Day 38
It is May 1st. We were looking forward to exit from the lockdown after one more day, on May 3rd. But the Ministry of Home Affairs has extended it by another fifteen days. A third round of lockdown begins today. This pandemic is like an ultrarun with the finish line changing and making the distance longer and longer. The disease is not done with us yet. India has lost 1218 lives as of today. It is as though we are being taught in a rather hard way that there is little in our control. We must sit in and wait it out.
I heard Oliver Jeffers in a podcast that the best comes from the worst. In his simple way he goes on reinforcing hope suggesting that life on earth is a beautiful thing. It is his ode to living on Earth. Authors who write with children as their audience are predisposed to thinking in ways that doesn’t ruin it, for kids who have a whole lifetime ahead of them. I have found myself reaching out to writings meant for children to reassure myself of the nice things in life.
Days meanwhile are flying by as they were in normal times. This journal began as a record of this unusual journey that we were all thrown into together. As I look back at the nature of this journey, I realise how unprepared we got on to it. The experiences along the days have been as new and unfamiliar as they could get in these times of guidebooks and information overload. We continue on it, not knowing how far the destination is and the costs that will be incurred.
Contested Realities 
Time to hold to the classics. Hang in there. 🙂
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Poetry prompt J? You got first four lines already.