The silence of survival.

Day 101: It’s been more than three months since the lockdown started. At first, it was fun. There were food, internet and tons of seconds to kill. True the social outings were closed but still, life was pretty good. It seems, at least for me a privileged soul the life has given me time to catch up on leftovers. In the first few days, I took up multiple language courses.
But all play and no work distorts Jack’s sense of reality. The discipline and the calendar had vanished from life. There was no Monday, Tuesday any more. That day, today, the other day, yesterday surrounds me. TV and youtube dried up. Each day baba would sit on the couch with the TV blazing latest deaths and infections in its full glory. At first, I resisted but due to the lack of better option lately, I joined him. In the afternoon we would gaze down to the empty road. The sun-kissed trees were blossoming in our absence. The ambulance sirens would help us keep count of the infections in our locality. After a while, we would be again back to our couches.
Our daily routine kept going as the world around us continued crumbling. The infected kept on skyrocketing and the government had to restrict the health services to the young and the most critical ones. The pyre fire kept engulfing at it’s mightiest powers but still fell short.
Baba’s medicine finished three weeks ago. But he did not suffer long. After two days he slipped in the bathroom. Frantic calls to the ER were useless. I continued the daily routine. The ration was fast depleting but somehow I stretched it for two more weeks.
Biology was my favourite subject at school. The evolution, natural selection, fitness, darwin always stoke the fire in me. I think the raw meat would at least last two more months. It’s 7:00 pm and time for the evening news.