Life in the Times of the Corona

Family time for me always meant loud, noisy get-togethers. Hot drinks, the quintessential Assam tea, and cold drinks, you know the on-the-rocks kind, served every odd hour, snacks meaty or non-meaty passed around and devoured with gusto, cackles of wild-eyed laughter, snorts, and impromptu sing-a-longs!

Ahh! This is a fairly realistic visualization of my crazy family’s get-togethers throughout the past years. There is this inexplicable warm, gooey feeling which spreads over you when you sit with your family and laugh, eat and sing for no particular reason. It might be someone’s birthday, anniversary, or the fact that it is a weekend. Just any excuse to celebrate life! I have passed many, many evenings like these. Be it at our Uzanbazar residence, my aunts’ places, or my sisters’.

The pathetic political scenario! This topic is a hands-down favorite among my family members to chew on! When you have a family as large as mine, differing political ideologies would leave the evening extra spicy and combative! But mostly, as the evening would mellow into the night, the conversations would invariably turn nostalgic. Of the days gone by. The retelling of the colorful stories of childhood. When days were simpler. Where every fond memory was touched by a golden-ish sepia tint.

Then came the big bad year. 2020. And changed everything we know about life.

20-20. An even number. Had a nice ring to it. And quite foolishly we believed that it was going to be a good, nice year. Come on, the year of 2020 sounded friendly, inviting.

Clueless of what was to come, in the early part of the year, I flew to my hometown for my annual visit. Excited to be in my family’s fold. Happy to be back in my beautiful mother state of Assam. A family wedding, my grandfather’s 91^st birthday, Magh Bihu, a short trip to Meghalaya with my parents and brother, and of course, our mad family parties. This was how I celebrated my time back home. Till that point of time, 2020 had not taken a sinister color. It was still nice. A newborn.

March came. My husband flew in too. Again, a flurry of visits, get-togethers, and fun ensued.

March 22^nd. A complete lockdown was suddenly declared in India. Our flights canceled. In fact, we stayed on for three more months. Till June. Working from home became the new way of working. Even though the situation was bleak and confining, laughter and happy times flowed. Weekend rummy games with my parents became the new buzzing activity. I, for one, who hated anything related to the kitchen, tried my hand on many new experimental recipes. Lo and behold, a new MasterChef was born.

But sadly, our family meet-ups were affected. No more evening get-togethers, no more crazy time. But you know they say that when there’s a will, there’s a way. My third eldest sister from Mumbai, Laili Ba, a family expert in crisis management, soon found a way out. Zoom meetups! What’s good for working with teams across professionally, would be good enough for our get-togethers. Nothing could come in the way of our family strewn across the globe.

Now every month or so, we do just that. Set up a digital meeting and we meet. Have fun, laugh, and yes, sing. Laughing at each other’s grainy, pixelated faces and technical blunders. Discuss what’s going on with our lives. Exchange spicy bits of well-intentioned grapevine. And then as if we are sitting in someone’s living room, someone would request a song and the family, as is the norm, would join in.

To point out the obvious, this year has had been difficult for all of us. We have had to cocoon ourselves in our homes to protect ourselves and our dear ones from this deadly, mutating virus. To look back, nobody knew how deadly this virus would be when we first heard of it. Perhaps had scoffed at it.

Almost three months to go and 2020 would soon draw its curtains. But the situation is still the same. Bleak as bleak goes. The virus has been wreaking havoc on people’s lives with no mercy. And continues to do so with impunity.  With one sweep it took over everything we knew as ‘normal’, took for granted. A loved one’s embrace or something as innocuous as going out to the movies is now a fleeting will-o-wisp of the past.

But despite the situation, despite the engulfing helplessness, ‘Life is beautiful’. And yes, the namesake movie starring Roberto Benigni is my father’s evergreen favorite. And like the movie, this virus too, quite ironically, has taught us many things. To find joy and happiness in little things, never to take anything for granted anymore.

In these testing times, I and my family have been trying to do that. To lit up a few moments by seeing each other’s faces, sometimes blurry (thanks to the sluggish internet speed in some places) but always cheerful. Trying to celebrate life in our way.

Stay safe everyone. Here’s hoping for better times ahead! This will pass…

Yours Truly…