365
As I sit down to pen (type) down this piece, I can’t help but let my mind wander off to how it was on this day exactly 365 days back. If you had told me then, that this is where I would be today, I would have made a stand-up comedy out of it and repeat that to you for the next 2 months at least. Yes, that’s how this year has been. Yet this is the year which has taught me more things than what those years of education did.
2020 started off in the best possible note for me, I guess. I was finally in an otherwise peaceful state of mind, I was keeping a good company, and a good company was keeping me. I managed to carve some time out for me, learning new things, going new places. You might think I have low ambitions but yeah, as far as I am concerned, I was satisfied with whatever was happening. Then we reached March or better to say March reached us.
Now I have promised myself that I won’t use any of those words in this piece, which we got acquainted with, during the last 10 months but it happened. I still remember the first time there was a serious-enough talk going around office. Most of it was turned into semi-racial humor or the initial dissing of the unknown. No shame to admit, I was a part of both.
Someone once said something which stayed stuck in my mind. You never know how big the wave is, until it hits you. Probably this is the single most important statement which defines this year. So, the wave hit. In a couple of weeks, all of us were locked to the comfort of our homes, all hunky dory working-from-home. We were still in partial denial and a rumor-humor zone. Some of us took everything seriously and followed all the guidelines which were being meted out, both the logical and the illogical ones.
A couple of months down and quite a few things changed. The smiles started getting forced and the air, unbreathable. The dream houses we gave ourselves after so many weeks’, months’, and years’ financial planning started occasionally getting nightmarish. We twitched and turned from one room to the other, while all our social media feeds started filling up with the balcony-views of the blue sky and the deathly silenced roads. We were not ready, but we didn’t know that yet.
It took us a few more months to realize that. The Google search queries started hovering around the terms mental health, anxiety, and trauma. Not to forget everyone started keeping a track of the daily counts like as if it were the meter of a rogue auto-rickshaw. This went on almost forever, till our Mathematics gave up. We had our backs up against the wall and every bit of positivity wrung out from our souls. And yes, that’s where we are at, till today, till now.
How do we deal with the fact that when in a matter of few days, we hit a new year, we would just be going to the same corner of our rooms, doing the same thing what we did for a majority of the last year, probably for the majority of another year? If you ask me, I am scared. Scared of a lot of things.
Scared that I might not understand whether I got the virus or is it just the hangover. Scared every time one of my family members catch a cold. Scared to find myself staring at the wall at 4 am in the morning. Scared to wake up and see that I cannot even make a cup of tea without messing it up now. Scared to just lose it all one day.
A few takeaways from this year:
The happiest feeling is getting served a plateful of food for which you didn’t have to break a sweat. Those who know, know.
No amount of social media, OTT subscriptions, gadgets, hobbies, food and/or beverages or anything can be a substitute for a quality human interaction. It’s weird.
There are no extroverts left in this world now. I cancel meetups with friends, whom I was dying to meet a few months back, and feel better amongst strangers now, and mostly hiding at a corner under my caps and hoodies.
The underlying instinct of humans is devilish. All of us are monsters inside, circumstances make us forget that fact but every now and then, it pops out. The sooner we accept that, the better.
If you are ever feeling low and sorry for yourself, the fastest and the surest remedy is to start watching a Bollywood movie. Those things are so horrendous, few minutes into it and you’ll be like at least, I didn’t make this.
If you have reached till here, you know how it has been. You know how it is going to be. If no one has told you this yet, I will do it. Give yourself a pat on your back, you are here, today, no matter how battered, how broke, or how broken you are, you have reached here. Things might go further south, or it might get better. All of us are surviving, one day at a time. You might be alone, or in a crowd or alone in a crowd. You will have to do this all by yourself. Just don’t forget to give a hand to someone if you feel you can or take a hand if you feel you need it more.
