“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.
