Cover Image Source - The author's own photo (digitally altered)
Friday, 7:30 AM. The mobile alarm was ringing. I woke up and turned the alarm off. I opened WhatsApp and sent ‘good morning’ to the official WhatsApp group created by my bosses. It is regular routine for me. I work for a draconian organization, where work-from-home was a utopian concept previously. The city is locked down due to coronavirus outbreak and the government has imposed home quarantine for everyone. So, my employer didn’t have any choice. But the ancient buffoons, running my organization, really couldn’t chalk out the work-from-home plan basically. I do nothing nowadays except sending 3-4 official reports by mail. My organizational business is at standstill. The ‘good morning’ wish sent by me in the early morning serves as my virtual attendance in the work life basically. It denotes that I’ve woken up from the sleep to start my slothful day. I’ve no choice, as it has become a practice in my organization post lock down. Okay, the message is sent. Now, I can sleep till 10AM. Yeah! That’s a subroutine.
My humdrum day has started. Nothing exciting happens throughout the day. I’ve piled up grocery items in my home. It is always difficult to stand in the serpentine queue to buy such items. My nearest grocer has registered 10 times sales in last 10 days. Yes, lock down started 10 days back. As usual, my WhatsApp and Telegram have been bombarded with numerous coronavirus jokes, memes and dreadful messages. Someone has forwarded an unverified news about the virus being air borne! I remembered that once upon a time, we used to pay for sending text messages. The world has changed a lot rapidly. I was afraid of masked men in the childhood. My mother used to tell me numerous kidnap stories and somehow I associated ‘mask’ with kidnappers vigorously. Now! It seems that a masked companionship is gonna be the new societal norm.
This virus thing is really big! It’s spreading so fast. Am I gonna die? I can’t be a saint to create closure with my loved ones and prepare to say farewell to life. I never had endless thoughts of death. But this social isolation thing is terrible. It injects swirling thoughts into the mind. I just realized that isolation can cause morbid thoughts. Wasn’t I always aware that I was mortal? I generally play word completion task with my 5 years old daughter in my free time. I was playing yester-evening. Just realized that COFF_ _ can become ‘coffee’ or ‘coffin’. I also actualized that my vocabulary stock has magnified in last a few days! Does grey matter enlarges when brain remains idle?
I don’t like the ‘idiot box’ but switched it on to watch the evening news. Our prime minister has appeared in the television screen. In a thespian tone, he just urged countrymen to dispel the darkness spread by coronavirus by lighting candles on April 5. Immediately I started to receive extra-ordinary numerological and astrological explanations of his suggestion in my chat apps. My dull head didn’t get what Mr. PM wanted to say. He keeps on saying strange things nowadays. The hospital beds are limited in the country. There aren’t enough supply of medical equipment or masks. The economy is halted. Foreign reserve is depleting and the country isn’t prepared enough to fight this viral menace. It seems that we’re living a ‘Bigg Boss’ life and my PM appears occasionally to give a new task to us. Hope is eternal. Hope doesn’t die. Hope it helps. Hope it saves!
My wisest friend just called me up. He started with how China suppressed many facts regarding the outbreak and pushed the world into a danger. He ended the conversation by cursing communism and calling it a fragile authoritarian edifice. Do we really have enough data about the spread of illness, age distribution and modes of transmission? I’m not sure. Every day, I get numerous contradictory information and conspiracy theories regarding the spread of virus. This is not the end of the world. But this virus may change the social policies and mechanisms. It’s war. World War V. V for Virus! We’re combating an invisible enemy now.
It’s late evening now. Generally we do dinner early at home nowadays post lock down. I need to finish my write up. My wife just yelled at me, “Come to kitchen! You’re not going to get a posthumous award for blogging!”
Note: The images, which are not cited, are generated by the author using free vectors. This post is written as response to the initiative of @theycallmedan
Well, we upvoted and rehived your post to thousand followers.. Thank you very much to choose us as your witness and curator.
It’s so awfull all the sadness and deaths, I hope we all have a solution quick and I wish you health and safety
Tnx for wish. We all want recovery from this
It does feel a bit as if we are at war at the moment :)
Rightly it seems that