Letter from Shabnam Minwalla

 Dearest readers, dreamers, wailers, gigglers, living-room-footballers and born-again bakers,

I’ve been thinking. And I hope you’ve been thinking too.

Admittedly, thinking is something we’ve done before. Even when the world was not in lockdown, when the doorbell rang 20 times a day and the skies were filled with aeroplanes and particulate pollution And admittedly, thinking is something we’ll continue to do, even when the roads are alive with cars and squealing college girls, rather than just furtive people looking like highway robbers.

Still, there is a difference. In busier, bustlier times we tend to think busier, bustlier thoughts. We tend to think of errands that need running, birthday gifts that need buying and classes that need attending in the next three minutes and 32 seconds. While in these uneventful days, it is possible to ponder over a single question for minutes, hours, even days. As I have been doing.

What question, you might well wonder, is worth hours or days of your time. Well, the question that has been teasing and tickling me at the moment is this: What will I tell my grandchildren about this strange time, when a pandemic swept our planet and crashed into our routines and realities? What will I tell them about this pause in the music? This bookmark, thrust into the middle of our stories?

Will I tint these memories with beauty or sadness? Will I talk about the cancelled exams, holidays and book festivals with exasperation or cheer? Will I remember these days when our dining table doubled up as school, office, restaurant, music class, singing class, conference room, courtroom and stage, with claustrophobia or amusement?

There is, of course, no single answer. My thoughts mutate quite as rapidly as the coronavirus itself. But there are some titbits and truths that will not change, that will be part of the final whole.

I will certainly tell my grandchildren that these were months when the calendar became redundant. Or, as the Whatsapp wag put it, “Until further notice, the days of the week are now called thisday, thatday, otherday, someday, yesterday, today and next day.”

That alongside the calendar, geography too became irrelevant. It stopped mattering whether your friends lived down the road or across the globe. You could only meet them on a computer screen anyway.

That we should be careful what we wish for. Each and every one of us has wished for a never-ending summer holiday. But now that one has trundled along, most of us would like to return to our everyday of clocks and calendars and happy hugs.

Perhaps I will tell my grandchildren about the second epidemic that came on the heels of the first. Maybe by then it will even have a name – Webinaritus? I will tell them about the webinars on baking, on cricket, on organising your wardrobe, on planning more webinars. And finally, even webinars on the effectiveness of webinars.

I must not forget to tell them about how common sense became the first victim of the virus. About how, in Belgium, the government urged people to eat more fries to support the farmers. How in Tanzania, the government tested its coronavirus kits on goats and pawpaws and then panicked because the tests came positive. And how in Malaysia, the government decided to allow only the heads of families to venture into supermarkets during the lockdown. After which the shops were filled with bewildered men clutching cellphones and hand-drawn maps and trying to find the celery and the spring onions. Only to be greeted by The Stare of Death when they returned home with 1 kg of ginger instead of 100 gm of galangal.

By now, I’m afraid, my future grandchildren might be getting a little restless.

Even so, I would like to tell them about howI was always afraid of the undead – those creatures that lurk in the shadow world between the animate and the inanimate. But that while I was keeping a vigilant eye out for zombies and vampires, the true danger snuck in via undead specks of protein. (There are probably a lot of lessons in there, and by the time I’m a wise granny I hope I’ve even figured them out.)

That sometimes it is good to come face to face with what you dread. Be it cleaning a bathroom or cooking fish or waking up and realising that there is still no vaccine, still no cure, still no fairy godmother on the horizon. You realise that things are usually not as unbearable as you imagined. And that you are much more resilient, flexible, strong than you knew.

And also that it is possible to find colour in the greyest of days. Sometimes there are vivid splashes – reconnecting with a roommate from 20 years ago, watching forgotten family videos, creating the perfect Dutch Baby pancake, doing all the joyful things you never got around to doing because you were always too busy and too bustly.

Sometimes, though, events cast a dull red shadow – the stories of migrant workers, starving and desperate, trying to walk the 1000 km home. Falling asleep on railway tracks on a dark night, only to be mowed down by a speeding train. And this bring the realisation that you have to do something, however small it may be, to brighten the days for other.

These then are the fragments,dull and glorious, sad and glad, that will be part of my story of the strange time when a virus changed the world.

But that is enough about me. What about your mosaic of memories? What will you tell your grandchildren about these extraordinary days?

Think, think, think.

Shabnam Minwalla

 

Shabnam Minwalla writes for newspapers, plays mother to three teenagers, devours murder mysteries and shops for sarees. But her absolutely, totally, completely favourite activity is writing books for children. These include What Maya Saw, The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street, When Jiya Met Urmila and the Nimmi series.