A couple of weeks time!
Warning: I shall be talking a bit about the virus (you know which one!). So, if you do not want to read about it or find it triggering, please give this a skip. But I hope you read it later, at a better time 🙂
Personal Thoughts
A lot has been written and said about the virus by now. A lot of us have read about the virus too. A lot of us have suffered with it as well. Perhaps healed, but still suffered. But as I see first hand a case of Covid in my family, I realize that no article, guideline, blog, advisory, report prepared me well (or I was not reading the right kind of Covid material!). Primarily, because most of them talked about what the virus does to your body, what should you do in case of an infection, what should you eat, drink, not do etc. But not many discuss how the virus makes you feel!
Watching my sister get infected a few days back, terrible and terrified are two close feelings. I couldn’t stop wondering who else in the family had got infected. Should we all isolate ourselves? What about my 60+ parents? Are they safe because they got their two doses of vaccine? What about my 4 year old nephew? It is remarkable about the virus how it attacks you in person and makes you attack your dear ones. It’s like a shrewd manipulator who is destroying you and everything you love by living among you.
Touch, feel, smell, taste — the beautiful senses we have — are nearly all taken away from you. The virus reduces you to your basic vulnerable individual self. You could be living your dream but how does it feel without smell and taste? Without the feel of touch from your loved ones? To make it worse, your touch is likely to harm your family and friends. How do you prepare for that feeling?
The truth is I have not found a way to understand that feeling. As like most things, it’s a thing in your head and you need to wrap your head around it! Needless to say, it makes matters worse for overthinkers (like my entire family is!).
Medical situations are always tricky, I have felt. There are multiple advises flowing left, right and center from family, friends, WhatsApp (?)! Doctors are helpful but choosing the right doctor can be an arduous task too. And in this pandemic, we have been left with very little choices. In fact, we have been stripped of our choices. You need a bed, there’s one bed available. Take it or leave it! What will you do? What can you do? You will take it. It’s forced! Do you trust the hospital? Or the doctor? Or their treatment? It does not matter because everything else has taken a back seat.
But again, choice is such a privilege in this world. Lower middle class and middle class, the most severely hit group in this pandemic, is an aspirational group of people. They educate themselves, work their asses off, save every literal penny to move above the ranks. They aspire for choices. They aspire for a time when they will have the resources for themselves. But this pandemic threw them back to the starting line. And that would naturally evoke a feeling of annoyance, distress and helplessness.
My eldest sister is recovering well though. My other elder sister, who lives in Bengaluru, one of the worst hit cities in second wave, also got infected about a month back and she fought it out, as will my eldest sister. Two weeks of time though can be really tough to spend. I can’t speak for my sisters spending days in isolation but it can be tough for other family members too. It’s a classic — take-one-day-at-a-time — kind of battle.
Personally, I have found it tough too. All in my head, of course. Thinking and overthinking scenarios for the first couple of days of her isolation. However, I quickly realized it was making me mentally weaker (much weaker, in fact) and I had to find ways to distract myself. And I started doing things I usually ask myself to control, and avoid at best, — binge watching!
I devoured series after series, movie after movie when I had the time from work. When I got bored of watching, I would pick up a book or spend time with my 4 year old nephew. Pro tip: If you are feeling down, talk to a 4 year old child. They’ll make you feel instantly better. Unless they are thoroughly annoying in which case you should just give them a tight slap — another pro tip (but I will leave the choice of latter to you!!!)
And in this rabbit-hole of OTT content, I somehow got hooked to shows where the protagonist is a female detective. I think it started when I begun watching Mare of Easttown. If you have not seen this series, then WTH ARE YOU DOING? There’s one episode remaining in this mini-series that drops on 31st (Monday) morning and I haven’t been more excited about anything recently. I ended up watching Delhi Crime too (finally!). And Happy Valley is ongoing. There’s this other show — The Last Hour — on Prime. It’s mystical and thrilling — set in the beautiful landscape of Sikkim. You should give it a try. It’s not airtight but it’s good enough. And most importantly, very different! I watched some other stuff too — movies like Donnie Darko, Zodiac etc — basically the good ones I had not seen earlier.
So, that’s where I am. I know, I started by talking about the virus and am now recommending TV series and movies. How easily we get distracted, no? But fun fact — the virus does not. It is good at this job so you can’t fight it if you are distracted. You need to be as focused as the virus. So, do the things they tell you in those articles, guidelines, blogs, advisories, reports etc. But be focused about it. Don’t get distracted!
As for me, I am distracting myself from overthinking, and it is working. Because I can’t stop thinking about who killed Erin, and how will Mare find the killer? I just can’t wait for this Monday morning.