Intro - xx

Quarantine

So you get a perception now, you see how temporary it all is. It has always been like this, so fragile, hanging by a breakable thread. It’s just that we weren’t able to see it before, as a bigger picture, and now as things become more and more real, now as things dawn on us, we are realising how abstract everything is.

Things have come to a halt. You always wish, as a person who crawls through each day with agony, that life came with a pause button. A button that would make it all stop for a moment, let you breathe, let you collect yourself so you can start again. Start better.

We are here now, we have been paused. We have been put to a halt, like everything else. Yet, things are still moving. It feels unreal, doesn’t it? Staying at home, doing things you don’t know will matter anymore.

Even if you feel invincible, staying at home, feeling like it won’t ever happen to you, it’s still a thought at the back of your mind.
What if you are next?
What if it’s you being listed in the names of people who are dead?
What if it is someone you know?

And now, take another pause. Think.

Before this all even happened, before this became so real that there was nothing we could do but go into hiding— wasn’t there a chance that the moment you are living now, could be your last?

Or is it only when a death threat is right at your door do you realise the possibility of an end?

Aren’t we always on the verge of dying? Of our perish?

Aren’t we always scared of dying? Or is it that we are scared of a life not lived?

We couldn’t have known it, that this would consume us like this, confine us to the safety of our homes, unable us of all deeds, but it has now. Its unfair how some people aren't privileged for that too, for a home that they can turn to. Its infuriating. We couldn’t have known that it would become so huge. When are things like these ever foreseen? They are only planned, the plan gets derailed, and then there is no plan left at all. Like life, right?

There are people in this world right now who are not in their homes. They are somewhere far away. They are not with their family, they are not with their friends, they don’t have jobs now and they don’t have money.

The economy has dropped. There are no customers and there is so much to sell. There are so many things to buy, and no thing left to sell.

How materialistic the system has forced us to become?

And now, what has become of the entire system we had built?

A well organised system that was our normal, that we worked in, were a part of.

What of it now?

You’d think you were a very small part of that, it was so huge and concrete, the only reality you had known.

Look at it all now, it’s crumbling.

There is a government screaming somewhere far away, a hospital seeing deaths of so many, and look how stupid it feels now to have beaten a kid because he came out gay.

Disgusting.

There are people who are stuck, with nowhere to go and no money to reap, people who are stuck in their own hell with nothing to distract them but the four walls they’ve always seen. Squint a little. Try and see.

Look how stupid it feels to have judged a man who wore a dress. Does it matter now? What a man wore, a dress, a jewellery, some eyeliner for him to look pretty, does it matter, now that we’re all the same, stuck in the pause that nature has put on us.

Does it matter now that you’re white, or black, or asian or brown, pakistani or gay, or transgender and all the other unnecessary labels.

Does it matter how you've looked today? To anyone else but you? Aren't you feeling beautiful today, and it's only for you?

Aren’t we all just simple beings fighting together?

Is it visible now, how stupid we all have been, not living the life we have been given, something that can be taken away in a blink, even without a pandemic looming over us.

Sit for a minute, think what you’ll be once you start to move again, not stuck anymore, not paused, always moving once again.

Its a waste of time, doing things you don’t love. Thinking you have time, thinking you’ll do them one day.

When?

Oh, not now.

Its a waste of time looking around, judging the world for what it is, because what is it? What is it if not diverse, never ending in its uniqueness.

See how the normal has now crumbled.

The system we all thought was so concrete. The illusion that we have to live life a certain way, marry, nurture, make money, it has all crumbled now.

What has left?

You are left.

Your passions, your love.

Humanity now is all that is left.

No one is making plans for an impending war, no one has time to hate, no one has time to hate on the basis of race, religion, caste, of what you were born into, of what you were born to be. No one has time for that now, no one gives a care.

No one cares if you are a woman, wanting to fly, no one has time to tie those wings of yours. No one has the time to criticise you for what you’re wearing. No one has the time to judge. No one cares if you’re a millionaire or an artist of a street.

No one is outside. We’re all in.

Why were these things so important before? Why, because we weren’t under an immediate threat of dying?

Is it all it takes? A simple nudge?

Life is the biggest abstraction we can know.

And I hope, when we come out of this, we come out humbled. If not all, then at least a few learn to live for themselves.

At least a few come out with hearts that are braver.

Including my own.

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