Tag: #lockdown
-
Lockdown Diary / Fragmented notes from the 21st or 22nd day?
In the small towns of the desert, children make houses of sand in the evening. Before going home, they smash those houses of sand with their feet and say, “I created, I destroyed.” In the last rites of most Hindu people, a close family member of the deceased has to take a bamboo stave and…
-
Lockdown Diary / Day I don’t know what
I dreamt about my grandmother. She died 12 years ago and I woke up in tears. I dreamt about her. I dreamt about the old woman I’d met in a Bristol hostel who didn’t want me to go out in the cold. She served me a dinner of three tomatoes, two toasts, and cheese. I…
-
Lockdown diary / 5-6-7-8
‘mīr’ amdan bhī koī martā hai jaan hai to jahān hai pyāre’ We have gained some perspective in the pandemic. We now know that Italo Calvino would have been more useful as a grocer. Clarice should have been an emergency doctor. And, of course, Mark Rothko should have used his time more wisely and become…
-
Lockdown diary / 3-4
We are falling like pieces of domino. We are being buried in mass graves. Our immune systems are killing us instead of them. We cannot breathe. The earth that we thought we had conquered is closed off to us. Tigers are laughing. Fish are dancing in circles. Roses are more fragrant this spring. Sun…
-
Lockdown Diary / 2
Red roses and hyacinths are in bloom. There is a cool breeze on this sunny day. I am cooking chicken with preserved lemon and olives. Lola is dancing Salsa and Cha Cha Cha out in the garden. There is a black and white photograph of my grandmother on the wall. The sea is not far.…
-
Lockdown diary / 1
I saw 20 million infected bodies. I saw 2 million deaths. I saw my thirty year old body and I saw 2 million deaths and 20 million infected bodies. I saw the body of a baby goat float on the Sundarbans Delta. I saw a crow eating the body of a cow floating on the…
-
Joy in the age of apocalypse
When our infected unloved bodies collapse on an empty street in a deserted part of the world, we will laugh like Zorba laughed at the collapse of the mine. Swans will roam the canals of Venice, gold fish will appear in the Thar desert, flamingos will walk the pink streets of Jaipur. We will see…
Beyond Six Rivers 