Sprinkles Of Love

Mid-February, I was heading for an interview, in an old building with few people scattered here and there. They did not move.

My pace deceived me. I could barely walk fast. My perplexing journey in the maze ended, but where! Coarse wet sand under my branded sandals. Water surrounded me and up sprang the humongous wave from the right corner. I turned back. The building did not exist anymore. Sprinting away from the Tsunamic wave, I realized. I could not run. I crawled. My gown tore, and handbag washed away in the waves. Unable to bear the agony, I opened my eyes and sat upright.

2 am. midnight. And I was cheating my closed eyes. Distressed from the nightmare, I sipped warm water from my bedside. And tiptoed around the house for a "walk". After a few minutes, my mind settled with a green signal to catch up with sleep.

The next morning I dialled important numbers on my phone and discussed my distress. Most of them faced similar insomniac fears. From the time Pandemic was declared and we were quarantined indoors, cities locked down, fears caught up on me and many naturally. As was the social norm, I too rushed out in the "allocated hours" for the purchase of supplies and dairy. No more were children seen in the greens. Only birds wandered in full spirits.

Fear of uncertainty! 

Uncertainty is an unwelcome witch in our otherwise luxurious and comfortable life.

"Entire night I kept checking his temperature" my friend exclaimed after her child had sneezed thrice and coughed once. 

"My husband left his hand fixed on my forehead to check temperature entire night after I was on antibiotics for severe bronchitis.

Fear of a flu-like viral disease created havoc in our lives. Across the hills. In every nation. Suddenly life was frozen indoors.

Most of them looked forward to social media for some humour memes to feel lighter. But with it came, false mongering news, rumours, and lots of insensitive opinions. Very harmful negative energy. Adding distress to already existing troubles and fears and losses. People in one part of the world were dying like flies. Gradually, all the funny memes slowly started filtering off to insensitive. Statistics showed the death toll high. 

While I was looking at my un-manicured nails, as the beauty parlours were closed; my attention caught some TV news. People sleeping on hospital beds in open as the hospitals flooded them out. With goosebumps, I settled in a corner of the couch.

The entire humankind was mocking at someone else.

Apparently for spreading the deadly virus to the entire world. Blame games were taking ugly forms. Somewhere, citizens blamed police for patrolling. The police blamed citizens for disobeying. Neighbours disliked each other for showing up outdoors unnecessarily. We are supposed to be indoors. Hate was everywhere! 

These two weeks of home-arrest was creeping up on me with one golden opportunity. To rest that "routine". With whom everyone had a strange love-hate relation. It took a virus to get me and my family barged to a couch, make all those extensively long calls to the people we loved. 

I was on a roll, narrating vividly to my children those silly-pilly unsaid anecdotes from my childhood. About that teacher who beat me in grade 2, how I slipped into to lotus pond and my friends pulled me up.

It took a virus to unearth a cleaning wave inside me and secured a cleaning disorder. Ministry flashed warnings "wash your hands for 20 seconds". Keep your surroundings clean. My entire family was involved in an obsessive cleaning disorder stage. Even the dust on the curtains must have feared me hovering with the vacuum cleaner every afternoon. One speck of dust and I would pounce on it like a spider man.

I had all the time to sit face to face and tell kids about my grandpa's prescription. How I grew up. How we cooked our own food four times a day. We had no restaurant luxury at our disposal. Cleaned the utensils ourselves, dried them under the sun and fixed them carefully in the respective racks. I would walk up to the mansion living room. Sip tea from grandpa's cup and disturb him while reading the newspaper. In between, he read a few lines loud that attracted me again towards him and he explained politics and sociology to me. And grandpa turned a role model to me for his discipline, knowledge and hygiene habits.

"Now my children study in International Schools. With overloaded guns called "syllabus". Common sense and general knowledge are a part of the syllabus too! I awfully feel, we chase time to teach them how to live with this syllabus".

In our generation where everyone was in a race, a miracle was called for.

Schools that wanted ranks. Colleges themselves wanted medals as top ones. Corporates ran a different race. The global economy, race to MARS, nuclear power, the war against poverty, everywhere the nations took the liberty of a race. 

Life had two sides. War and Love. Love seemed to have changed meanings. It took this virus to arrest the world to calm down and hit a reset. 

The mightiest nations too had to lock down its cities. Filtering everything, humankind was left with the "old cake". From older lifestyles to older entertainment channels, we are blurred with confusion. In January, almost all, exclaimed that 2019 raced past. Time stopped flying. Time was zooming at rocket speed with the invention of the MARS rover. 2020 arrived in a zoom. Literally in a zoom. People sitting indoors now are working from home and many are running a meeting on the "zoom" app.

A challenge for mankind.

As for we ordinary citizens, we were expected to be indoors. For the very first time, the statistics of actual communication between we family members beat that on WhatsApp. For the first time ever, we put off the air-condition of our posh apartments and opened windows. There smiled many other faces from other sides. Many other windows were open. Young, old, all peeped out hungry for quality time. For the first time, the younger generation was "bored" of the gadgets. Alexa went to sleep permanently. She was forgotten. We looked forward to opening windows and talk to different neighbours whom we had greeted only "Hi" in the past few years. 

And possibly, we opened windows of all rooms, to look for a variety of crowd. One afternoon, bored of life indoors, I settled with a "Tulsi" plant and a pot. Re-potting it. Suddenly the security personnel at my building walked up closer to my window and struck a conversation. We talked for fifteen minutes. And I learned gardening tips from him any Alladin's Chirag would not fetch me. 

By night, we observed huge trucks spray disinfectants on our streets. A few crazy families like mine screamed and clapped from our balconies. Soon, a few more joined. And the lady who always walked her dog, whom I greeted nothing more than hi, hey, bye, was swallowing up some grief and laughing loud with tears storming down her eyes. After losing her old mom in Italy for the Virus, she deserved a hug. But we were handcuffed by social distancing. So we initiated open arms from windows and blew away kisses to her. 

The Sprinkling Of Love.

It had begun. This was the miracle that was called for. With the world in this stage, all that we could do was sprinkle tremendous amount of love and smiles. It is arguably more contagious than the virus. 

From this day, I let go off a few egos of the past. A few priorities of the past. They were merely rat race goals. Some not wanted. Some subtly no. The new life where everyone smiled at each other with absolutely zero hesitation. 

My nightmares ended. My nights turned more fruitful and productive. By productive I mean, I could let out silent prayers for the health and proper of the entire mankind and sleep.

Sprinkle lots of love and this is all humankind needs the most. The rest of the priorities will fall in place.

Love you all.

Sprinkle some love, some laughter and together we shall fight any COVID.