Stranded: Anecdotes from Disconnectivity and a Pandemic

“Without the internet, I’d have gone insane, I swear.”

25th March, 2020

Dear Diary

It’s Day 1 of India’s lockdown. The virus, spreading from China to the rest of the world, has claimed more lives than all the preceding riots our country faced. What has spread faster is fake news-- rumours and conspiracy theories speculating bio-warfare. Consequently, most governments around the world shut down internet services for an unspecified duration of time, including ours. We are required to isolate ourselves for twenty-one days under absolute lockdown. 

Twenty-one days do not sound very tough, especially given that it requires us to stay at home. Also, it is more than enough time to revise my Geography syllabus twice over. On that note, my board exams have nearly ended, only minutely interrupted by the pandemic that is wreaking havoc in the masses all over the world. Nevertheless, all of us look forward to resuming our ordinary lives soon, sit for that one last exam, enter college, and go on with our lives. 

The only thing sad about the whole situation is that I remain separated from my family. I had to stay back here at home, overlooking dingy lanes of a crowded city, with no means of reaching out towards Maa and Baba. My grandma is sick in her massive mansion that she refused to share with anyone. I shall never understand my parents’ compassion for her.

My ignorance towards the sufferings of the world continues to be unwavering. Twenty-one days are a boredom-infused vacation, a glad imprisonment, a loss of fun I otherwise could have had. Twenty-one days is anything but a precaution. 

Yours, Tanya.

1st April, 2020

Dear Diary

I. Am. Covid. Positive.

Haha! Relax, it is a joke. Happy April Fools’! I freaked Maa out with this joke. She almost started crying over the phone. It was fun. Insensitive, but fun.

Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat anything in my own diary, right? I just can't seem to come to terms with the death rate-- 1%. I honestly expected it to be a lot more serious. It has been, what, a week of lockdown? The cases are rising on the graphs they show on television all the damn time, soaps and other shows are off, the goddamn internet has been cut off, I am not allowed outside my house, and even my family isn’t allowed to come back home. I’m just frustrated. It is well-known that isolation makes a man go insane. Well, I’ll just straight up admit I am a little insane. But then, I spend my days sketching, reading, indulging in the ages old CDs my dad has housed in his drawers, dancing to no music, ignoring my geography textbooks, and cooking for myself, which I discovered I’m disastrous at doing. But the lethargy of inactivity is unshakeable, as compared to the exhaustion of sheer hard work. Maybe “sloth” is a sin after all.

Yours, Tanya.

10th April, 2020

Dear Diary

Dad called me a few minutes ago. The call connected after three days of relentless attempts.

Everything is over.

This cannot happen.

No. Maa cannot die. I will not have it. No.

15th April, 2020

Dear Diary

They extended the lockdown. I never got to see her. I will never get to see her again. 

It has been days since I last ate anything. But my stomach turned torturous, so I fed it oatmeal. It tasted like wet sawdust. I ignored it. It is impossible to come to terms with it. So I took to bed and refused it. 

I need to stay sane. Whatever killed grandma turned out to be The Virus. And its pandemic claimed my stupid, dutiful, beautiful mother along with her. I have nothing left in me to offer to her as hatred. Dad calls me, but I never pick up calls anymore. I do not have an instagram feed to distract me. I am alone in the world, stranded, and the world has stopped revolving. For once it’s going the way I want. It stopped for me. But I’m never going to catch up with it again.

I have closed up every orifice of this house, refusing to let in the slightest sunshine that would remind me of the passage of time. The only times I can fathom the slightest strength to move out of bed are when nature calls. The huge television set dominates the dimly-lit room. It’s 1pm, and morbid graphs are on a continuous loop and I stay slumped in the sheets, staring numbly at the screen. I keep falling in and out of sleep. I am too scared to go out and get groceries.

No one exists in the world but me. And I am not much of a survivor.

Yours, Tanya.

Sometime in April, 2020

Dear Diary

Last night I woke up in cold sweat. My memory came crashing down on me, choking the air out of my lungs, imprinting its thumbprints on my throat. Maa’s death came alive in my senses, hitting me like a nightly train, furious and merciless. I never got to see the lifelessness of her face, that deathly white, devoid and stripped of humanity. 

I desperately wanted to listen to the song that she used to sing but… Youtube failed me with its ceaseless and incomplete circles of disconnectivity.

I need human touch, I need the comfort of scrolling through a mindless newsfeed, I need a voice note from someone familiar, I need to order sanitary napkins, I need to listen to music. I need hashtags of a quarantined existence to show me I’m not here stranded alone and crippled in fear. I’m going insane.

Yours, Tanya.

Sometime in May, 2020.

Dear Diary

Today, I sought out company through the kitchen window. The cats have come to think this is a deserted place. So they deserted it too. Familiar crowds in the dingy lanes have been replaced by small puddles of water. I don’t recall any rain. Some way off in the street, I saw a mask-less, toothless older woman staring at me, a snarl curling her lip. I turned away, but from the corner of my eye, I saw her making obscene gestures. She is all the company I have. 

The page is damp with my tears, and nearly no light enters the room. The soft pillows do nothing to restrain my animal screams. The air has grown stiflingly hot, and smells of my unwashed body. I should bathe. But I don’t have it in me. Had it not been these cold walls, the soaked pillows, the dimly lit room and this pen… I don’t know. My thoughts are derailing.

Yours, Tanya.

Sometime in May, 2020

Dear Diary

I have this strange illusion sometimes. I feel like I am drowning. There is water, or perhaps a heavier liquid. I cannot see, breathe or move. My sanity is being pushed to the brink. I try to concentrate on my happy memories, but they do not come to me in this dark, airless space. Memories have faded with overuse.

Yours, Tanya.

Sometime, 2020

Dear Diary

The year shall never pass. 

I was about to die tomorrow. Yesterday, I mean. But I WILL NOT scream. I am still Tanya. Perfectly sane. 

A bird perches on the wall across the pavement across the street across the… This is exhausting. It sings. It is annoying.

Someone get me out, please. No one remembers that I am.

Yours, Tanya.

Sometime, 2020

Dear Diary

I am Tanya, and I will NOT go insane.

I am Tanya, and I will NOT go insane.

I am Tanya, and I will NOT go insane.

Sometime, 2020

Dear Diary

I feel like I am rotting. The bird won’t stop singing its stupid song. I have been listening to it for a longer time than… I dont know. I have lost track of time. They will not restore the internet and I cannot seek help anymore.

But somehow this moment is better than what is usual. The bird gives me hope. I can’t walk anymore. But I dream now of being on that pavement like the bird. I drift in and out of sleep. I watch the bird. I watch the graphs. I laugh like a madman. I cry like a madman. But sunlight filters in through closed curtains and I do not chase it away. It settles on my face and gives me my mother’s comfort. Soon it grows too dark and mother’s whispers haunt me in the dark.

But that renewed glow of the sun, when it is dark before and dark after, forces me to pee, to take my food and water and dip my face in a bucket of water. And I shall be on that pavement soon, when the rising curve flattens, where the last of the sun’s glow isn’t wasted on my waning sanity.

Until then, I will be.

Yours...