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It was 9 AM in the morning when I checked my phone. My eyes were heavy on sleep. With time plenty on my wallet, technology lavishly blessed and bestowed to the generation and a good amount of procrastination to spare, I had spent the previous night, abandoning all hopes and cares and chaos of the world, surfing the net reading “Top 10 ways to love yourself by Oprah Winfrey”, conspiracy theories on Covid-19 that it was actually a man made bioweapon by China and not a natural pandemic, watching some stand up comics and ASMRs on YouTube and finally succumbing to sleep at 2 AM.
I checked the phone again. This time it read 9:15. My notification was filled with three hundred something messages on WhatsApp, all from class related group chats. They were all the usual same stuff. More pdfs from the lecturers with them telling us to go through which were responded with the routine Thank you sirs and ma’am(s) and thumbs ups, which I hope the teachers found convincing?
Please get out of the bed I begged myself like every other morning. I had dozed off for the third time; my alarm was giving up on me and all hell might break lose any moment if I didn’t get up. There were assignments and practicals piling up and household chores waiting for me.
But the bed was so warm and the sleep so dear. The lockdown is till May and it’s only April now. Five more minutes.
I dragged my almost lifeless, purposeless, unmotivated body out of the bed finally this time after several five more minutes later. Oh, Mum is gonna be so pissed. This time for sure. I opened my bedroom door with a prayer and stepped out of my room nervous, guilty and scared. Right in front of me there she was, in the kitchen, sitting in a chair, her eyes fixed on her phone, not even bothering to look at her dear daughter who slept longer than sleeping beauty herself. She is definitely pissed.
Luckily she was not. It had been pouring cats and dogs since morning and so the weather was lazy by default. Mother nature, though she was sick, had my back (Get well soon sister……after I finished all my class works that is).
It was a WhatsApp forwarded message, Mum was so focused on, about how to tackle the Covid -19 by drinking 4 cups of ginger tea 4 times a day for 4 weeks and she was reading it loud to a neighbour aunty, whom I almost always see every other morning, standing on the doorway of our kitchen.
Dad was smoking bidi on the veranda when I joined him with my cup of tea. Adi Imli was passed out in the adjacent room. Probably exhausted from the late night gaming. I could hear Mum and aunty going on about the latest news on Covid-19 the source which turned out to be mostly forwarded messages. Oh! The media. Dad and I didn’t talk. We just enjoyed our silence, watching the chicken scrapping the damp earth for fresh food and listening to the women talk about how the potatoes got sold out in the nearest grocery store too soon for their liking. It had stopped raining.
“An hour” I heard Mum “I had to wait for an hour for the crowd to cease. It did cease and so did the potatoes. Don’t they understand that panic buying is not smart? Everybody has to eat for heaven sake.”
“If I had known” aunty replied “that the potatoes would get sold out like that…….Ah! I should have just gone to the junction from the first place without wasting my time expecting to get anything here. People are just going mad.”
“No use. It’s the same scene there. In fact worse. Men, women, everyone rushing to get things and the vendors, out of their wits, confused whom to attend to from the commotion until a police wallah shows up with his lathi and gives him a beating for God knows what reason.”
“ Yes! The police! Oh! They are the worst again. I mean, we get it, they are just doing their job trying to keep the situation under control but don’t just go around beating people for no reason.”
“Yes. There was this news that a lady doctor, somewhere in mainland, was returning home after her shift when the police halted her car. Yes! She was in her car, with her mask and she showed them her doctor ID explaining she was just returning home from her shift. But no. They beat her badly. A woman. A doctor. Beaten by the police on her way home FROM THE JOB FOR HEAVEN SAKE.”
“ The police wallahs must had been drunk. What happened to them?”
“ They apologised it seems. Hmmmp! Apologising after such a careless and thoughtless act. They should be punished that police wallahs. Severely.”
“ This news, it was on the papers?”
“ No I read it on WhatsApp.”
Whether it was a fake news or a real one, the police do seem to be getting out of hand. They are supposed to protect us not scare us. Man, don’t do that. Beating the hell out of people just because you feel like it when you see them I repeat SEE THEM on the street walking. Sure, the Nizamuddin case was legit. That’s when you beat the hell out of people. Because that’s when you are not social distancing. And spreading the virus. Which they did (one rule people there is one rule. And I’m sure even God doesn’t mind that). But just one or two people? We never know what kind of emergency that might be in. Or they might just be going to the shop to get some bidi? Or bread? I want to have bread though. They don’t sell bread anymore here.
Dad went to the kitchen after he finished his bidi. “Your husband went somewhere today?”
“ Yes. I sent him to the junction to get some potatoes.” Aunty replied.
“ I doubt he’ll get any,” said Mum pessimistically.
“ Whether he gets it or not, I hope he’s aware that he has to be back in the colony by 2 PM. The colony gate closes after that.”
I heard Dad saying as I sipped into my tea and guilty pleasures of day dreaming. They don’t sell bread anymore. They have restricted the playground. The shops are out of stock with items my brother wants. Prices of some items have hiked up. The streets are empty. The air seems less polluted they say. All the institutions are closed so they are adopting online classes and online assignments which I don’t like because the environment and mood is just not right.
Ah! It’s another usual morning.
Chubazungla Walling
B.Sc.(Hons) Ag
SASRD, Nagaland University
Medziphema Campus