Dear Reader, we meet again. Seven months ago, when the nation went under an unplanned lockdown, I found out the key to an ancient room which was kept locked. I turned in the key to find out that the room lives and breathes as it is, exactly the way I had walked out of it. Unfinished articles and manuscripts mocked me indeed, a coffee mug reeked of old coffee dregs, and this laptop of mine.
I dusted off the cobwebs and I poured in the latent anger that was roaring within. Fractured healthcare, migratory birds were no more romantic, head of the Nation being in his own head as revolutionary minds were put behind bars because how else would you cash this lockdown?! Seven months ago, what-ifs crowded in this dull mind, conveniently escaped by binge-watching, stress eating, working tirelessly and drinking coffee at a pace of drinking water.
The collective impact of this lockdown has been debilitating but empowering at the same time. Old puzzles were solved while embracing new ones with care, affection and empathy. The concept of Time created a thick fog while I struggled to make Dalgona Coffee like everyone else. Time unfurled itself like an electric blue woolen ball that Dimma used to sew sweaters for me while I appreciated monsoons for the very first time in my life. Self doubt haunted like Banquo’s ghost while I took shots of cowardice more than Macbeth could ever manage to gulp in. It takes immense courage to be a coward too.
Dear Reader, hope I’m not waltzing on your nerves and you are walking with me?
If not, we can stop for a quick smoke. Today is a melancholic morning, you know. Even in this monumental chaos, my city has decked up for Durga Pujo. Today is the penultimate day, Nobomi, and tomorrow the Goddess leaves, only to return the next year. Isn’t this breeze sweet and calm?
All these days of restricted festivities, through the frosted glass of cabs, amidst the sonorous pangs of the metallic radio playing, all I felt was a sense of desolate hopelessness when I saw the crowd outside. Mothers, fathers, children. lovers, friends, adorning masks are out and about, in the expense of medical bills and state-mandated humiliation and survival, per se, walking with tired faces and even more tired souls, to capture a glimpse of hope, a futile sense of ‘everything is fine’. I see that you are done with your smoke. Let’s walk a bit, shall we?
No, dear Reader. I am not being a pessimist when I say desolate hopelessness. I am trying to channelize the vibrant optimism that I had seen outside the cab windows. Yesterday evening, I stretched out my hand through the window and I scooped some in my hands and I tried eating it.
Do you think it would work? Life would have been a cakewalk if we could pop pills of optimism, but I digress.
The usual crowd of Pujo is missing on the streets. The city decked herself up only to know that Love/r will not be arriving this year. She heaved and sighed, curled her lips and she understood. Ever forgiving, Her love is omnipresent. You know, apart from the rational and practical problems that the virus has served us on a silver platter, that are hammering the rationale and practicality incessantly and consistently, it has also spun the web of nuanced emotions, untouched, un-understood, unaddressed.
I should assure you, that emoting is the most powerful and empowering stance that a person could posit. Literature created havoc once during essential turns of history. The entire discipline of creation stands on a singular ground, emotions.
Dear Reader, while I look at your face that I realize that there is strange fatigue looming around you like an unavoidable pallor. Shall we rest under this tree a bit?
Okay.
Let’s sit then.