Yours Whimsically - Part 25: #LockdownDiaries

“Truth is stranger than fiction”. Nobody had imagined that a day would arrive when a large part of the planet is forced to stay indoors, for such prolonged periods of time. The movie “Contagion” (on my watch-list) depicts a scenario very similar to what we are experiencing today, I’ve heard. But then, in that movie – like several other Hollywood movies – the US saves the world. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction!

Frankly speaking, the lockdown did not disrupt my routine to a great extent, because I anyway spend most of my time at home, preparing for my exams. However, it hurts when your choice is restricted, when your agency is curbed. Running out of ideas to keep myself engaged in these uncertain times – apart from studying, I decided to record my activities for a day, which are detailed below. 

10.30 AM: Amma has asked me to clean the windows for her today. It takes quite some time to clean them well. I wonder how the maid completes it so quickly! Though the lockdown has been lifted, the road is quite empty: the peak hour traffic has passed. As I dust and wipe the grills, I see six cows, in varied stages of rumination and rest. A couple of them are ambling along, like they own the place. On other days, a similar situation may have clogged the traffic for quite some time.

The stiffening of a cow’s tail and its lifting is the first indication of a cow about to relieve itself. It is not that I am noticing it for the first time. However, there is some intrigue to the whole process. 

11.30 AM: I am not rigorously studying or attempting tests today. Let me dedicate it to observations and sundry tasks. More than half-an-hour has passed since I sent my friends a message on my observation about the cows. None of them seem to be inclined to even acknowledge it, let alone share the curiosity.

I was disturbed from reading the newspaper by a peculiar sound. It was a squirrel, nibbling at the bark of a tree in front of the apartment. Before this pandemic-induced lockdown, it would have been impossible to hear it above all the noise. I have been standing here for the last fifteen minutes, almost meditating, tracking the squirrel, as it scurries along the branches. It tries to hide at the sight/cawing of crows nearby.

My reverie is broken by the wafting smell of perfume. There is a lady walking along, perhaps returning after shopping for essentials. Alas! The face is half-hidden behind the mask and I shall never know who she is.  

12 PM: I am checking the updated stats for the blog I wrote a few days ago. The last few posts of mine have not done well, in terms of views. May be, it is because I have become so infrequent in my posts that whenever I share it on Facebook, only a few people see it in their feed and fewer care to read it. I have also unfollowed a lot of people – resulting in “mutually unseeing” each other. However, the ones I am really angry about are those who saw my Facebook “story” but did not bother to open the blog. If only as many people had visited the blog! There lies the conundrum: do I write for myself? Or do I write to be read by others? Should I seek validation from others? Questions for another day, perhaps.

Worse are those who liked the screenshot from the blog on Instagram, without bothering to go to the blog and read it at length. Did they even read what they liked? Or was it out of habit – of double-tapping every image that rolls down their screen, while they are busy relieving themselves?! Lesson learnt: The number of friends on Facebook or the number of followers on Instagram is neither an indicator of your importance nor your popularity.  

Maybe I should begin randomly liking photos and posts - on both these platforms. That would perhaps increase my visibility. Let me sell my soul to sell my blog!

3 PM: I am trying hard to sleep. Over the last few weeks, I have been sleeping on a mat. It isn’t a sign of frugal living or a simple lifestyle. It has just become too hot. You can’t even call the electrician now to repair the fan. The afternoon heat, a slowly rotating fan, a near-lifeless road, the infrequent cawing of crows – seems like a scene straight out of an art movie. Or better – from one of R K Narayan’s books.

3.20 PM: I gave up the struggle to sleep. There’s Jagjit Singh playing on low volume, as I read some articles from the Indian Express and EPW. “Hosh waalon ko khabar kya…” – the ghazal that led me to Jagjit Singh. It was in my first year in hostel. During breakfast that day, 9XM or some other channel was playing this from “Sarfarosh”, instead of the regular Kumar Sanu/Udit Narayan/ Alka Yagnik crooning. Thus began my exploration. I don’t understand the lyrics in entirety of several of his ghazals. Yet, they connect. A line here; a musical note there – it is sufficient to trigger a chain of thoughts and memories.

During hostel days, Jagjit Singh featured in the background even as I studied…. In the later years, those ghazals hummed in the background of many a late-night adda….As coincidence would have it, I am reading an article on stories and storytelling. After all, stories are a retelling & recreation of memories – individual, familial, cultural, civilizational, aren’t they? 

4 PM: The squirrel is back in action. Let me see it at work for some more time. There’s also a dead rat being feasted upon by crows under the tree.

4.30 PM: The number of vehicles on the road is gradually increasing, with people returning home. It is clearly evident that the lockdown has largely been eased from the number of vehicles and their horns. I had never assumed that such cacophony would feel so welcome.

Am I imagining it? Or am I able to distinctly make out the smell of vehicle exhaust? Maybe the drastically cleaner air over the last forty-odd days has heightened my sense of smell!

5.45 PM: The lockdown has revived old games. We are playing “chauka-baara”, a desi version of Ludo, played with cowrie shells, instead of dice. It has the right mix of strategy and fortune. One can infer many a life-lesson from this game, but I shall not get into it today. 

7 PM: In high-school, we had a story which our teacher called an ‘expression of the triumph of human spirit’. Any answer pertaining to that text had to contain those words in order to be complete. I see that triumph manifest before my eyes now. My parents have succeeded in their endeavor to ensure my brother dedicates time for ‘online bride hunting’ and are doing it in earnest. Having played a game of fortune and strategy a while ago, they are translating it into real-life now! I want to call this "Love in the time of Corona", but it sounds too cheesy and cheeky. 

Despite all the uncertainties, we continue to plan for the future with a (sometimes) bewildering sense of confidence.  It is the belief that we shall come out strong at the end of it all which keeps us chugging. Hope is such a beautiful feeling, isn’t it?

11.45 PM: The summer heat seems to have brought ants out of their hiding. As I sit, trying to plan my schedule for the next few days, I see a group of ants carrying a dead fly back to their colony. It’s fascinating to watch these ants lift something which is multiple times their own weight.

2.30 AM: Despite not having slept at all in the afternoon, sleep eludes. And I don’t even have any gnawing guilt to justify this sleeplessness. I now wonder what bothers me more – the fact that I am unable to sleep; or the fact that I don’t have a worthy guilt.  

I have read somewhere that counting 100 to 1 helps one fall asleep. Let me do it in English and Kannada both.

Hundred….ninety nine….ninety eight….

Did all of these occur over the course of a single day? How much of this is fact? How much is fiction? Where does truth end and fiction begin? That, Reader, I leave it for you to decide. 

Yours Whimsically - Part 24: On Harry Potter, memories and more...

Last week, I watched “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)” for the umpteenth time. I stopped keeping count years ago. Despite knowing the movie so well that I know many of the dialogues by-heart, I watch them afresh each time, eagerly. This is true for all Harry Potter movies. I’m not saying that they are great works of art, which offer new meaning or insights with every viewing (or reading). It is simply because, for me, the series carries with it a sense of nostalgia.

As the clichéd line goes, I’m a 90s’ kid who grew up with Harry Potter. It was the first series I ever read, from cover to cover. I was initiated into the Harry Potter series thrice – is there any term for thrice-born?  During the first two attempts, I promptly fell asleep by the time I completed the first chapter of Philosopher’s Stone. I mean, it is very difficult to hold the attention of an eight-year old with a chapter like that. When POGO started telecasting Harry Potter movies, my brother and I religiously watched the multiple reruns, setting aside everything else. My brother even tricked me into waiting for one book every year, making it seem like a sacred custom of great importance and ‘magic’. It took me three books to realize how foolishly I bought into that entire charade!

By the time we were in high-school, some of us had matured into “Potter-heads” discussing books and movies with great enthusiasm. We were in Class 10 when “Deathly Hallows (Part 1)” released. It was around the time of its release when a few of us were going to attend an inter-school competition. That Harry and Hermione share a kiss on screen was being hotly discussed, oblivious to the fact that we had a teacher sitting a couple of rows away. She turned around and gave us an all-knowing smile but luckily, did not embarrass us further.  

During a very eventful second year in college – a story for another day, perhaps – a friend of mine and I delved deep into the subject of assigning characters from the series, to various faculty and students. We had a Voldemort, a Dumbledore, a Dolores and even a Hagrid, for the simple reason that he had a noisy bike! One of the last things my friend and I did before bidding farewell to the hostel was to watch a couple of movies from the series, almost raising it to the level of a ritual. You see, the memories associated with the series are endless…

In a manner similar to my initiation into the world of Harry Potter, there were many false-start articles before I sat down to write this today. Too many ideas jostled for space, without any of them germinating well. Besides, I was hesitant to put pen to paper – out of the fear that it may turn out like an essay that I would write while preparing for the exam! However, you never overcome your fears unless you face them, do you? I decided to rely on the best source of material for my piece – memories. Watching reruns of the Harry Potter movie has its benefits, you see. Moreover, with the whole world coming to a near stand-still and nothing to keep us occupied, aren’t memories the only ones to keep us company? (Apart from those “8 PM tasks”, that is. Now, some of my friends may well accuse me of pushing my ideology!)

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It has never been easier to feel nostalgic than today. I am not talking of the fact that we simply have too much time to spare. I am not even talking of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata being telecast on national television. Even without the generous help by the likes of Schoop-Whoop, Social media has transformed private reflections and quiet ruminations into a very public, noisy affair, triggering a chain of people to jog their memories, for the fear of missing out is so widespread! Old albums have got a new lease of life, thanks to the lockdown. I check Facebook very rarely and Instagram even less – I’m one of those Instagram users who logs in only to post or to check how those posts are doing! However, these days whenever I do check, my feed is filled with throwbacks, with plagiarized lines about how one longs for the years gone by. This deluge is despite me unfollowing quite a lot of people on my friend-list. Every now and then, a challenge rages on, keeping people occupied with searching for photos suited for the challenge, fishing for compliments and complimenting others on their pictures, in expectation of reciprocation. 

Unless you know the person too well or unless the person insists on your liking/commenting on the post, you can choose to ignore your Facebook or Instagram feed. (Trust me when I tell you that I know of persons who go around asking people to like their pictures and even unfriending them if they fail to comply!) The real challenge is when the same is replicated on WhatsApp, especially in family groups. The smartphone revolution, coupled with Jio’s Digital India campaign, has indeed empowered a lot of people. Every new day brings with it a new puzzle or a challenge, flooding the group with photos and messages, testing not only your intellect but also your social skills. The read receipts can be turned off for personal conversations, but not for groups. Seeing the messages but not responding to them can earn you the reputation of being ‘unsocial’ on social media. I doubt if Shakespeare ever had such groups in mind, but “to be, or not to be, that is the question”!

You might assume that I am complaining about feeling nostalgic. I have nothing against it. In fact, I value memories and reflections. How else do you connect with your old self? And unless you are able to appreciate who or what you were, it is not possible for you to realize who you are or chart a course for who you want to be. “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered”. What I am actually complaining about is the blurring of the lines between the public and the private.

When some of my friends from college decided to “Zoom” some days ago, I gave in to the surge of nostalgia, wanting to reconnect with the group that largely defined college for me. The last time I met some of them in person was five or six years ago, at their respective farewells. My memory of the first such farewell stands out, because I was awkwardly silent for the most part that night. May be, I made up for it when that senior came as an alumnus in my final year. 

A few minutes into the “reunion”, topics veered off into small talk and of course, the ensuing pandemic along with strategies to cope with it. Inspite of all the laughter that ensued, realization dawned that our lives and trajectories had diverged, post-college, with little in common to hold us together – except memories of times spent together. Perhaps none of us had the heart to accept it or the courage to say it out loud. I still like to believe that it was due to the virtual, ‘dry’, setup of the meeting that such an anomaly occurred; or perhaps it is just me overthinking, like always. Maybe it is just due to the pandemic. Or maybe it is that the path I have chosen to tread does not have much of an overlap with most others there. I still hope that if and when all of us meet in person, it will just be like the old times. Or is it too much to expect? Was it a mistake – because this may alter my perceptions of us as a group, in turn changing the texture and smell of my memories, remaking them? Or is this what they call ‘growing up’? 

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Years after we have left this pandemic behind, how will we remember this event? Will there be a throwback to these two months of throwbacks? Will somebody collect all those challenges circulating on WhatsApp and compile them into a book, "commemorating the human spirit and creativity during these trying times"? Will there be a record of human relationships that blossomed or broke down in this lockdown? Will waves of nostalgia bring back fond memories?

Life will not be the same after COVID-19. Will our memories be?