I still haven’t gotten used to waking up to eerily silent mornings, lacking the flurry of activity and chaos that I usually associate with mornings. No sabzi wale bhaiya parading with his cart down your street in the afternoon, beckoning the neighbourhood aunties to hurriedly rush out to get the best deal on tomatoes. No sight of a van full of weary school children arriving to drop off its passengers home. In the evenings, no trace of the kids in your colony bickering over who cheated to win and no distant sounds of party music from a wedding at night when you’re trying to sleep. Instead, silence envelops the neighbourhood, the town, the city and the country like a blanket, broken occasionally only by an ambulance’s siren rushing to get its patient to the hospital and the announcements from the police’s speaker mic warning you to stay inside past curfew. Cell phones don’t blow up on the weekends with your friend’s messages asking you if you want to meet up. Instead, you are greeted with messages titled ‘URGENT: Oxygen tank required’ or ‘Any leads yet??’ Quirky caller tunes replaced by a grim voice advising you to mask up and maintain social distancing before stepping out.
Bound by the tragic reality that surrounds us and doesn’t allow respite to a single soul, the sense of loneliness and desperation that creeps upon us is inevitable. Constantly caught between a strange numbness and the overwhelming need to cry at the next moment, you try to keep yourself afloat amidst waves of chaos that threaten to swallow you almost every day. By the end of the first week of May, I was frazzled. My phone overflowed with requests for leads on oxygen supplies and despairing friends looking for an ambulance. Evening tea was accompanied by mourning for that distant relative we adored and nights were frantic and fraught with anxiety as the slightest cough or headache had as rushing to grab an oximeter and check our temperatures. The fear had entered our bones- pacing around the room to calm down a racing heart and clinging on to the futile hope that a miracle would happen overnight and make all of it go away.
But hope is a wonderful thing. The basic need to keep ourselves alive is the spark that can grow stronger steadily to encompass everyone and encourage them to light their own small fires in the bleakness that surrounds us. And thus springs gratitude- an emotion so warm and easily come that it sweeps away all signs of weariness and burnout, even if it is momentary.
Recognising and appreciating someone for the smallest of efforts can be often overlooked and undermined in the rush of daily life. It is so in these very testing times when life is at a standstill that reflection becomes unpreventable: a sudden rush of gratitude comes to the forefront. As some of the most beautiful flowers bloom from the crevices of a collapsing wall and grace us with its presence, expressing our gratitude towards something can warm us up even in the most dismal situation.
The pandemic has profoundly limited our lives and confined us to various spaces- some are lucky enough to call them home while others can only call it a house. But home is made with people, others who you can call your own. Thus, foremost I am grateful for a family- for mom’s home-cooked meals, for the rare long conversations with dad, for a grandmother’s comforting voice over the phone. For mindless bickerings with my sister and reminiscing incidents at family functions with cousins. Grateful for a friend’s reassuring text when you’re most anxious and hour-long video calls where you could laugh over and relish the memories you made together when things were better. Grateful for a pet who curls up on your lap on days when you’re feeling particularly down during quarantine. No matter how far or isolated you might be, memories you made with a family swirl around and wrap around you like a blanket on cold winter nights, and you find the corners of your mouth lift unconsciously as you look back upon days well spent and which give you the hope to look forward to more. I hope everyone is grateful for their chosen family and can always find a home with them in their hearts.
I am especially grateful to the people who have risked everything and endanger their lives every day to make this situation easier for the rest of us. The healing hands of a doctor or a nurse busying themselves with their patient while being clad in suffocating PPE suits all day, sanitation workers who continue to work relentlessly amidst the fear of infection, teachers and professors who will travel miles just for the sole purpose of teaching something new to their students every day. They are the unsung heroes, the people we put all our expectations and trust on and who always strive to fulfil them. In expressing our thanks to them, I hope we recognise our privilege and continue to appreciate them for their noble service with the purest of intentions, always.
And lastly, all of these combined efforts have resulted in the coming together of the community like never before. It is true that adversity unites all, a single cry for help is not going unanswered for long. People scrambling to gather resources as soon as there is a distress call or an urgent text, raising funds for that denied access to these resources, compiling elaborate lists and health guides, putting out content and information on social media platforms on how to correctly use an oximeter or how to boost breathing techniques, leaving gentle reminders for each other to take care of their mental health and trying to boost the morale of those who feel burnt out- overlooking trivial disputes that divided us in the past. The mobilisation of the Indian community against the pandemic even in the face of a collapsing healthcare system and mismanagement is truly a remarkable and wonderful occurrence- expressing gratitude towards our people and hoping that this solidarity persists not just through this crisis is the least we can do at the moment.
As we cruise through these onerous times, holding each other’s hands to comfort is a luxury that the pandemic does not allow, but keeping each other in our hearts and sending a grateful smile across once in a while can do wonders.
Manavi is a second year English major at Lady Shri Ram College For Women . Aside from being a voracious reader, she is intent in exploring cultural differences and languages across the world and also has a keen interest in mental health .
Wonderful wonderful piece Manvi…god bless
Great going ! Keep it up
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Beautifully written. Keep it up Manvi.
Great writing dear Manvi. Keep it up.
Beautifully written. With warm words and also quote the inspiring article. Keep it up! Awiting for you next article
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