A STEP AT A TIME

Before we were hit unsuspectingly by the pandemic, whenever I watched films shot in New York or Mumbai or Paris I would always look for the World Trade Center or the Taj Hotel or the Cathedral of Notre Dame in the panoramic scenes, because it was such a strange feeling to look at these structures of  imperial importance, which were once used as harbingers of death and destruction,  just standing there as a reminder that it takes nothing, but one building to change the lives of thousands of people.

Today we see first hand that nothing but a group of viruses - not even visible by the naked eye can change and destroy millions of lives vis-a-vis a huge chunk of the earth's population is being told to stay at home ,as have I .We have all seen a ridiculous number of films , shows and documentaries by now and almost everything on the screen  symbolizes an old world , a reminder of the seismic change we have seen only in two months.

 Early morning walks, coffee at a cafe, meeting friends, a day that has a purpose, getting dressed in the morning and coming back home exhausted, spontaneous plans, being able to eat out, conversations that do not start and end with tinges of impending doom, going to the mall and just touching things I can't buy ,sitting on a bench in a park and I can fill a book with the list of things I miss.

It is hard to believe that the nostalgia we feel is for things we took for granted just a few weeks back.

I do not think that there is a word for what the world is feeling currently. This is a sudden and hard separation. In the past something like leaving your house for some time could fuel a sentimental longing of normalcy, but we know that we can always come back home where everything is familiar again.

In our case we do not know the psychological traumas or PTSD that a large number of people are going to face at the end of this seemingly endless tunnel. It is going to be a difficult time to recover from months of  loneliness, meaninglessness and reminders of the reality of death.

Especially for people who have been forced to be confined in abusive homes or who suffer from mental health issues.

As an experiment I tried to just stand on the road outside my house today, after a month of last setting foot on gravel and surprisingly I could not even take a single step, since it felt so foreign .At the end of it all when it'll be time to step outside in a world that will have changed forever , that is what we will need- a step at a time