Locked/ Unlocked

On June 29, with what I like to imagine was carelessly elegant insouciance, I throw my phone into the trash. In my planner — which has few plans and more diary notes — I’ve clarified that this was a mistake; just in case I forget that the phone is not the issue. 

This is around the time that it sinks its claws into me. I know because of the blank pages and the doodles. Before going to bed each night, I doodle one word. Any word. Whatever word feels in some way to signify the day that’s just passed. Words like “retreat”, “inadequate”, “crawl”, “grapple”, “almost”, “gloom”, “unravel” and “patience”. 

The lockdown was supposed to be less debilitating for introverts because we’re comfortable in isolation and used to the white noise in our heads. For at least three months, this was true. Even now, it isn’t the solitude that’s chafing at me. But there are other demons that find their way in through the silence. The last month has been hard, and it doesn’t feel like catharsis to admit as much.  

In the eerie, elegant novel Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, inside the protagonist are many spirits. They often jostle for power over the protagonist’s flesh and bones because the way to the mind is through the skin. I sometimes feel like that, only the voices in my head are far less storied. Mine are mundane, tired, monotonous voices, like the exasperated one that points out there is no discernible reason for me to feel low. My near and dear are all Covid-free; I have my health and my job; a short walk takes me to the sea; I have a streak of bright pink in my hair — so really, why am I moping?    

There doesn’t need to be a ‘why’, of course. But I have to consciously remind myself that, if we really want to go there, there are many reasons why. Because even though we have settled into the modified normal of the lockdown and superficially, life is mundane again for those with the privilege of feeling either bored by or acclimatised into the new everyday, death is still in the air. 

The cocoon sometimes feels like a bubble that won’t pop, with the air inside running out. Despite the shoutiness of social media, it feels like silence is everywhere as we tiptoe and posture our way through days on end. I type a message to a friend: “I’m running out of things to say. No words.” And then I backspace back to blankness, removing every single letter with growing speed, until there is just white space. I don’t want to spread this dark silence. 

*

It looks like an onion. Until, that is, someone takes a knife to it and reveals a sponge and chocolate ganache interior. 

[image error]Natalie Sideserf’s onion cake

The onion cake was one of the many cake-flavoured optical illusions that popped up on my Twitter timeline earlier this month when the “Everything is Cake” meme took over the internet briefly. In these videos, you see an everyday object which is sliced to reveal that it was actually a cake. These cakes are apparently known as hyperreal cakes, as though the regular cake is somehow less real (which is a bit unfair, if you ask me). Then again, this idea of authenticity is precisely what the “Everything is Cake” meme is messing with in these videos. Reality, they point out, is what you make of it.   

Soon after, another set of videos took over the internet. These didn’t have cakes, but they were also about one thing becoming another. This time, it involved cats. People — mostly women — picked up pet kittens and cats, and held them to their ears as though the animals were telephone receivers. The cats looked wide-eyed as they were lifted by their humans and literally objectified.

Both these memes were nonsensical and chances are we’ll have forgotten about them by the end of the month. They may already have waned out of public memory, but they linger in mine because these memes strike a chord with our pandemic-struck lives. In them, nothing is as it seems, and this is true of the world that we’re trying to negotiate today. Simple, basic functions like breathing are fraught with danger. We approach the everyday with a mix of anxiety, suspicion and fear as we sanitise vegetables, isolate received packages and avoid brushing against someone else’s skin. Everything in our world could be sliced to reveal Covid-19, it seems. 

The cats and the cakes take this weird condition of feeling alienated from and unsettled by the world around us, and turn it on its head. The revelation is not death or illness, but laughter, befuddled felines and the comfort of cake. They’re a reminder that unlike the virus, we have an imagination and we can distract ourselves.    

*

In a pandemic, every month is the cruellest. Across the country, we are all Schroedinger’s cat — we’re simultaneously locked and unlocked as restrictions are relaxed and reimposed, depending upon the numbers. India is now second only to the United States of America in terms of the number of recorded cases of Covid-19. The outbreak has flared up again in Kerala, where more than 1,000 new cases are being reported daily. In Maharashtra, each day brings with it a record number — sometimes of deaths; at other times, of cases; sometimes, both. Mumbai is triumphant that there are “only” 1,000-odd new cases and 50-odd deaths reported daily, while other cities are seeing alarming spikes in their numbers. Day before yesterday, India recorded 757 deaths and more than 49,000 new cases, the highest daily spike in both categories. Altogether, there are more than 454,000 active cases of Covid-19 in the country and including the asymptomatic cases, we have more than 1.3 million cases in India. So far, 31,425 have died of the infection. In case you were wondering, the government of India would have you know that there is no community transmission in India.  

Every evening, my phone lights up with an alert that details the number of new cases and deaths recorded in Maharashtra and Mumbai. Every evening, the message leaves me frozen for a few seconds. It has been four months and I still have no idea how we’re supposed to cope with the weight of hundreds of people dying of Covid-19 every single day. Every day, I wonder how many of these deaths were preventable, how many are unrecorded. I think of the acquaintance who travelled across the country because her parents were hospitalised with Covid-19, only to be trapped in home quarantine. Her parents died, their bodies were cremated; all while she remained in quarantine. I think of people I don’t know being forced to go through their beloved’s belongings and throw them out as hazardous bio-waste. I remember a doctor talking about the terrible cruelty of a death in isolation, where patients are denied the comfort of human touch or anything familiar in their final moments. What do we do with the anxiety, guilt, helplessness and despair that comes from being survivors? 

Most of the time, I turn these phantom feelings into food and eat them up. I’m not sure exactly when or what shifts, but I realise I’m processing the daily updates differently — better? — when I stop foraging for midnight snacks. It takes me a few days to realise I’ve stopped snacking because I’ve lost my appetite.  

*

There must be countries where the only reason for a stomach to knot with anxiety is that Covid-19 is slinking around like a neighbourhood peeping Tom. India is not one of them and I know this because my work email is full of updates that confirm my suspicion that most of this country is an unholy mess.  

Since June 5, we’ve seen a “skirmish” which just happens to be the bloodiest Indo-Chinese clash in 40-odd years. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed and there are Chinese troops at Pangong Tso even though apparently there was no infiltration or encroachment upon Indian territory. We lost a legend, choreographer Saroj Khan, and one of the brightest actors of his generation, Sushant Singh Rajput. Indian journalism has suffered a bloodbath, with more than 150 journalists losing their jobs. They’re called cuts — a simple, neat word for messy, painful and life-changing decisions. Delhi Police filed seven chargesheets in connection with the riots that savaged north Delhi in February. According to them, the riots were “revenge” and “retaliation” by Hindus who were apparently provoked by (mostly) Muslims. Among those who allegedly instigated violence is activist Harsh Mander, which is among the most outlandish things I’ve ever heard. Also, BJP leader Kapil Mishra is apparently a victim of Muslim mobs. At some point in the near future, the official record of these riots will be pitted against the memories of survivors and the informal archive on social media. Maybe the truth of what happened in February will survive only in stories, the way the injustice of the ancients is recorded and remembered in our myths and legends. 

My notes to self have multiple underlines (to show outrage? Joy? A combination of both) where I’ve written that the courts have granted bail to Jamia student Safoora Zargar and ordered poet Varavara Rao should be taken out of Taloja Jail and hospitalised. This should have been due process rather than a battle won in an ongoing war. Zargar may well have been granted bail because she’s pregnant when in fact, she should have been released because peaceful protest is not terrorism. Other equally peaceful protesters remain in jail, with no prospect of bail so far. Rao was so unwell that he was delirious and couldn’t stand on his own, but as far as government agencies are concerned, he’s ‘using’ Covid-19 to get out of Taloja. He has tested positive for Covid-19 and despite being declared asymptomatic, is being given the treatment that is for symptomatic patients. In the first hospital that he was taken to, his family found him in “a pool of urine”. He was transferred to a second hospital and then a third, where he has suffered a head injury. 

Note to self on July 5: “Which wall would I like beat my head against today?” 

It’s been months since I took a day off. When you’re working from home, it feels odd to take leave even though it’s actually more necessary because in no time, days loop and we become hamsters on wheels. I have friends who have been working seven days a week, partly because they need to and partly because they’d rather work than, as one friend put it, “feel as empty as my walls”. I send my friend a link to a photographer I know, who is selling prints at reduced rates every Monday. Like so many of his tribe, he’s been without work for months. My friend writes back, “You should sell your sunset photos. I won’t buy them. As in, I want them for free. But you should sell them.” 

[image error]Sometimes, the clouds are the silver lining. (Photo: mine)

Some time later, Mumbai’s skies transform into something magical. For days in a row, for a few minutes at sunset, the light thickens to golden and then some strange alchemy transforms it to jewel tones. If someone had painted these skies on a canvas, we’d applaud their imagination but point out that you can’t have a sky that’s blue and amber and fuchsia and magenta and ochre and pink simultaneously. Now we know you can. 

I’ve missed every single one of these gorgeous sunsets because I’ve been at my desk. I could have slipped out the way I have a couple of times before, but I didn’t because I knew there was work about to land in my inbox. Instead I saw these sunsets through the eyes of other people’s cameras. One day, a friend asks me to go through their Instagram for the sunset photos. “It was a Jana type of evening,” they tell me. I send them a heart and curse myself for not sneaking out. 

*

Earlier this week, I had a dream. I was in an apartment that doesn’t look like the one I live in, but it was mine in the dream world and it was in Bombay. My father was sitting on an armchair, reading a book. I walked up to the balcony — I know. Balcony, with a sea-view. In Bombay. LOL — and my mother joined me. Outside, it was raining hard. Suddenly, there was a loud noise and a tremor. Through the rain, I saw the Gateway of India. It was as though the square of land had broken away from Apollo Bunder, floated north, and crashed into the rocky, mangrove-stripped bay of Bandra.  

“How did the Gateway of India land up in Bandra?” I asked my mother. 

Just then, the Gateway teetered. It started to sink. Neither my mother nor I moved. We stood and watched the arch drown, inch by inch. Below, blurry-faced strangers shouted out in alarm and tried to pull the Gateway out. Some dove into the sea, as though they could drag the monument up like it was a drowning child. The divers surfaced with pieces of the Gateway — a chunk with some English lettering, a bronze angel. The Gateway continued to sink underwater.   

In truth, there is no bronze angel on the Gateway, which remains as solid as ever on the patch of Colaba that has been its home for more than a century. Nothing about that dream should feel real and yet, I woke up at least twice and in the middle of the night, reached for my phone and googled “Gateway + sinking”. I knew this was ridiculous, but I still told myself that I would ask reporters I knew if they’d heard about the Gateway drowning. Somewhere deep inside, a little part of me that was terrified that what I’d seen wasn’t a dream. 

The morning after, I went about doing the things that needed doing, all the while feeling jumpy and unsettled. What do you call an event that never happened and yet feels too real to be dismissed as imaginary?  

*

While institutions failed, society became more toxic and the online shouting matches got shoutier,  the universe picked up my little snow-globe of a world and shook it like a rumba shaker on cocaine. 

In the kitchen, the gas starts leaking. In the living room, the television conks out and the fan stops working. On the desk, my computer fades to black. In the bathroom, the toilet breaks. On the table, the router sputters and the internet blips. All this happens over three days and on day four, when the toilet explodes less than 24 hours after being fixed, I find myself standing in the middle of my flat, giggling hysterically. Outside, the sky is darkening. I still haven’t bought an umbrella, I think absently while the toilet roars like a mini Niagra Falls. I won’t get a plumber till tomorrow morning, which means thanks to me, an entire wing of this multistoreyed building will have no water in their bathrooms. “Thank you very much,” I mutter out loud, “I’ll be here all year.” Then, as quickly as I can, I put on my shoes and mask, and power walk my way out of the house. I can feel it welling up inside me, like a gathering wave. I’m going to cry. Over a broken toilet. 

Except, of course, it’s not just the toilet (though the toilet is important. Modern plumbing and the bum shower are basically why I wouldn’t want to be reborn in any other era. Seriously). It’s everything — the old wounds I’ve picked, the writing I can’t do, the weight I carry; the world in which I’m mired, whose ugliness and disappointment I see reflected in myself. I keep trying to fill my head and soul with beauty. I’ve watched brilliant plays, ballets, films, television shows and documentaries. I’ve read books and poetry, making notes, lingering over chapters and re-reading passages. I’ve sought out the silly and the smart, not only as distractions from the awfulness of the present but also in a manic hope that they will somehow fix me; make me less inept, more capable; make me better. Instead, all I’ve managed to do is reduce myself to a husk of insecurities and now I’m walking aimlessly around a neighbourhood I call home, crying into a mask. Not that anyone can tell. I’m not an amateur. I have decades worth of experience in faking calm and seeming confident.  

So I walk and I weep, without making a noise, careful to breathe so that I don’t hiccup. I am aware this effort is unnecessary. Everyone who is outside has their head stuck in their own cloud. Until a few weeks ago, these roads were empty and the pavements were lined with the destitute. Now, the cars are back (with their floodlights on so that they can blind everyone else on the road. Thanks for that) and the poor have mostly disappeared. And here I am, crying over my broken world and feeling incredibly stupid for doing so.

At some point, it occurs to me that weeping into a mask is not comfortable. It also doesn’t feel particularly hygienic. Sure, the fabric mops up the sniffly fluids, but should you really have that same fabric, damp with aforementioned fluids, pressed against your face? I change directions to reach a chemist and buy a mask. He doesn’t have small change so he gives me two toffees. If it’s a sign from the universe, I accept it and make my way to the sea, where I’ll breathe in the sea, imprint the Technicolour sky upon my soul and get chased by a disgruntled cop who’s had it with hipsters. 

For all my melodrama, I’m actually ok, despite my seesawing emotions and the universe not having the decency to at least drop menopause on me. They’re right. The lockdown is easier on introverts. We’re used to the discomfort of being locked in with only our thoughts for company. It’s just that this is an age of madness, and that is not easy on anyone. 

If you’ve read till here, take care, be kind to yourself and breathe. You’re probably doing better than you think you are at your lowest moments. And if you’re not, there’s always therapy.