Coronatimes: Fear and Humour

There’s fear, above all. Fear that shakes the globe. Fear that blurs the lines. Fear that melts the ridges – politics, religions, occupations. Identities. Fear that poisons the air so you fret even to breathe. But breathe you must, eat you must. Survive. Life, stripped off lifestyles. Lunch spreads strip down to bones – food to survive, not thrive. Clothes go to wash every second day. Palms bruise from soap and scrubs, floors smell of Dettol stains.

Fear that separates the essential from the non-essential. Fear that sifts through our everyday habits and mark the needs from the wants with unprecedented clarity. Fear that tells us what is what, after all. Fear that come as reminder, realisation, even respite, that we are alive still. We may survive, only if we are afraid enough.

Fear, above all.

It rises and hangs in the sky.

Like a cloud that can strike.

Anytime…

Hush!

And then there is humour. The only thing that soars above that cloud. That shared little moment of a slipped laughter, a finger swipe. Thumbs up, forward, ROTFL.

Humour, perhaps the only first-aid.

Like air.

Essential and polluted, in equal parts.

And so comes the jokes, memes, tiktoks.

How are the women looking, now that parlours are closed? Baboon pictures follow.

How are the CEOs, Sales Head and Senior Vice Prezs spending their mornings? Under marital-distress, of course, sweeping floors and doing dishes. (Of course they are men. Come on!)

How do women spend their days now? Scolding husbands.

How do women change from angels to ghouls, as children and husbands stay home.

No, activism isn’t for such times. The world needs vaccine, not equality. Your feminism can wait, now, now that it is Life and Death. Park yourself.

But something tells me, the truth is removed from what we paint. In that truth, we are doing better. We are nurturing the love that was once our marriages. We are bathing in the softness of parenting, like the Sunshine through that cloud of fear. We are doing fine. We are doing better.

I also wonder what we would be if on the other side of this disaster, if we'd come out changed after all. Changed for ever. Changed for the better.

Maybe that CEO will clean the floor after all, still, when the baby spills her milk; wipe the kitchen slab, make the first tea before anyone is up. Maybe he will work from home more often; wait, or she! For now the office knows it is possible, and do they. ust that they know there is love at home if you have time to look.

Maybe the lady will decide she’s just fine with her eyebrow bush, with hair in the armpit she has now like her husband, like the species that is human being. Maybe she would cancel the hairdresser's appointment, even as the country unlocks, and spend that time doing what she has put away for many years now: she'll start her laptop and brush up her CV.

Maybe even the children will remember to wind up after they play, wash up after they spill, clean up after they eat. Water plants. Fill bottles. Know how to share the television remote.

Maybe we will all learn to live better. To tell needs from wants, even as the cloud lifts.

Until then, we are all locked in.

United in fear. United in humour.

Until then, women, laugh on. Men, join in.

Until then.

You say: “Par darling, suno toh. Yeh roti to dekho zaraa, bilkul thand ho gayee!”

Until then.

We reply: “Woh mere liye rakh do, main naya banake laati hun.”

 Until then.

Till we are free. Once again.