Essay Contest Runner-Up: Contemplating Corona Times

By S. Rupsha Mitra

I can still picture the day on which we were sitting on the lush green carpet of grass, in the expansive arena of Princep Ghat listening to the swish of the slow breeze.

The air was so promising, there were no restrictions to touch that brown sal pata and eat fuchka, as we enjoyed the amaranthine blue beauty that the sky is. Celebrating amid the serenity, we were least aware of what was going to befall the world – a global pandemic!

And now it has been almost three months from then, and no word can certainly capture the transition we have gone through. These months have been silent, with this indolent idleness about them and the recurrent humming of fears, intrusive thoughts, that inner voice which shouts, yelps and yells ‘don’t touch this and that’ is definitely rather vexing. And the everyday news coming over, as it is filled with horrors, has been terrifying us to the core.

In such tough times, another unpleasant experience for Bengal was the Amphan. A major raging cyclone that hit the Bay of Bengal in the middle of May, almost shaking our world upside down. The days that followed were bleak as the entire city was transmuted into a sable expanse: there was no electricity, no water supply—not even drinking water in many houses. Though the city recovered soon from the precarious clutches of Amphan, the devastation it caused in the outskirts of the town, rural areas, the mud brick villages, is beyond words. There are still people suffering the repercussions of the storm. It gives me goose bumps every time I think about those fisherwomen and men in the remotest corners of the state, the bee collectors in Sunderbans—all those who have been rendered homeless, whose livelihoods have been ravaged in these tumults! I can hardly empathise with them and what we can do is only lend a helping hand and perhaps pray for them.

This disquiet season has also affected the cultural colours of India. Just the other day we were discussing how the absence of the usual resplendent joy of festivities has been feeling like an empty void. A few days ago, my sister was lamenting over how she could not take her Ratha out in the streets. It was the day of Ratha Yatra, seeming like any other day during the ‘new normal’. Kolkata has this weird kenopsia about it—the  nearby bazaar bustling with the aroma of fresh mangoes and the exhibition of the silver delicacy that is the Hilsa fish, the farrago of people hurtling down the streets along with the ferriwalahs, the woman carrying sacks of deodorized flowers—all jostling, and finding their way—this picturesque view of a summer morning I used to behold from my balcony has been replaced by a nameless nihility. Our habit of planning for Durga Puja shopping in these months has received a great set back as well. Now we are no longer conversing about lurid pandals, beautiful idols, or the excitement of getting a grand collection of clothes for Puja rather we see this fog ahead of us, almost like the smoke coming out of the Dhunuchi.

Though these times have been this much saturnine, but on a positive note there are things that are happening which still keep hope alive.

There has been an awakening of sorts worldwide. People have really begun to empathise—in times of physical disconnection, the essentiality of psychological connection has been emphasized.

And what I have really learned over this period as we are incarcerated in our houses, is how to revere the bonds of life, how to sing the psalm of togetherness. I imagine what would have happened to me if I had to spend my lockdown without my family, without the strength that our radicles of attachment are! This is a dawning realisation that how our relationships with our kith and kins, the near and dear ones complete us. Generally in the frantic pace of life we forget the simple pleasures of having a family dinner or phoning that distant friend who had helped at a juncture or even trying to sit calmly,  and if you believe in an Almighty, thanking them for what we are and what we have.

I hope when everything gets just like the normal, we continue to be grateful for everything we are blessed with and try to restructure and refashion this world on new structures of tranquillity.

Notes :

1.     Sal pata – referring to paper cups made of sal leaves

2.     Fuchka – popular Street food

3.     Ratha yatra – Grand festival honouring the chariot of God

4.     Ferrriwalahs – hawkers

5.     Dhunuchi- bengali incense burner required during rituals of Durga Puja