My Laburnum Tree

Last year (2020) saw a vision of fear. We did not know what was happening. What hit us. Despondency was all around. Until, the flowering of the laburnum tree in 2020 gave me hope.

 I was Covid free throughout 2020 and in early 2021 things were appearing to be changing for the better. Vaccinations were happening. Business facilities were returning to normal. Until that fateful day in late March when I lost my sense of smell. I knew. I was hospitalized. I recovered. But by the end of April panic had set in all around. 2021 will be remembered as the year of panic in India. Way beyond fear! It was said that the virus had become "air borne", making social distancing irrelevant. People were running around helter skelter for ambulances, hospital beds, oxygen, medicines and finally crematoriums. Lockdowns were back with a vengeance. Oxygen cylinders were being hoarded and tankers were being hijacked. The unscrupulous were making fake lifesaving drugs. Hospitals were burning down. Bodies were floating down the river and the crematoriums were overflowing. Migrants were going back home. Home to what! This time the mutant had struck rural India, unlike the year before. People who recovered from Covid were being struck down by " black fungus". India achieved the dubious distinction of having the largest number of cases contracted in a day. It was chaotic. There was talk of a "third wave". And every one was blaming everyone else, except themselves

Then in the middle of May the Laburnum bloomed again, in the middle of a cyclone. Panic and chaos turned into reassurance. More people were recovering, aid was pouring in, more vaccines were being produced and being imported, more age groups were being inoculated. The common people were rallying around for each other. Oxygen became abundant again, oxygen concentrators were freely available, new and effective medicines were invented. It was said that they would "cheat the cheater". There was new reassurance. I calmed down. The doomsday scrolling stopped. The "war" was not over, but this battle was won.