I always felt so blessed to live in the city of joy, Kolkata. The place taught me to live a busy, but charming and kind life. But things started changing in the past several days. Most of the places of Kolkata became COVID-19 containment zones. I observed that all the rush on the road, and hope in our minds, just stopped suddenly.
It seems this pandemic paused our life with no surety of when we can really resume it again. I can see how anxiety and ageism affect a small middle-class businessperson, my father. I realize the misery of a student life, my little sister, who is just stuck between two semesters of her new college life. My introvert mother has already tried several ‘nuska’ (remedies) on us to improve our immunity, so that we can win this race of ‘survival of the fittest’. We all know that this pandemic actually affected us a lot in many ways, which makes it difficult to deal.
Then Came Lockdown Day #56!
When Kolkata just started to digest the fact that we have to make COVID-19 a part of our daily life, a six-hour-long severe supercyclone devastated our life.
Pluvial flooding destroyed our little hope; it seems like collapsed trees and houses just portrayed how distressed we really are now. Will it be right if I use the metaphor of the fact that no electricity is actually showing us that there is no more hope left to stand up again?
I have never felt so hopeless.
Living with the double burden of the pandemic and the cyclone is not an easy thing, but we need to have patience.
In the words of Nachiketa Chakraborty,
“One day the storm will stop,
The world will be calm again.”