A day into the Pandemic - Agar's Morning

This is 2020. The clock ticked 4:30 AM. It is plain dark outside. There is a curfew at place. The streets are plain empty & at its most silent hours. It's been two months that the pandemic has lingered & does not seem to end any soon. The month of May brings the waves of heat to the northern city of Delhi. Agar slept a bit early the day before. He is awake now. His calm has started to break from the chambers of his patience. The pandemic has only been growing in size. The death count has been moving upwards. The human tragedy is broadening at an uncertainly high pace.

It's a single room rented place. Agar's body is feeling ached. There is too much sitting and he would spend a big chunk of his time swiping through the five-inch screen of his mobile. There are all kinds of people in that rectangular screen. There are individual stories. There are agonies. There is desperation. There is uneasiness. There is helplessness. And there are happy warriors. They all have something to say. What they say is the part of a shared story of our times. Agar sleeps keeping the mobile phone before the pillow at a hands distance. It's his companion now. He interacts with it and through it.

It's humid. Agar has droplets of sweat at his forehead. His eyes are open. The ceiling of the room is something 1.5 metre high and a three-handed fan is rotating at a slow pace hanging from their. The room is not that large. Its yellow color has started to fade. There is a table-chair duo at one end over which some books are placed. Besides it there is an Almirah. At the opposite end of the entrance, there is an attached bathroom, fitted with an English-style toilet seat. There is a big-sized window in the room that opens itself to the main street. During the day, Agar would stand by it, shirtless, where he would watch the pinkish melony of the air. He would listen to the tinklish whispers that appear. He would look at the street vendors standing guarded for hours for their livelihood. These are bizzare times. People of this metropolitan city are seal packed inside their houses.

Agar could not sleep more. He is tired of resting. He is tired of waiting. His youth compels him to work. He does not understand what's happening with the world. They say that such times come once in a century. He is away from family and friends. When the pandemic burgeoned, he got stuck in the city. Now it's been two months. 

Have you ever heard of the northern summer? It's brutal. The sky would shine and at afternoon one could not dare directly look at the it. The sun could make us blind.

There is a cooler in the Agar's room. Water acts as the coolant in it. It's water tank has a small leakage. The floor is wet. Running for the whole night, it has been emptied.  The pump is creating a tarr-tarr sound. Humidity in the room makes him uncomfortable. It is sticky. Agar moved his hand to pick up the phone. He is unmotivated to do anything. 

This small device is now some kind of extended organ of the body. At the peak of the pandemic, it keeps us sane, or does it make us insane? Agar has not have had a human touch since the time the first news of the pandemic began. These are more than sixty days of desertation. He feels unloved & ignored. He is alone, yet not the only one with this feeling in the world. There is this caged community, some feeling dizzy within the four walls of their room, some at the behest of the lack of financial savings, some at a lost of their closed ones, some with ignorance & some feeling insecure for their career... Their agony varies in length. They all feel differently. They all feel left out, if only they knew that at a hands distance, there live another human, or a dog, feeling just the same. It seems as if loneliness is becoming some new kind of sect. They all long for care & pure love. But it's prohibited at the moment. We need to keep a safe distance from everyone. We need to wear masks. We need to keep washing hands. We need to be vigil.

Agar scrolled a bit through the social media posts & the news updates. He may be struggling to keep good of his mood, he is a champion at not losing at it. He knew that it is the time that is doing the mournful dancing & he must sing back to change its genre! Agar is aware of the importance of mental health along with maintaining his physic. He had been maintaining a daily routine of meditation, talking with distant friends & family, going for a masked walk & exercising in the room walking in the terrace... In sooner time, the once dead looking room has a changed temperament. Agar has chose to play a song & its tune is bathing the room away from its negativity. He stood up to start the day's chore.

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