These are bleak and meek times. As the nation fights a deadly second wave of COVID-19, people struggle to regain the normalcy associated with the first wave. The healthcare infrastructure is collapsing while the supreme leader is busy pretending to work 18 hours a day with no results. The virus has infiltrated our houses and I barely know of a house unaffected by it.
Personally speaking, I haven’t been doing well lately. Just after my uncle recovered from COVID, my mom and grandmother fell prey to it. It’s tough. It has been anything but easy. We have been wearing masks at home for almost a month now. I go to the loo with a mask on. That’s how horrific the situation is. A minor sneeze or slight discomfort in my body makes me scared. To combat these miserable circumstances, I ordered garlic bread the other day which gave me diarrhoea. I have to go to a washroom on the opposite side of my huge house which takes about 15 minutes so in case I plan to go back to sleep at 7AM, I am most likely to fail. Also, we are privileged people. We have enough resources needed to fight the virus but it has broken our morale. I am tired of ranting to my best friend, Gangaur and there is nothing I crave more than to roam freely in my house without a mask on. To add to the problems, my other best friend and I had a fight and now we are no longer on talking terms. My friend circle is torn apart and I miss those zoom calls and playing fuck, marry, kill until 3 in the morning. I miss being able to say that I follow the precautions just by wearing a mask as a mere accessory. Though what I miss the most is my mom’s cooking, which says a lot about the role we have made women play for 2000 oppressive, patriarchal years. A homemaker’s sickness devoids a home of its very spine and yet all we do is romanticize and glorify their pain.