We are in it together. For a long haul to boot. No mistake. So stay home, stay safe. Live to tell the tale. Today’s young will have something for their little ones. Spinning yarns. Of how a virus in far away Wuhan travelled from a bat to a human lung.

Like the many WhatsApp jokes – No Ming Ling. Who the hell is Social Distance Singh?- contagion literature of value too will emerge. Song, story & cinema, in an outpouring of creativity.

One thing’s certain. No one is coming through unscathed.

I am home bound & confined to a dull unused-to-routine that needs must be adhered to.

No way to live. But this is serious man. Seriously!

Household chores are interspersed with yoga – meditation. Also music & books to relieve & enliven.

Doing utensils by the sink I peer out at a clear blue sky. My window to the world outside. Something’s changed. Something’s changing.

On the 12th day of lockdown an unfamiliar cry rends the air. Like wheeling back in time to small town India, a vegetable vendor passes by. Delivering fresh veggies at the door step. At a fair price, what’s more.

We’ll get by, I think. No work. No pay but the poor are slowly finding ways. An auto rick pulls up another time. Passengers no more, the guy has decided to sell. Innovation? Tell me some more.

It’s been peacefully still & quiet. The cacophony you hear is birds. Loud & shrill. Dear, noisy, quarrelsome little creatures.

A sudden roar shatters the sky. Airport’s shut I thought. It’s a lone flight transporting someone somewhere. Stranded travellers perhaps.

A myriad feelings flit through the day. Of gratitude. And guilt. More of the latter. Keeping migrants in mind, specifically. Did they have to leave the way they did? To the imagined safety of faraway homes that just might be unwelcoming. Something would have worked out here. If only they had stayed.

There is a beggar at the gate. The first in years. Three children in tow, he actually rang the bell. What should I pass him through the bars? What should I say?

Everything inside is in limbo.

The country’s watching ‘Ramayana’.