The Corona Isolation Diary - Day 291

 

It has been almost 10 months since Corona happened and Lockdown occurred and life became unrecognisable. One is almost used to this "new normal" by now. I haven't been to a single adda, gone out for a single cup of coffee, or seen any friends face to face in this entire time. just a couple of video calls with the Univ gang, and endless work meetings is all the exposure I have to any face other than those at home. Mentally, where I am is beyond description or explanation, and not really worth the time to try to expand. I've given up thinking about it, particularly since there is absolutely nothing i can do about it until things change drastically. 

Money is a huge issue, and another where there is nothing to be done until a miracle happens. Credit card dues are piling up, loans are not being serviced as one wishes, insurance is gone, lapsed without timely premium payments. one more reason I refuse to think of the physical symptoms right now, because I simply do not have the money or the insurance to deal with whatever ails me. 

That's the bad stuff. some good stuff is happening as well... 

Picked up the pencils again, after some 23 years, from sheer boredom, and while the first few attempts were pretty pathetic, and I'm still nowhere near the quality I had managed to get to way back in the past, at least it is something to do where the results are not totally a waste of time.

But the biggest gain from this time of self isolation and social distancing is how much time and attention has gone into the relationship with monkey. So much quality time has been spent, so much cuddling and kisshies have been dispensed, so many "I love you"s said. At least one is assured now that when one is gone, of all the things monkey wonders, "did mamma love me" will never be one. There can now not be the slightest doubt on that front. 

All the homebound quality time has also allowed for some serious heavy duty "talk time". Another major plus. 
 

The Corona Isolation Diary - Day 138

Things are getting more interesting as weeks go by… and by interesting I mean weird, messed up, crazy, etc etc, of course. There is no end in sight, and things just keep getting worse… places are starting to get their second waves, numbers are spiking across the board, and India is just about starting the massive first wave we know is coming. Degrees of separation with affected people is getting fewer. From just hearing on the news we have got to a place where I personally know them, or they are a friend of a friend. This shit is real.

At the same time, “anti-restriction” protests are getting bigger and spreading. Anti vaxxers, anti maskers, idiots who think a mask will restrict their oxygen flow, and selfish assholes who simply don’t want the inconvenience and see a conspiracy in anything they are “told” to do, are out on the streets en masse, screaming and shouting about their fundamental rights to have a haircut even at the cost of hundreds of lives. Community transmission is thankful to these morons who are now the super-spreaders of the virus, they will be instrumental in bringing the death tally up to the millions and in crashing entire health care systems. I would say good riddance to bad rubbish, let them all get Corona and suffer the consequences, but sadly, thanks to these dweebs, and their idiocy, it becomes more and more likely that the bug will reach, and often kill, even people who ARE being sensible, who ARE taking logical precautions. So, we will pay for their shenanigans. And the fact that spikes in infection DO happen after every major event of this sort with people without masks completely ignoring physical distancing is no longer deniable. Recent history of aborted attempts at sports gatherings, religious festivals, and more has amply proved that whenever morons congregate in large numbers flouting basic safety in the name of “freedom”, massive spikes in numbers happen.

India is now pretty close to being at the top of the list in the matter of both new infections and deaths… and this is super scary, because given the numbers being released, and knowing how much of a gap there always is in “official” numbers and real ones, the real numbers are likely to be seriously freaky. And this means so many things. It is not just the fear and real possibility that every delivery, every trip to the grocers, every time domestic workers or plumbers or electricians enter the home, they might be bringing in disaster. It is not just the fact that although I and mine are taking all possible precautions, we are still hostage to the vagaries of fate and the actions of millions of idiots increasing our chances of being affected regardless. It’s surreal, like one of those ethics conundrums I like to pitch at my students, about whether saving a large number of people – who were doing the wrong thing - justifies sacrificing the one person who was doing the right thing.

That’s the baseline… this constant anxiety, surfacing or hidden, ignored or acknowledged about the bug coming home… me, I don’t mind so much for me, might even welcome it if I was sure to be carried off… but I do have a partner and a child, both of whom are in the high risk groups. And them being affected is NOT a pleasant thought, to say the least. But that’s just a tip of the situational iceberg – isn’t it? What about work, and money? As of now, unless something drastic happens, some sudden windfall or some amazing deal going through, not only do I not have any certainty of being able to meet bills and payments next month, I have no insurance cover of any sort – neither health nor life – meaning that in a situation of extremity, illness, death, disaster, I have zero recourse. I am not even thinking of doctors for things that ARE wrong and going wrong in the normal course of things, as of now, because I cannot afford the actions which will become necessary, as soon as I do.

And this is just the beginning. Given what the pandemic and resulting changes are going to do to global economic systems, what is the future going to look like, work-wise, when it finally happens? It seems likely that things will remain more or less this way for at least another year. This sporadic opening and closing of everything… voluntary isolations, lockdowns, and closures is unlikely to significantly change until a vaccine becomes mass produced enough to be commercially available and affordable to most people. And that does not seem possible in any way in any hurry. Under normal circumstances it takes, what, 10 years to develop, test, produce and market a vaccine. Even with the pressures of the situation, there is only so much faster that things can go… so I don’t see an effective vaccine even being discovered before the end of this year or further along. After that comes the entire process of production and distribution… with 7.8 billion people on this rock, what are the odds of a majority being vaccinated, or even vaccines being easily and readily available in third world countries anytime soon?

And until that happens, I am not sending monkey to school, or risking any resumption of a “normal” routine. Which means, realistically, this self imposed situational house arrest is unlikely to end anytime before mid to late 2021 (if I am lucky) or later (if I am right). Given that I am barely stepping out of the house now (maybe once a month or so, more of a drive, with minimum contact with anyone, verbal or physical), I don’t see social life happening in a big way before then either. While people have been talking about having virtual “adda” through skype/zoom etc, I find myself strangely apathetic to the idea, in spite of how depressed and frustrated it makes me not to have my tribe around and not to be able to vent, bounce ideas, argue, etc. The head is not doing so well, as evidenced by the fact that I am sleeping something like 2 hours in every 24, not reading anything significant and barely anything insignificant because I cannot focus long enough to process a paragraph, mostly just feeling blank and calmish on the surface, not daring at all to look below it to the witches’ cauldron of whatever is going on just under the surface, what manifests as the regular nightmares and the extreme lack of energy for anything.

The anxiety and stress are surely not helping that situation either, for me OR for the diabetic hypertensive at home. Things can only get worse or more damaged – both physical and mental health wise – under the level of constant, low grade, buzz of worry that most of us are living with right now. The isolation, the fear, the uncertainly of what happens next, the surety that things as we knew them are gone, that normal will never be the same, the complete absence of a sense of steadiness, of continuity, of certainty, security… it all adds up to a pretty bleak scene.

And then there are the unforeseen, unanticipated effects… Recently a much loved relative, someone who was like a mother to my fellow and who loved me and showed me so much love from the day I met her, passed away from cancer. Under normal circumstances, her last month or more would have been filled with multiple visits from us. As it was, with lockdowns and such, we only managed to travel to the village AFTER we heard the news of her passing, and that was just an evening, where fellow was not even able to go to the cremation because of restrictions. Her two daughters live farther away, one in a remote part of the state and another out of state. Both were unable to travel at all, and not able to see their mother one last time or say goodbye. Sounds like not much, but the feeling of unfinished business, of an absence of closure is a burden to add to all the burdens. This disruption of the social rituals and norms we have created over time to help people deal with so much, both happiness and agony, sadness and laughter, joy and pain, is going to have some very serious long term repercussions I think, in the cumulative effect it will have on individual mental health.

Another side effect of morons and faulty systems has been the spike in deaths from other preventable causes. Yesterday a young activist in her 30s succumbed to a lung infection which could have been easily cured if there were enough beds and equipment available. This is just one of the many cases happening everyday of people being turned away from hospital after hospital until they pass away in the ambulance or at home. Or there are the cases of people dying of Covid-19 related causes, and hospitals refusing to release bodies until unbelievably exorbitant bills are met (40 lakhs in one case).

So, even if you are lucky enough to find a bed and get admitted, quality of care, affordability etc are completely arbitrary and most likely to be beyond most peoples’ means. 

So, as things stand, anything can kill you because we have for decades allowed healthcare to be unimportant, allowed conglomerates and pharma biggies to take over things and impose whatever prices they felt like, have relied on insurance (especially in the case o the employed middle classes) to happily live in a bubble of imagined invulnerability. Now we will face the consequences, and they will not be pretty. I would not be too surprised if things in developing nations at least get to the level of the plague and Spanish flu days, with bodies piling up in the streets and municipal sanitation services giving them mass burials or mass cremations.

What will be the long term economic impact, too? How many people will be laid off? How few of them will find employment again? What kind of employment? How will economic systems change and how bad will the depression get? How many will die from the virus? As likely, if most of the dead are among the middle and poorer classes, what will that do to production, supply chains, and more? What the hell will the working world even look like once this is finally over? And given that the crisis itself might take 2 or more years to pass (the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted a year and a half), and the resulting global repercussions are likely to last for up to a decade, what does that mean for monkey’s future? Hell, will I even live to see it? With the forced isolation and so on, drinking in most houses has gone through the roof, smokers are going through more coffin nails than ever before, meals are regular, and likely to be richer because you are trying to bring SOME variation to life, but exercise and activity are close to zero. All of this is bound to have a serious negative impact on health.

All in all, I am surprised at how calmly I am writing about it, talking about it with many people, while all the while being in such a major panic mode. It’s a bit like functioning on autopilot, seeing and knowing what I am doing, all the while a part of me, another me, sits in a corner shaking and screaming and tearing their hair out - having a full out panic attack.

The Corona Isolation diary - day 91

“One year of cryin' and the words creep up inside Creep into your mind, yeah

So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say”

“Open up my head and let me out”

Only instead of one year it’s more like forty, and the recent 90 days haven’t helped. Only all these things there are to say are just not sayable. Only every time I sit down to a blank sheet my mind decides to emulate it exactly. Only my mind is seething and churning and I am constantly on edge, but I am so supremely apathetic at the same time. Only writing about it is not just sustained and consistent and difficult effort but also pretty pointless because the words won’t come and I am not sure I want to say these things after all, or face them, or acknowledge them.

First of all, the existential angst, the imposter syndrome, the vague sense of disquiet, the malaise of the living… those are things one has lived with for as long as one can remember and it seems to make no sense to suddenly wish to articulate them all over again, or at last, for no apparent reason. Nothing really earth shattering has happened, nothing has changed (well not in the mental/emotional realm in any case) in any significant way, no major tectonic shift has occurred in the minutiae of life. It would only be so much “chorbito chorbon” as we say in Bangla… rechewing of chewed cud.

But hasn’t something changed? I suppose it has or I would not be pouring words out right now. A bright young man, who chose to be an actor because he loved it, and who did pretty OK in our dear temperamental Bollywood, was starting to become a star of sorts, and to show promise … died of suicide this week. This, as expected and usual, caused an outpouring of “mental health” related posts from netizens, ranging from the meaningless but benign “my door is always open” kind of tripe to the far more harmful suicide shaming of posts like “not fair” and “you shouldn’t have” and “please don’t”. There are even numerous ones shaming, guilting, denigrating and patronizing mental illness like the famous “don’t call him mentally ill he was a brilliant student and scholar and interested in astronomy and philosophy” one I keep seeing. Many, if not most, are putting the onus of the prevention/survival of mental illness issues on the person who is ill, with “reach out”, “pick up the phone and call me”, etc type messages, never mind that one of the most common things in depression, anxiety, and a range of other mental issues would be to make the person UNABLE to pick up the phone to talk about their issues or to “reach out”.

So yeah… that happened, and that sort of shook up my current state of apathy a bit. Not to mention the cumulative and pile-on effects of the dystopian pre apocalyptic times we are living in. 90 plus days of quarantine, self isolation (albeit with the significant other and the offspring), and social distancing are bound to take toll enough. Add to that the seeming decline in interest in the actual state of the pandemic, among people I know as well as strangers, and the world is just “going Disney and there’s nothing you can do”. The virus is well and truly still here. But worldwide people are behaving as if it isn’t. Throngs are hitting parks and beaches, demanding haircuts, and whatnot. Back home, a look out the window is showing me people riding triples on bikes – all sans masks – or strolling leisurely around in groups of 4 or 5 or more, all close together, all maskless. A small trip out of the house in the morning in Kolkata will just hit you with how “normal” everything looks. Because the Bengali would rather die of COVID 19 than be without “fresh” veggies and fish for ONE SINGLE DAY! So …. as the meme goes… some day we might have to say that “there was a community called Bengali who went extinct going to the market everyday”. And this is while lockdown is still in force, so I can only imagine what post lockdown Kolkata, and by extent India, is going to look like. Public transport is pathetically inadequate right now, especially to handle people in any kind of a virus safe way. As always, we have far more people than we have amenities, and hence the sheer population pressure on things like buses and auto rickshaws is going to make all these “fantasies” of maintaining social distancing and running at 1/2 occupancy and so on just as much of a pipe dream as feeding everyone and educating everyone has proved so far.

In other news, the fellow has been going to the odd meeting, and the frequency of that is set to increase, as things open up and people get back to work. This is a good thing, I keep reminding myself, as freelancers, self employed professionals, and small business owners, we need this. We need for work to happen and meetings to take place and deals to be struck. And yet, every time he puts on that mask and fishes out gloves and pockets the “travel sized” sanitizer, I am reminded of how much of a chance we are taking. Now, that chance is bad enough when one takes it for oneself. After all, you can only take so many precautions and do so much to protect yourself, and the rest of it is left to chance or god or the universe or what have you. But when you also have a 75 plus year old person and a teenage child in your ambit, things get significantly more complicated and far more anxiety and guilt inducing. My own life is mine to do with as I please, and I am happy to take chances with it, and well within my rights to do so. Do I have the same right to endanger two people who are not only close to me, but well within the high risk categories? And if I don’t, if we decide to become total hermits for the duration, and refuse to do anything that involves face to face interactions, we basically lose most of our work. After three months of practically no work, and severely depleted savings, is it wise? And does not my being poverty stricken and unable to provide also significantly harm these two people who are dependent on me?

So yeah, bit of a Catch-22 there, where practicality needs must win over debilitating fear, but which leaves a severe additional burden on the already mountainous pile of anxiety. Fun times. And just to make things more interesting, there is a pretty good chance I shall have to start going out fairly regularly myself for similar work related causes. On the one hand this fills me with enormous joy simply because I will FINALLY be out of this little two-bed-room-cage I have confined myself in for so long and actually see and interact with PEOPLE!!! For a basically extremely social person like me, the past 90 odd days have been a surreal version of purgatory and limbo on earth. A sort of endless Groundhog Day where nothing ever happens and each day is just a slightly different repeat of the one before. Where the only people I see or talk to are the fellow and the offspring and, occasionally the guy who delivers essential goods every once in a while. Where even video meetings seem unreal, and sort of vaguely disturbing because, to me, social interaction automatically means physical interaction to some extent. Seeing friends without the accompanying hugs and small touches and the actual (slightly but significantly) different sounds of voices undistorted by digitization, just seems like not seeing them at all. It is, on the other hand an addition to how many exposures this unit is participating in each week, and hence significantly increases chances of catching something, or passing it on to the two most vulnerable members of this unit.

And then there is the friction. Two extremely strong personalities, a Leo and a Scorpio, both used to speaking their minds, both strong of spine, and neither much used to self erasing in this very egalitarian relationship, is lovely under normal circumstances. It has kept us equal, happy, balanced, young, interested, and engaged for 19 years. Except…. All of those things?.... not so great for 90 days in close proximity ALL THE TIME! Space, each one having their own life, each with their own circles and interests, intersecting where common ground exists and using that to strengthen the rest; this has always been our, extremely successful, formula for a happy home and partnership. Which, of course, all falls apart when you, literally, have no physical space at all, never mind mental space; when neither has any semblance of a circle anymore, when interests are confined to respective handheld or desk/lap top gadgets. Add to this a cantankerous 75 year old, who is far along enough in their own second childhood (and naturally entrenched nature) to not be the most ideal person to share space with. And throw in a teenager working through adolescence (although remarkably well) while dealing with the stress, anxiety, and fears that this pandemic/lockdown situation has brought, confined to home, and unable to interact – in any significant way – with friends and peers; all in all, NOT the perfect recipe for peace and harmony in the residential sphere.

Continue this state of things for months on end, with no real end or solution in sight, and basically the entire future of the offspring, the unit, and the world as unsure as it is possible to be, and the sheer cumulativeness of the effect will ensure that things keep getting hairier and hairier. So, what starts as the occasional fulmination of one temper or another will soon escalate to a semi regular fusillade of snark from all quarters and a sort of never ending but all pervading, ever broiling sort of an atmosphere of constant and universal irritation, misunderstandings, over reactions, and general snappishness. We’re sort of in a “Defcon 3, but let’s not look directly at it lest we all implode/explode”, sort of a situation right now. And that doesn’t help the overall peachiness of life, if you know what I mean. 

Barring all that – not much one can complain about. We are all healthy, mostly happy, mostly well adjusted, currently non suicidal, not too depressed. We are all still able to get along without wanting to seriously murder or dismember each other (maybe just stab – a little bit – you know, in a non fatal way). We are still privileged enough to have a home, a car, enough money – even in our comparative penury – to supply ourselves with the basic needs and some non essential luxuries. We have electricity, internet, Netflix, Prime Video, Zoom, Google Classroom, and whatnot to make work, school, and leisure life easy. And most significantly, friction or not, we have each other to support and be supported, love and be loved, care and be cared for.

That, today, is enough.

The Corona Isolation Diary – Day 65

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The Corona Isolation Diary – Day 20

I haven’t been out of the house in 21 days. And even before that, for about a week, I was only going out once a day, in the evening, and that wasn’t to socialize or meet people. Essentially, I haven’t seen anyone since what feels like forever.

Most days, I’m ok… for the most part. We’re ok. We begin the day well enough. I wake normal and ok… and fellow actually has a fine excuse to go out most days “hunting and gathering” so presumably he is less confined and cabin fevery than me.

I am usually fine till about 4 pm. Work, chores, cooking, cleaning, bath, lunch, etc… after a late wake-up, usually takes care of the morning. I usually watch something on Netflix or amazon prime after lunch, trying to stay distracted and not think too hard about things. This works fairly well, almost all days so far.

Around 4 though I start to get restless and can’t focus on whatever I am watching, no matter how interesting it is. I feel hyper, short of breath, I itch all over, I cannot get comfortable, it’s just hellish. This continues till about 5 or 5.30 when I finally give up and go back to the living room. This is the start of our family evening, with tea, snacks, and the Carrom Board. After which, around 7, monkey has dinner and goes to bed, leaving the two of us to our “grown up time”.

Grown up time has been a tradition in our house from the very beginning. Monkey has always had an early bedtime, because I hate kids dancing on everyone’s heads till midnight and the parents having no time even to talk. For 14 years, this has been the time when fellow and I reconnect, talk, share nonsense, discuss world history and current events, listen to music, share a drink…whatever…

These days, it is the time when we pour ourselves some club soda, and focus on individual handhelds, anything to avoid looking at the TV screen, in my case at least, and the relentless regurgitation of corona corona corona. And then, there is the twice daily rerun of the Mahabharat and Ramayan. Cool enough in a nostalgic way, - how we watched them so avidly back when we were kids, and what not – not only are they just a little bit intolerable right now, in terms of quality, ethics, and so on, I also worry about the further saffronisation it is causing to a whole new generation of captive audience. It is not easy to forget that the entire run up to the destruction of the Babri masjid was, in part at least, fueled by the first telecast of the Ramayan. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMT18TMNQbY) this makes me uncomfortable and worried, especially given the kind of polarizing and communal language the media is using… from Corona jihad to Corona bomb… and yet, I cannot turn it off in my home, because what else is there to do, and turning off, or trying to, will cause unnecessary friction and arguments.

Arguments and shouting is something we haven’t had in my house for something like 15 years now. We disagree on things, often, but then we discuss them, talk them through, and reach a common solution. But not these days… as frustrations mount, and forced constant presence in such close quarters (my home is a 750 sq ft apartment) turns us all into short tempered people, arguments and fulminations are occurring almost daily. With one hypertensive, one teenager, and me – who has always been quick to anger, the atmosphere is often tense, with most of us trying not to do or say anything to set it off.

And then, then there is the constant background fear and terror that we are very firmly not facing. The fear of bringing the virus home to monkey from the morning expedition, the fear of getting it, the fear of how many and who this virus will kill before it is finally done, the fear of whether we can make it that far, economically, emotionally, mentally, the fear of what the 2-3 months AFTER this is over will be like before we can begin earning again, the fear of whether there will even be avenues left for freelancers like us to continue working, or whether we will have to go back to the “jobs”, the fear of whether there will even be jobs left for us, and whether we will still be employable in a much diminished market during what promises to be an unprecedented global economic recession.

Banks and credit cards have given a moratorium on payments, until May 30^th, taking away the immediate stress of where we were to find the money – in the midst of all this – to make the payments. But it brings another level of long term stress with it, because all of it (plus the interest that banks will continue to charge) will fall due – in a huge lump – in the first week of June. By the time that time rolls around, we will definitely not have the kind of money that paying those dues will entail, not to mention what else I manage to pile up on the credit cards in the meantime.

So, no matter how much we try to ignore all these things while we are awake… it is no wonder it bleeds through. And when we sleep, the subconscious can finally be heard engaging in the freaked out screaming that we are shutting our ears to while awake. Every night for the last 15 or so, I have dreamt Corona. I usually overdose my brain with whatever I am binge watching, before trying to sleep, so that dreams are more likely to be murder mysteries or sci-fi strangeness than what have you. For the last 15 days or so, the murder mysteries or sci-fi strangeness has simply been running in the foreground of a Corona pandemic. Last night fellow woke from a nightmare of being tied to his bed in an isolation ward, unable to breathe properly and unable to get help. Monkey claims not to have had nightmares so far, and I hope that is true, which would also mean that the shielding we are trying to do is working.

Given that I was already in a pretty nasty place, mentally, and seriously considering therapy, I have no idea how long and how well I can handle all this. As for fellow, whether he acknowledges it or not, he was probably in a worse place than me when all this began, and he has no outlets, not even a blog. His go-to tactic has always been ignore and bottle… so I am not sure how long that will work either.

The Corona Isolation Diary – Day 13

Mahamayatala, Garia, at 6pm. Usually this intersection has about 200 cars, plus autos, rickshaes, two-wheelers, and a few hundred pedestrians.

There is so much to think about in this forced isolation … too much. There is the all-day droning of TV channels with “Corona Updates” that rehash the same numbers and same drama over and over again. There are the unwanted updates that are sprung on you after others have been googling or whatsApping, there’s the horror of one kind or another brought to you by your own social media activity. Every word, every image, every new nugget is guaranteed to make you more anxious and frankly terrified, as the world seems to be going to hell on a hand basket, aided by morons insisting on spreading the contagion far and wide, and soon to be followed by much worse times globally – in terms of economy, hunger, and more.

These are the generalized worries – the larger picture everyone is dealing with. And then there is the more specific. I cannot imagine the state of mind and health of people living in abusive homes. I cannot imagine how horrible this must be for most of my LGBT+ people, whose primary sites of violence and oppression are so often their homes. I am lucky enough not to be in either situation. I also cannot fathom how difficult this must be for people, especially women, in out patriarchal, arranged marriage based, women do the housework, sort of families. Having the menfolk and the kids home all day everyday means so much extra work for them, so much angst, and so much thankless and supportless exhaustion. I am lucky not to be in that situation either.

Most families in this country are also a forced cohabitation of people who can barely stand each other and have no such thing as communication. Parents don’t really like or know each other, or have any kind of a social interaction history with each other. Kids are like they are from another planet altogether. I am lucky to be part of a family, both natal and my own unit, where we actually like each other! We get along famously! Our interactions are fun, social, and pal-like. Even in the best of circumstances, we spend hours together playing games, giggling, laughing, making weird jokes, and so much more! So that’s another pressure I am not feeling.

In spite of this, I am seriously restless now, reeling under cabin fever, and seeing everyone’s nerves fraying, and feeling my own sizzling away to almost nothing. All the “help” I have from everyone seems not enough or wrong or misdirected, every word every tone is magnified and capable of causing huge irritation nor pain, I have to keep reminding myself that I like these people. That I love them. I do not think I could last through six months of this (The UK just warned its citizens that the London lockdown could easily last six months, I warned a friend last week that this was likely,…. Not just there, but everywhere).

                                                               

There are also fears. It is not complete isolation after all. Fellow has been venturing out, every 2-3 days, in the morning, to see what is available, top up supplies, and find whatever fresh vegetables etc can be found. What this means is repeated exposure on his part, with an immune system presumably weakened by diabetes and hypertension. This also means a better than zero chance that he is bringing the bug home. No matter how much he bathes as soon as he comes in, handling the stuff, the money, all of it carries risk, for him, and for the monkey. I am trying not to think about it too much, and just do as much as I can. Then again there is the mater, who has asked her domestic worker to start coming in again, and has been getting stuff almost every day via the watchman at her building. She is a high risk 75 year old. On top of this, while meds continue, for obvious (or not so obvious) reasons, the morning walk has been indefinitely suspended in the case of the fellow. As a diabetic, apart from the meds, the one thing keeping him fit and fine was the 10 km he walked every morning. Long term suspension of the ONLY physical activity he has is likely to have dire consequences for health – both long term and short term.

And then there are the terrors I am not quite looking in the eye… that fellow and I are sort of jokingly referring to, but not really thinking too deeply about or discussing seriously yet… because we will lose our minds if we do. We are both freelancers. What this means is that the work we do this month, pays for the expenses next month. We have no paychecks, we have no salary, and we have no provident fund or pension. This was a great idea at the time we made the change… went rogue.. and it’s worked more or less satisfactorily for the last 3 years or so. But now… already, this month, 4 or 5 things have been cancelled, which were to pay for the basic expenses next month (which include a payment of 40,000 for monkey’s school). I am working on the last of three projects right now – which will, in total, net me 20,000 early next month. So – short term – how I am going to meet the payments for next month, I haven’t a clue.

But the worse nightmare is the long term one. If the lockdown extends – and it is almost certain that it will – I am basically looking at losing all livelihood for the duration, and for however long afterwards that it takes for things to get back to normal. I won’t begin to starve until the end of another month or so, I have that many essentials in store, but after that I will have neither the groceries nor the means to pay for them until the crisis ends, plus one month (we get paid 30-45 days AFTER the work is done.) My fellow’s work is all people related, in large groups, and face to face… one can hardly do the kind of corporate training sessions we do – Online. Even if some part of it can be done using tools like Zoom, companies in India are reluctant to reimagine their training that way, and would rather just postpone the entire thing “until things settle down”. As for my work, my clients, primarily, are NGOs and other social organisations whose work in turn is people related, in large groups, and face to face. These, obviously, are not happening. And unless they happen, what am I to document, report, or write about?

I am in the unique position of being a demographic no one can see. I am not the middle class employed, working from home Indian. I am, in essence, in the same category as the unorganized, daily wager. The difference is – of course – that I have a buffer of about 2 full months before I join them in their plight. If this lasts 6 months, let alone a year, I will lose my home (mortgage payments will not be met), I have already lost health and life cover (unable to pay premiums), so if any of us falls ill now or in the near future – while this lasts – we are screwed. Considering that one of us is a hypertensive diabetic… hope is the only thing that keeps us from gibbering with sheer terror. Of course, we may not have to worry too much about losing our home 6 months from now, because if we cannot work next month, we do not eat the month after that. Soon after that, we cannot buy gas, fill petrol, pay school fees, pay credit card bills.

We shall be crashing right along with the global economic crash that this entire shebang is bringing. And I am too terrified to even think about it properly, let alone talk about it.

The Corona Isolation Diary – day 11

I’ve been thinking for a while about maintaining some kind of a record of these times… fellow wordsmith friends agree that we must write about this… have some kind of a running reckoner of what went on, how we felt, what we did. I suppose it makes sense, especially since we have no idea how long this will be or how far this will go. Is it possible that this will be a world changing, era ending, history making, and apocalyptic sort of thing? From what I see so far, quite likely it will. So, some of these narratives we leave behind, assuming the worst, will probably end up being some kind of a future “Diary of Ann Frank” sort of deal (not mine, presumably, but some).

For my little unit, this is day 11 of self-isolating, day 6 of the official countrywide lockdown. For about n5 days before the announcement, we had already been isolating, only going out for essentials. We’d been watching the progress of the virus on the news for a while, and had started to reduce unnecessary social interaction before either the statewide or nationwide lockdowns were announced. The only people engaging in regular outings… were the offspring – forced because school was open, and the mater, because gallivanting (Oh! It’s all hyped, we Indians have super immunities, etc, etc). When schools finally closed on the 18^th, we were officially self-isolating, and constantly telling the mater to do the same.

A couple of days before the announcement of the nationwide lockdown measures, I had a rude awakening when my neighbourhood grocer told me he had run out of basics. Luckily, the stores in my mother’s area still had supplies so I stocked up on the essentials enough for about 20-25 days. It took much more of an effort to convince both my fellow and my mother of the needc to stock up … because state head as well as our dear PM had said “essentials will continue to be available”. Many friends have still not got a decent stock of basic dal-chal-atta and are happy in the thought that 21 days is not that long. Others have taken a walk around their area in the mornings and are happy and assured that shops are all open.  

It’s not that simple. Given the way casual and unorganized labour is just gone… the way trucks are not being able to ply because police have no idea of what essential goods are… the way perishable food is sitting in mandis, rotting… the way vegetables and fruits are rotting in fields because there is no one to either harvest or pack or haul, and no way to sell or transport… supply chains are as good as gone. This can only mean one thing. Shortages are only a matter of time. Basic staples, meds, gas, menstrual hygiene products… we need a decent stock of these… how much is decent? I am working on a base of 30 days’ worth, and top up as we consume. I have a child at home, so I must also think of snackfoods etc. I know this may be an indefinite situation (most likely to be much longer than the 21 days announced so far), and I know I can’t really do anything about impending shortages as they happen, but I hope to have at least enough to survive on for some time.

I see so many friends on social media who are using lockdown as a time for culinary extravagance and baking sprees. While I understand the impulse to get creative, experiment, and jazz up food in the absence of much else to do, I think it is short sighted to be using up groceries in more than usual quantities. On the contrary, we should probably be thinking of rationing. At home we are limiting food to a hearty but not extravagant breakfast, lunch and dinner comprising of 2 dishes only (unlike the 4-5 of average Bengali households), and a really small something in the evening, usually just biscuits. I don’t know how long lockdown will extend, and how bad things will get soon, in terms of availability – already today there was no packaged water, eggs have been absent from the market for weeks, and vegetables are beginning to dwindle. I fear, I dread, things will get far, far worse. And soon.

The fellow finally realized where things are headed, after this morning’s hunting expedition, and has now decided to stock up on meds this evening. Given that he is a hypertensive diabetic, these are essential meds, and – in my opinion – should have been acquired last week. I fear it might already be too late. My meds, mater’s meds, and essential basics – fever, cold, stomach upset – I have already stocked up enough for more than a month. Will top up as long as available.

It may seem like a lot of gloom and doom predictions… but that’s what the situation is showing me.

Here are a few things to consider.

farmers-left-stranded-with-fruit-and-veggies-rotting-in-the-fields

Trucks stranded

Punjab farmers dumping veggies they are unable to sell due to curfew

no supplies, and food rots in mandis

“Oh! But its only 21 days na”, a good friend shrugged off my advice. IS it? Even without the special circumstances of India, places like Italy and Spain, and the US, are clearly showing us that 21 days is just not going to cut it. How are we so unimaginative that we cannot conceive how enormous this is and how bad it can get for a country as crowded as ours with systems as lax as ours?!

Look at the math. Final predicted numbers are something 60% of the population being infected. Imagine that number... Just for a minute. For a country with 134 crore people, 60% of the population is more than 80 crore people. Even if corona has the much touted and hence flouted "low fatality rate" of 3%, that's still upwards of 2.4 crore people likely to die! Let that sink in.... 2.4 CRORE. Not to mention the people who will recover but need hospitalization and ventilation for that recovery. Imagine how fast it is likely to spread, especially with the morons doing everything they can to infect the largest possible number of people, and now the migrant labour situation taking the virus to every nook and cranny of the country…

India grapples with migrant worker exodus

Thousands of migrant workers at Anand Vihar bus terminus

With us being a country of slums and the slums being perfect grounds for infecting millions at a time…

Dharavi is sitting on a time bomb

Corona has spread to Mumbai slums

The way I see it, we have barely scratched the surface. Before these first 21 days are close to over, we will start seeing cases in thousands. Not long after that, in lakhs. Given our subpar health care systems, absolute lack of facilities, and shockingly few numbers of testing centers, isolation beds, and ventilators, many more people will die than necessary, because they will not have access to life saving care or meds. The sheer pressure on the existing system is likely to also crash the entire medical system, making care and emergency treatment difficult – if not impossible – for people with other medical issues. I hope no one I know catches dengue, or has a heart attack or stroke in the next 6 or so months. What the pandemic will do to the economy, to livelihoods, to supply chains, and more, globally and much more so in India, … well, that’s the stuff of my worst nightmares and fodder for dystopian literature. I am sure looting and food riots are not very far off… neither are curfews and army on the streets.

What this will mean for me and my little unit… I don’t know, but I am very, very afraid. Best case scenario… we survive, and when this is finally over, we start from scratch, trying to adjust to a world that is very different from what it is today. 

Shonku, Sandip, and why I have given up watching Bangla movies

I’ve given up on Bangla movies. After many years of trying, and many experiences of murderous rage after watching “recommended” and “bhalo” arty Bangla movies, I finally just quit. Professor Shonku, however, was a much beloved childhood literary character, and Man and I discussed whether we should chance it. His take was that we might, given that it is directed by Sandip Ray, Satyajit’s son, who – man thought – would be more likely to handle his father’s creation well. I wasn’t so sure, and so not convinced, and the matter was left unconcluded, undecided.

When monkey’s new year’s eve plans fell through, and an attack of the “weepies” happened, however, I figured –“what the hell”. There wasn’t anything else to watch, Dabangg 3 and Good Newwz being far more unwatchable, and any other possible plans made no sense given the fact that everyone and their uncle would be at the same malls, restaurants, and destinations. So – on the principle of the least of all available evils – we booked ourselves 3 tickets to go see Professor Shonku o El Dorado. Thank god the tickets were cheapish, or I would have been far more enraged than I am now!

I marvel at the decline of both Bengali film making and of Bengali viewership that this movie was “highly recommended” to me! It is a Bad film overall. First of all, for an adventure film, it is – as Bengali Aantel Marka films are wont to be – extremely slow. It could easily have been at least 30 minutes shorter – and should have been, in my opinion. No one really talks that slow, or takes that many pauses, or gives that many “meaningful” looks while conversing. The only thing this kind of acting and direction manages to do is make the whole thing artificial, and fake. Normal speed conversations, simpler conversations, and a faster pace for the overall film would have made life much easier for poor mindlessly bored viewers like me.

Secondly, why wasn’t anyone checking for continuity, timeline errors, tying up loose ends, and basic things like that? That’s one of the first things one learns to do when writing, especially writing a script! We are told – in a totally unnecessary opening sequence – that the professor has been missing and presumed dead for many years, having disappeared around 2010… and a diary has recently been found, written by him dated 2012 marked (2). The (2) business is never explained during the course of the film, and the 2012 business becomes very strange because as the character (there for about 5 mins overall) in the opening sequence begins to read the diary, he is taken back to the time when Shonku was still happily living in his house at Giridih…. So…. If he was in his own home in 2012, how was he missing for 2 years? Didn’t anyone simply go to his house to check if he was there? Also, during the entire subsequent adventure, detailed in the diary presumably, literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people knew where he was! From the university in Sao Paolo who had invited him to speak and were giving him an honorary doctorate to random Brazilian billionaires who wanted to buy patents to all his inventions….so how is he classified as missing again?

Also, the person who brings in the diary to sell it to the reader in the opening sequence, mentions that it was found in a crater created by a meteor hitting somewhere in the Sundarbans, of all places. Which leads to another major question and a major loophole. How did the diary, presumably written in Giridih and Sao Paolo end up in a meteor crater in West Bengal? Well, no one ever bothers to explain that, not in the course of this movie at least.

A large part of the narrative of the movie takes place in Sao Paolo, Brazil… but the people there have some really interesting accents. For example, the head of the Brazilian University, a woman with a Portuguese origin Brazilian name, has a very pronounced north American, US, accent. Her “secretary or assistant” has this on again off again sort of generic latinx accent. But the few times he uses supposedly “Portuguese” words, like serenista for example, not only are they off – language wise – they are also off accent wise. Shonku’s two white friends, one supposedly a Brit and another a German routinely drop their accents, and even manage to exchange them once in a while! So, to someone who is even a little bit sensitive to speech, or cares even a tiny bit about authenticity, the whole business is very annoying and disorienting. I would rather they all had neutral accents than each one having precisely the wrong one in pretty much every scene! The dialogues were also written, I believe, by someone not familiar with the differences between Indian, US, and UK English or the way LatinX native language influence would affect someone speaking in English. So, not only are the English dialogues in all the wrong accents, they are very often also the wrong sentence structure! In short, everyone speaks weirdly, and everyone speaks like an Indian and a Bengali (presumably Sandip himself).

There was some hope that an essentially sci-fi franchise like Shonku would benefit from modern CGI technology and the result would be an excellent visual treat. Sadly, that did not happen. Maybe here was where Sandip had needed to really apply some of his creativity. I realized, as I watched, that many of the miraculous seeming inventions of the professor – like the miracurall medicine that cures all known diseases – were far more believable in the 70s and 80s when both the world and I knew far less than we do now about what causes diseases and how wildly different one can be from another. So, some tweaking there might have benefited the overall narrative and removed some sense of the jarring mismatch. And the quality of the CGI was widely uneven from scene to scene. Where the virtual phone display was quite well done, the same cannot be said of the holographic calls or the ball lightning.

And really, it all brings me back to direction. Sadly for him, and me, Sandip is no Satyajit Ray…. Not even close. Bad direction, bad editing, bad acting (yes, even from Dhritiman), bad script, all manage to combine to give us a perfectly insipid film. This was an adventure story. Where was the tightness? The excitement? The sense of anticipation and wonder? Sadly, missing. All it ended up being – as a film – was just another self-important, bloated, heavy handed, pseudo intellectual bag of hot air.

What an enormous waste of time! The only thing the movie really achieved is reinforcing my resolve never again to bother to spend time, energy, and money on ANY Bangla movie, Ever!