Cry Me a Pandemic

How easily can life slip out of your body? The answer to this question takes a hold on your mind, though it has been known since antiquity. When the crisis began, life seemed to move quietly, but after a long time now, it is only quiet on the outside. The narrow allies of the mind have become dark too. As a refuge, I try to keep myself busy with seemingly odd things. like polishing my shoes and ironing my formals. Strange! Isn’t it? shoes as a symbol of hope.

In pandemic days past, watching news was not an option to be considered, but now it doesn’t go off. It goes on and on. Reducing the tragedies to Statistics and goes on saying, Hundred deaths here two hundred there. I feel like a scoundrel to admit that the news of death doesn’t effect me in the same way as it used to, as from the beginning I have seen the open murders, I have seen people as young as 4 and as old as 90 dying on streets in retaliation to the stones from the armed forces, I have heard slogans after every death, I have seen a huge sea of people following the funeral of the slain, and I have seen people dying for the cause of the freedom of their land. But now it was altogether so different. People were giving away their lives to a virus that was not even visible to the naked eye. Just few men like those of oblong blue capsules digging the the dard bodies deep inside the soil or just putting them on fire thousands all together. a situation as that of David (virus) and Goliath (humans). During this first-ever pandemic, the one thing I despised the most was being away from the university—from the country’s capital, back to the conflict zone, a zone devoid of basic amenities such as internet and electricity. I was simmering with indignation as though I had been dragged through the pornographic institute. At times, I was not able to attend the classes or submit my papers on time! All of my dreams, it seemed, were vulnerable to the haziness of memory lane. I used to see myself as a slender young lady in college; now I see an older corpulent woman doing helter-skelter college stuff. just to submit with no purpose, curiosity mingled with fear of not being able to open my eyes wide and be utterly overwhelmed by looking at the marvellous equations on the black board. Ah! Those good, efficient, healthy-minded professors who have reminded us always that there is a way out to every problem, whether you have to understand the unending repeated patterns or the logistic maps, were all gone in this terrific situation of the pandemic. What was left was a machine, and behind that a voice! Now the voices of these professors made me feel like an optimistic tadpole who basks in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded.