Lockdown story

(India’s first Covid-19 lockdown, circa April-June 2020, Mysore.)

It is as if time has stopped. One spring evening, it was announced on the air waves and the public address systems atop police patrol vans that the present-day Black Plague was upon us, and so we all must stay home. For three weeks, they said, but who really knows for how long. I have spent the past 7 years hopping cities, countries and continents, travelling on work and leisure, clocking up at least 40 flights every year. Life as I knew it has abruptly come to a halt.

In the far periphery of the city, it means spending time watching the bonnet monkeys that vandalise the banana plants in our compound. Or contemplating flocks of pigeons, parrots, mynahs and warblers headed in the general direction of the hill at dusk. Another resident of our apartment complex — an actor in the TV shows and theatre — replenishes the water in the makeshift bird bath he constructed on the terrace. His little project is the source of birdsong for us in what seems like endless quietude. He tells me that I am lucky to be able to work from home.

It is as if time is running out. There is news of economic ruination and an insidious, unknown ailment. Of the food supply chain being disrupted, aggravating hunger, the emptying of kitchens and coffers, and the collective upending of our lives. Of countless daily-wage migrant labourers journeying home several hundred kilometres on foot. There is uneasiness, confusion, fear, anger, kindness, and even guilt.

I miss mornings at the Chikka Ghadiyara, the “Little Clock Tower’’ in the city square, and the adjacent market with its thieving cows and abundance of colour. The evenings are bereft of walks by the lake, the days of the warmth of my partner and little reminders of love. I crave iced coffee and sourdough bread at the only European bakery in town, and the large, green, quiet environs of the Rangayana.

Buzzing bee hives, large and small, now hang on the ledges of my apartment building, because we can no longer summon the workers who know how to remove them without getting stung. A majestic Brahminy kite studies me as I write. It flies away, and a white dove arrives a little while later. “Visitors,” I tell myself, “in the time of social distancing”. The view at night is that of a ghost town, but for homes and dim sodium vapour lamps illuminating the streets until the curfew hour.

“Nature is healing,” reads the buzz on the Internet, because human activity has been doggedly curbed. The government has issued a laundry list of lockdown restrictions, which changes often but seldom makes complete sense. “Stay home to stay safe,” it says. “Wear a mask,” it says. It is a reminder of both, the blessing and the right, that is to be able to breathe free in the open air, literally and figuratively.

All photos at: https://flic.kr/s/aHskszn6ob