haunt me. I feel guilty of being blessed with an abundance of food, of shelter, of feeling happy, after chatting with my friends. Since, when has this crept into our lives? Since when has ‘feeling happy’ become loaded with so much of heaviness and helplessness. This is becoming too much, these ramblings in my mind. These are calamities I can do nothing about. I still have to cook, sing, paint, write; do things that make me happy and keep me sane.

Suffering has always been there in this world; even before I was. Every time someone laughed, there has been at least one person somewhere in utter sadness. I grieve for all things lost, for everything that shouldn’t have happened. I have tremendous respect for the health workers, the cleaners, the researchers looking for an antidote. Each one of them, who have risked their lives for mine. And I am not going to just clap, I will do more, I promise.  While most of the things look grim; I have hope. Hope for humanity to bounce back. This is a time for great learning, at every moment. We will do our bit in our way when we are ready.

The world has shrunk, we all have come together. There is no superior nation, no superior power anymore. We all have been battered equally; we stand broken. And we will come out of it collectively, till then we have to hold on to each other. Cherish every happy occasion and shed a tear for every death, in every corner of the earth. Because that is the balance, the fulcrum on which this world will keep going. My family back home, are making bread at home to distribute to the stray dogs. They are making sure that the wages are paid to the employees. These small things; are hope personified. I am sure there are many like this amongst us. We just have to find ways. There is a way. There always is. I smile; this time without feeling guilty. I sigh and cup my face with my hands. Someone shrieks, “no don’t touch your face”. I dash towards the rest room, wash my hands, reach out for the sanitizer bottle, and say a prayer!

Rituparna Mahapatra, is writer based in Dubai. She taught English literature at Sambalpur University, Orissa and Delhi University. She worked briefly with Britannica India, and has contributed to many leading newspapers both regional and national. Currently she is editor-at-large UAE, of Kitaab.org; and teaches creative writing in English.

Categories
Musings

Corona and my uncle

By Archana Mohan

Apparently, my 75 year old uncle, Kailash, is immortal.

His astrologer, the one whose perennially hanging VIP undies on the terrace are a Google Maps landmark, told him so.

I quote my uncle verbatim. “My Jupiter is in the 6th house and even if I want to, I cannot get killed this year.”

And so, whereas we ‘snowflakes’ stay at home and wash our hands till the fate line disappears, cool dude Kailash walks around the empty streets every evening without a mask or care in the world.

Do you know a Kailash? You probably do.

Do you mutter under your breath when they wash their hands and fail to do a rotational rub of their thumb clasped in the other hand’s palm? Ah! Newb.

Do you roll your eyes when they dismiss it as a ‘made in China’ defective virus?

And when they send you forwards on Whatsapp about the power of raw ginger juice in keeping the virus at bay, what do you do? Do you smirk, ignore and go back to the Mexican drug cartel show you have been binge watching?

Congratulations! People like Uncle Kailash aren’t the problem. You and I are.

We mock these senior citizens about being PhDs from Whatsapp University but forget that the same university sends them gory images of victims and statistics that probably scare the daylights out of them.

They know that people of their age, especially those with underlying health conditions are twice as likely to develop serious outcomes from the corona virus as compared to otherwise younger, healthier people.

And that is why they forward messages that claim to know ‘nature’s cures’. They aren’t stupid. They are scared.  And raw garlic, gives them hope.

The virus wasn’t made in China. It is being made here, at our home, everyday. For when an ‘Uncle Kailash’ acts out and refuses to conform to the lockdown, he isn’t ‘pig headed’. He is scared.

Scared that 200 people in your area have been quarantined. Scared that he and his family will be one of ‘those’.

He doesn’t have the luxury to switch off from the crisis and ‘work from home’ as you do. He cannot meet the friends who sail on the same boat as him. He struggles with video calls. He is worried sick about his daughter in the States. He keeps checking his medicine cabinet. Anything can happen.

He hasn’t told you but he knows that even though his astrologer says he is immortal, he really isn’t. He knows that life is like a mutual fund investment. It is subject to market risks and even if you read all scheme related documents carefully, you could still get burnt.

He is so petrified by what is going on, that he cannot sleep. He has questions. Many, many of them and he is afraid to know the answers.

He is dying to speak. To unburden. He yearns for a kind word. A reassuring pat. A kiss from a grandchild. A cup of hot tea, with extra ginger. New gossip about the neighbour. Anything. Even an off-color joke about his favourite actress just to lighten up, to take his mind off the fear. Even if, for just a few minutes.

But where to start?  He sneaks a look at you. You are wearing headphones.  Your eyes are glued to your device. You are probably busy. He really doesn’t want to intrude. He backs off.

Later that night, he sees that your phone is charging. Perhaps he could try one more time. He gathers courage and sends you a forward.

Ting!  A new Whatsapp message.

‘Congratulations! UNESCO has declared ‘Jana Gana Mana’ as the best national anthem of the world,’ it reads. You read it but don’t react. Old Uncle Kailash at it again. These oldies! The worst mistake we made was introducing them to Whatsapp.

87% charged. That’s good enough.

You plug the phone out from the charging cable and get back to your binge watching.

You are watching ‘Contagion’, a 2011 movie about a deadly virus that is about to cause misery to the entire human race.

Unknown to you, there is a deadly virus in the other room eating up an old, terrified man.

It is called loneliness.

Archana Mohan is  the co-founder of Bookosmia (smell of books) a children’s content company that delivers brilliant content to the world through Sara — India’s first female sports loving character. Her book Yaksha, India’s first children’s book on the dying folk art form of Yakshagana received wide acclaim. She has worked as  a  journalist, corporate blogger and editor working with names like Business Standard, Woman’s Era, Deccan Herald, Chicken Soup for the Soul and Luxury Escapes Magazine.  She won the Commonwealth Short Story contest’s ‘Highly Commended Story’ award in 2009. She loves interacting with budding writers and has conducted journalism workshops in colleges.Do check out Bookosmia’s website https://bookosmia.com/about-us/ for more information.