Suman K Sharma
Amar was in no hurry to get up. The maid had stopped coming since the beginning of the month and so had the boy who collected the day’s garbage. The doorbell that rang irritatingly in the mornings had gone soothingly quiet. Absent too was the urgency of picking up the morning paper from outside the door. Strange, but true: one could survive without such frippery as got fusty the moment one gave it a look.
He luxuriated in the abundance of leisure till he heard Bina’s strident voice, ‘Not going to office doesn’t mean you should be lolling all day long in the bed! I have left your tea in the kitchen. You can have it when you want.’ Gauging his wife’s temper, Amar got up and plodded to the kitchen. The tea was just as hot as he liked. Bina, for a change, had tuned in the Aajtak channel, instead of her favourite, the Colours. The news was worrisome.It was Corona, Corona and yet more Corona. The number of confirmed cases had gone above 20,000 across the country and over 640 persons lost their lives to the pandemic. Worldwide, there were over 25.7 lakh active cases and 1.7 lakh deaths. Asymptomatic cases – the ones that showed no outward signs of the disease – were alarmingly on the rise.
Amar could see the fear writ large on the faces of his 18-year old daughter Neha and 16-year old son, Varun. Perhaps to ease the pervading unease, Bina cheerily asked Neha to prepare her favourite cucumber sandwiches for the breakfast. Varun was also to be in the kitchen, to wash dishes.
Amar handed over his empty cup to his son with a flourish. ‘Now that’s good boy,’ he said jokingly, ‘let us show these ladies we can do such chores as well as they do. I will attend to the jhadu-pocha, while you assist your sister in the kitchen.’ Bina vetoed him instantly. ‘No, you won’t. I don’t want dirt to be moved around and deposited in the corners. Leave the floor cleaning to me. You wash clothes. The machine is spilling over with dirty linen.’
The foursome got busy with the appointed tasks and by the noon time the household was gleaming with a sparkle of happy togetherness. The children had retreated to their room and Bina sat again before the TV watching the hour-long episode of Mahabharat on the Doordarshan. Amar pulled out from his bookrack a thriller and sat on his rocking chair for a cosy read. He was hardly through a few pages when Neha came excitedly to show him a landscape she had painted. Before a long row of shut house-fronts by a lonesome road,there stood a ferocious dog with dreadful bared fangs. The art work was captioned ‘COVID-19’. Amar knew his daughter had an artistic flair. But it came to him as a surprise that she could express herself so graphically. ‘You are an artist, Neha,’ he said appreciatively. ‘Thank you, Papa,’ she replied with a smile, ‘Now wait till I make a portrait of yours.’
While talking to Neha, Amar had not noticed his son Varunstanding anxiously behind her to have his say. ‘Sibling rivalry,’ Amar said to himself and recalled his own boyhood when he could not bear his father paying too much attention to his older brother. It turned out that Varun wanted to challenge him at a game of carom. Presently, father and son duo got engrossed in their game. It was Bina’s third call that roused them to join for the lunch.
The after-lunch lethargy made Amar feel that the secondhalf of the day was not going to be as lively as the first half. Time imposed its own variations even though the circumstances might seem unaltered. An afternoon siesta, watching TV with Bina, a cursory enquiry of what children were up to, evening tea; and then again the boring sameness of the 2 BHK flat.Being cooped up got on his nerves. The smells, sounds and colours of the evening seemed to call him out. This was the time he used to be on a walk in the nearby park. But at the thought of the park, he checked himself. To go out was to expose oneself to the real and present danger. It was not only his own life, but also the survival of his family and of all others he loved that was on stake. The risk was not worth taking. With such thoughts subduing his mind, Amar walked inside his home -full twelve steps from the main door to his bookshelf and back. After what seemed to him a long time but was less than ten minutes, hesat down dispirited on a chair. The wall clock showed 7 PM: time for the day’s second episode of Mahabharat. An hour after that,Doordarshan would be re-telecasting the morning’s episode of Ramayan, followed by the long forgotten Buniyad. The folks working over there were so considerate,Amar thought, weren’t they? Between these gems of the past, they gave us full one hour to take our evening meal and what all went with it. Some unconscious urge propelled him towards his personal cupboard. On a shelf was a lone bottle of whiskey, a relic of the happier times; only that it was absurdly empty.Out of the gathering gloom a bright idea struck him. He took the bottle to the kitchen sink and started washing it thoroughly.
Bina, who was busy preparing khichri for the supper, asked what he was doing. ‘I want to grow a money plant in this bottle and keep it in the house as a souvenir of the COVID-19 regime,’he said.
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