reminiscing in the time of quarantine

While we get to look at the other side of things. I segregate my blog with this post into: before covid 19 and after covid 19. How in a couple of days' time, things changed! For some urban members of my generation that largely has zero points of reference for a time like this, we are landing on and finding our feet quite simultaneously in the last couple of days.

With passing of the first few days in self-isolation and quarantine, i am now beginning to find my words back from thin air. Our beloved PM named these days as Junta Curfew.

It does not happen very often, but the (newly found) Centrist in me liked the unintended hidden poetics behind these words. At the risk of sounding saccharine and sappy, I'd say isn't this also some kind of an ideal world? People using services and things only as much as is needed, playing badminton after dinner on the streets, children walking along side their mothers, board gamer flatmates getting together after lunch for a quick round. The quiet din of everyday buried inside households, behind the walls of the work that needs to be done, no honking, no emissions, streets restored to the utilities they were meant to serve.

This optimism might be an offshoot of hormonal fluctuations thanks to my ongoing period. There are some emotions from last week's rendezvous with a friend. An extended soiree when we recalled our days of being foolish and haughty. How humbling a time like this can be, that it can render anything romantic.

A total lockdown, a crisis when we get to rethink, replan, reformulate everything from scratch? Sounds Utopic to me! But then it'll be night again, these will be trying times to soothe in between. Around the hovering hours beyond midnight, when I get to be with myself in the pin drop silence of the dark, dead, black night. This is when I start thinking about the blues. We, the great generation, the ones who ushered in the 1991 Liberalisation, ours the generation of avid documentors of the mundane every day — we are here, witnessing a crisis of our own making.

Last night I laid in bed and tried to come to grips with the present, the nowness of life. This is it, the Partition stories we heard, the world war legends we read about, the war-time poems, the black outs: this will be something of our very own. A first-hand experience to relay on to our future generations. What we make of it, how we deal with it, with how much grace we pull ourselves through it, in what all ways are we able to display dignity.

Everything is put to test, a trial of sorts.

Simultaneously, the times make us think of some of the golden stuff. While it does make somethings look portentous, shadowing our perceptions, tell-tale signs of impending gloom, there are a few signals akin to silver linings as well. I met an old friend a week ago, and now that I think of it, the evening comes across as wondrous and beauteous to me. It was only our second meeting in all these years that we have known each other, yet our conversations were like those of childhood chums. Something from this close a past, something as de rigueur, something so off the wall, and so predictable and planned becomes so meaningful, that when a week later, you look at it with a fresh pair of eyes, the weather turns, the rooms shift, the seasons change, the flowers bloom brighter and the dogs are more loquacious.

Here's a small note about the meeting that I also shared on Facebook:

No I won't tag you on Facebook!

The last time I ate out before this self-isolation, was with someone special, who'd come from far (no, don't read too much), someone who always carries a cold (nope, not here again). We met outside my favourite restaurant in the city, and we (ummm, okay just me) ate to our heart's content. Made fun of the fellow patrons, gobbled down some nice colourful liquids and sauntered around So Del — from one busy neighbourhood market to another crowded pocket. All through the thickly tree-lined roads of Delhi.

We arrived at a bookstore, picked our licks, cried at the dearth of money for all the books that can be bought and read, made our peace with it and then raced to the next store — a stationery giant. It was therapeutic, to say the least, and soul-stirring. We petered out life, old grudges. Talked films, books and reading habits — all things cerebral and platonic — at once routine and out of the blue.

While this person's personality is defined by a lot of features, my almost thirty-self was smitten by the salt and pepper beard and long hair. At one point I shared my hair clutch with him for his equally curly and super frizzy brittle hair.

I know all this reads tediously romantic, but I will go on. Why can't we brain out the thought of friendships also being romantic? Friends are, after all, extensions of our personalities with whom sometimes we spend more time than we do with our partners. It sounds tiring, but so be it.

We gatherers of old fallen leaves and withered flowers, we the wearer of old unironed clothes, we the woolgatherers, we the wanderers, we the gray people, we the frayed, fazed, quiet observers. We who found each other through these sands of facebook, and met each other at a momentous time. We tend to find the prosaic in broken tiled floors and chipped bare walls.

So it was completely in line with our stars, that we would meet the day before Covid 19 became this big a deal. We starers of others feuds, quietly conspiring against something of our own. Escaping things by a mere whisker, on the brink of witnessing a major outbreak, we gleefully enjoyed an evening of companionship, of some walks. Back to my leafy society, while waiting for the cab, talking about common friends, we yapped about a million more things. We gifters and admirers of books.

While I'd love to report that one of us ended up with more books, both of us moved out of the evening as richer as people. Conversation, the soul of all of life's relationships, the elixir of most of our existence, the base of our interactions that we worked hard at developing into this very precious bond. Through the darkness, into the light, we stirred with patience. After all, without love today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's.

Since its quarantine times, and we are opening up to the world a little more than before, here are two photographs of singers who are very close to my heart for reasons that are tough to grasp at in this space.

https://youtu.be/F6FkVPOMtvM
https://youtu.be/j1zBEWyBJb0