Before the city went still
There was unrest in the office today. The pantry was empty, most cabins were sealed off, faces were masked and an unusual distance was maintained. It is not often that you find the chatty corridors of a creative agency lulled into an uncomfortable murmur. Yes, there is a raging pandemic warming up for its second wave but what did that have to do to alter basic human conversations? Something didn’t feel right and the day just dragged on like a dull silent film that wouldn’t end.
When we neared the end of that working day, news of the lockdown broke out and each one of us slipped into our personal spirals of anxiety and overthinking. The nostalgia from last lockdown blanketed our conversations for the next couple of hours and we found ourselves trying to predict the unpredictable.
The rest of the city, however broke out in a frenzy. Traffic appeared pile up on every major junction, road and highway. In this mayhem, it took me nearly 2 hours to find an auto-rickshaw that were to take me all across town to my far-flung neighbourhood. In the midst of it all, Bengaluru’s summer charged at me with a fuelled sense of exasperation.
Stepping out of the office that day felt ominous for so many reasons that I could neither comprehend nor explain. Our goodbyes were curt yet heedful. There was a looming fear of returning to a world entirely unfamiliar. The sense of forgoing this temporary familiarity we had built with one another. I sat inside that rickshaw with this relentless anxiety that just wouldn’t go away and the ride back home began without waiting for my racing emotions to pause.
I have a strange habit of blasting cheerful music during moments of unease. It takes me off the edge when the going gets tough. So, I put on the most ecstatic playlist that I could find in that moment. While I remained stuck amongst scores of other vehicles with people sharing the burdens of the emotions that I was experiencing, I discovered a moment of connect. Wherever I looked around, I only discovered moments of anxiety, uncertainty and also sights of stoic acceptance in the faces that I noticed around me.
It was unusual yet comforting at the same time. The middle-aged man who tightened his grip around his wife’s waist and she slipped through tiny spaces in the traffic at a commendable speed. The child donning the oversized safety helmet sitting backwards on a scooter ridden by his father, clutching on to transparent bags of eggs and bread. The driver from the garishly neon lit cab lowering the window to let commuters in on the latest Sandalwood hits. A bold bumper sticker on his cab reads ‘My life…my rulzzzz..” And in that moment, he seemed to completely embrace the meaning of that phrase. The traffic cop at the signal stretches out and takes long meditative walks on the footpath as the fuming summer air mellows down into a pleasant evening breeze.
An occasional ambulance siren went off at a distance, bringing a disquieted end to this meditation that we all seemed to indulge in. The policeman straightened out his back and rambled into the walkie-talkie in his hand. The child on the scooter looks around curiously to find where the siren sounds were coming from, the cab driver rolls up his window, shutting the rest of us out from his listening party and as for me, I retreat my head back into the rickshaw and go back to my doom-scrolling. In those moments of an awkward trance, we all seemed attune to our individual thoughts and emotions. None of us seemed to panic about what the bitterness of tomorrow’s lockdown holds, none of our eyes were racing back and forth trying to keep up with the pace of our thoughts. We all seemed at one, we all seemed to pause. I carried the sweetness of that meditative aftertaste back home with me to a family that was warming up to unleash new chaos. Lists were being drawn, responsibilities were being divided, groceries were being rationed and I take a long deep breath and jumped right in, trying to do my bit before the city goes still.
