Day 41: Partial Exit

04/05/2020

Day 41

The auditory portrait of the city has changed today. Motorcycles and scooters could be heard all day. The city is waking up as though after a surgery, feeling its circulation and checking its organ function. To have expected the silence to continue would have been to dwell in pleasure where misery prevails.  Delhi’s traffic pile up is back. Bangalore will follow shortly. From the government’s count, on the day that Indian cities are partially exiting the lockdown there is also a record increase in infections. Resuming our pre-covid normal lives will not be easy. Economic, social, physical, mental… and all imaginable breakdowns continue to happen. The long curve of pandemic’s impact has begun to reveal itself. It will be a tough walk ahead. 

Today’s conversations have been about the long queues outside liquor stores across the country. It is the first day of their reopening since the lockdown began. What would man do by being in his senses, especially in these times? We need our intoxications, whatever they may be. 

With Malik, every second sentence is a dead end with the board marked with a dead end laugh. We did a bit of group thinking about India’s Covid-19 statistics. We dealt a rapid assessment to death figures concluding that surely people can’t die without a death certificate issued by the administration. Some register, somewhere would have been inked with a name that has turned a statistic. We both nod in agreement. The next bird to fly in was the question if the worst was behind us? We can’t say for sure. He had squeezed himself into the tight space between the water tank and the wall, to get closer. We nodded again that it is too early to say. Indian immunity was praised. It must be recognized that it is a diseased nation but not from diseases that a rogue virus can bring along. We got diseases from shortage and neglect. That is what we excel at. Stock food and don’t let people get any – that would be our disease. Malik knows it better than me, for he is a GP. 

Where are we headed? For this question I had to deliberate alone sitting in the balcony looking at a summer sky, the last coffee of the day in hand. If I knew the answer, I would write a post. Make it another day’s post. But who knows! Writing can’t be that easy.