MITA SEN, housewife, 70 years
‘ONLY connect’ were the words M Forster used to sum up his panacea for the vicissitudes of modern life. And as I look back on the last 14 months, when life as we knew it fell apart, I realize that `connecting’ is one of the significant ways I have kept sane and alive. First and foremost, connecting with people, with family and friends, with my neighbors which whom I hadn’t even exchanged a hello in months. Always too busy, always juggling with too many things to do, most of which in retrospect seem so trivial. I chatted with elderly relatives much to their delight, something I plan to do constantly but sadly, keep postponing, and then feel an intense shaft of regret and guilt when they depart!
I speak to the young members of my extended family too, asked about their hopes and dreams and frustrations, and was pleasantly surprised to discover how the young think alike in many respects, though we belong to dramatically different generations, indeed, different worlds.
Friends and I were constantly in touch sharing information about the wretched virus (an info overload if you ask me), sharing jokes and recipes and hilarious memories sometimes dating back fifty years. That’s the incomparable blessing of having old friends. And the isolation was redeemed by this connecting, and made even more rewarding when I reconnected with friends somehow lost down the way.
And finally, I looked at the people who have been providing me essential services all these years, saw them as fellow sufferers, found out the subzi-wallah’s name, how many children he had, and shared similar little details which make us comrades in life’s adventures….these are just some of my random musings during these trial and tribulation times which seem to be never ending but I am sure this too shall pass.
At least my mami who is covid positive and in hospital since yesterday and with a whole lot of comorbidities including lung problems…is getting treated and has oxygen! So terribly worried and can’t think straight as I am writing this in bits and pieces to produce something readable. I pray my mami will live a little more to entertain us with her stories of youth in an impossibly large joint family supported by just one doctor in the army at one point of time in Calcutta, my father Dr Roy, he was a busy surgeon in the army and a most conscientious human being. Oh, I miss both my ma and pa sorely in such times!