I feel like— we have entered a dystopian novel, a graphic chapter in a history text book where nothing makes sense & everything is unpredictable, but my life goes untouched, as I continue to work from my study, eat what my parents cook, learn to draw online & have the internet give me hope & anxiety reminding me of my privilege, in a tiny pebble-in-my-shoe kind of a way or a car-full-of-men-following-me-in-the-night way by turn, making me question my sanity when the banging of utensils instead of reminding me of togetherness, reminds me that humans like cats are distracted by shiny media gimmicks, leading to a constant borderline worry for all of us, & more for people lacking economic, social, cultural capitals, to whom quarantine means going hungry, who don’t stand a chance at the ventilator, if the government doesn’t do something real fast, so when things get bad, when not if, it will irradiate them from this country; these economically & religiously poor, without really affecting me, the rich, with a fighting chance at the ventilator, MH medicines that keep a mind afloat & a system that affords, the feeble hope of a relative-sitting-outside-the-ICU; a hope that the people who come out of this will be kind, aware, grateful; the dolphins will stay back in Bombay, people will hold close people they care for, do more things for joy, will learn to pick their democrats better, or won’t, but will remember what can be done for people with crippled bodyminds, if powerful people put their minds to it while I, on Instagram, in the easy manner of the entitled, talk of the delicate joy of brief hope & freedom from anxiety of the moments at home; like when papa mumma taught me Surya Namaskar, I did a skin care thing for papa, saw D’s puppy friend, spent a whole day calling myself a diva because I used lemon rind, mixing with it the tough times like the mornings when mummy is agitated, R is in pain & I wake up with a chest ache, throwing in a biased anecdote of strength involving Goldie tasting a lemon or R singing ‘piya tose’ at the end that will stink of survivor’s guilt —something’s come loose in my head.
