Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
As I keep staring out of my first floor balcony at the empty streets with the occasional masked wanderer meeting the eye, I reminisce about how it was before the Covid pandemic began.
There was a WhatsApp video sent to me that intended to depict the craze of the younger generation for Chinese goods and products. A doing mother is talking to her husband on phone. The woman says our three years old kid wants the latest Chinese making.
When queried on what exactly the kid was demanding, the woman responds, “Our daughter is asking for the Chinese made Covid 19.” It ended with her husband looking aghast.
Just two months after this video scripted in Tamil got viral, the real picture emerged with people getting scared of stepping out doors. Eventually, it turned into a full fledged shut down on March 25, 2020.
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As I recall the initial days that took me running from pillar to post to get my favourite brand of cigarettes. After getting used to the implications of the lockdown conditions, I settled to smoking bidis. It went easier on my purse and also proved to be readily accessible.
My only window to the outside world, including rest of the city was my Facebook page that carried news and perspectives of the happenings.The first reports that poured in on a typical news format was from Sohit Mishra covering the reverse migration dilemma for NDTV, during the early lockdown months.
Depicting shabbily clad labourers walking on the railway tracks, carrying their scant belongings over their shoulders, it gave me the visual impact of Dick Wittongton walking the streets of London before being declared Lord Mayor. Also, a Dickensian feel conjured up of David Copperfield walking on a marathon journey towards the residence of his aunt Betsy Trotwood.
The literary images that conjured up in my mind also made me acutely aware that the citizens of Maximum city will be faced with the longish nightmare till an effective vaccine emerges. Amidst the anxieties that gnawed my mind, I was subject to reading a slew of miracle home remedies that figured on my WhatsApp contact list. It made me feel, I should take up employment as a medical practitioner and make hay while the sun shines.
This triggered a memory of my early journalism days when I was asked to do an investigative story on quack doctors plying their trade in Bombay by The Free Press Bulletin features editor, Seema Patel. It was no easy task that was entrusted to me as it was in the mid eighties – the era that was devoid of Google and mobile phones. I recall this to illustrate how simple and easy life was in the days that were devoid of scaremongering devices that pry on people’s minds.
In retrospect, I strongly feel that to recapture the scenes of simple life, we might require the services of HG Wells to construct an authentic time machine that will help us escape tight corners like the current pandemic situation by conveniently traveling back in time.
Now with the second phase of stringent lockdown restrictions imposed on the city of Mumbai – my city, that rudely shake me from my meandering literary train of thoughts.
