I’m writing this
because Tara put the idea in my head last night.
“Why don’t you write
about these times as the world fights against the virus?” she said “Who knows someone
might want to read it years later.”
An hour ago, I thought
of really doing so. Since last year, I live in Mumbai in a rented apartment. I considered writing a kind of a journal of day-to-day happenings
in these uncertain times.
Just before I settled
with my laptop, I told Tara that I had taken her suggestion seriously.
“Which suggestion?”
“The one about writing
about these times. Remember you told me so last night?”
“I was just joking”
she said.
“……………..”
I have second thoughts
on going ahead.
“Well, anyway I have
decided to write about it.”
“But who would want to
read it?”
“Anybody who wants to. Maybe years later.”
So here I am writing
about life from my point of view in the times of Coronavirus in India.
*
There is a Dumbledore
quote in the Harry Potter series that I had requested a budding artist to make
into a poster to hang in my living room. I dusted it this morning after
breakfast and kept it on the dining table. It says,
“Happiness can be
found in even the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
A bright sun to burn
away this malady, a team of superhero scientists who discover a cure, stories
of successful recoveries, and a curve on a graph that’s been circulated all
over the world to become flat and flatter till it plummets into a thin horizontal
lifeless line – this is the kind of light we hope for.
*
A toddler I knew once
sat eating French fries in a food outlet. Each time she dipped the fries in the
red tomato sauce, she looked up brightly, holding it in her chubby hand like a
matchstick, and said,
“Light On!”
