“May tomorrow be more than just another name for today.”
Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days
Pandemic Is A Portal. I borrowed the title of this post from Arundhati Roy’s essay of the same name.
A portal is a doorway. One emerges into a changed world and realities when one passes through it.
Her essay is in a political and social context. She wrote how our society would change once we emerge out of the present situation. So many things are changing around us, and so fast. Our old understandings of things and situations around us, old ways of doing things are changing beyond our immediate recognition. Perhaps these changes were inevitable, perhaps not. But there is no doubt that the pandemic has hastened the changes. It has made the fault lines bare and widespread.
But this is not about what she wrote and how our society is changing. This post is about my life and its changes due to the pandemic. Passing through this portal named covid19 pandemic, I, hopefully, will emerge a different man.
For me, the door to the portal opened in September 2019, when I left my nine-and-a-half-year-old job in a spur-of-the-moment decision. Little did I know then that I am about to enter a portal to emerge a new person, in a vastly different world.
Returning home, when I disclosed the news to my family, they were all shocked beyond comprehension. I am the only earning member of the family, and to them, it was a highly irresponsible decision on my part.
Have you ever seen a road construction worker breaking stones with a hammer? He keeps on hammering till the stone shatters to pieces. Do you think that the last blow was more powerful? In reality, continuous hammering weakens the structure of the stone. It requires just a little push to break the stone once the internal formation weakens. To an uninitiated, it seems that the final blow is responsible for the breakage of the stone.
Life imitates nature. But most often, we fail to see and appreciate the fact. We hold the most proximate event responsible and overlook the fault lines that have grown over the years.
So my leaving the job may look like a sudden and unplanned event. In actuality, the seed of this event was forming over the years. A small event became like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
When in life if, one must choose between honor and wealth(job), what should one choose? I picked honor. How about you?
But when you have an uncertain future and a family to keep all the world’s wisdom cannot help you much. It is only your action and hope for the future that keeps you from sinking. I, for that matter, never lacked the energy for the action that might change the situation. So I tightened my belt, rolled up my sleeves, and started to look for a new job in earnest.
It took me around five months to find a job suitable for me. And the end of January 2020, I started my new assignment. I was to kick-start the eastern region operation for a multinational consumer electronics brand. We all sighed in relief.
Little did I know that I have already entered the portal. And whatever happens now is beyond our control. By the third week of March 2020, the nation was under lockdown - a hasty decision that helped no one other than shocking us out of our stupor. We witnessed the country falling apart on our TV screens. Horror was born out of indifference towards our less fortunate fellow countrymen.
It was like witnessing the final chapters of three hundred years of atrocities. We were smug and comfortable, insulated in our middle-class respectability.
In the meantime, the less unfortunate ones like us were celebrating by banging pots and pans in balconies and rooftops. We were busy eulogizing the pristine air and the silence of our cities. We were ecstatic about waking up to the songs of birds. We admired the picture of our great leader feeding his pet peacock while millions died of hunger, robbed of their livelihood and shelter.
But on my work front, I had a job to do. I was fresh to the company – new to its systems and its people. It takes a fresh employee, especially when he is in a senior position and in a remote location from the decision-makers, at least 3-4 months to get into the groove.
By May, the management was contemplating on what to do in the situation. Considering the grim outlook of the economy, my company wanted to negotiate the brand licensing contract with the international parent company. The negotiations fell through. And in June, the hard decision was taken – that the company is closing the project. And I was out of the job.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Anais Nin
Most of us love traveling on the broad, paved highways - the journey would be easy and smooth. Sometimes we see a narrow path off the main road. We wonder where it would lead us if we take that less trodden road. Most often, we do not dare take that road. Even when we take that narrow lane, we pine, all the time, for the main road. It might so happen that the highway is closed up ahead, and this narrow dusty road is the only way forward. That side road - bumpy, uneven, dusty, and narrow - becomes the road that will take us to our destination. But we do not have any way of knowing that. Has anyone seen the future?
My taking up writing is like taking the side road – that too by chance. It was never intended. A man’s potential is not known to him unless he sticks his neck out. He most often needs a nudge to realize that potential. The nudge may come from friends and closest family members or even from an acquaintance. Or maybe life’s circumstances give the push. For me, it was a sledgehammer instead of a nudge. No income, total lockdown, nowhere to go, nothing to do.
Yet, life has an inertia of its own. It is more like a flowing river. When its forward march is blocked, it diverts its course and flows right on towards its fulfillment. Does life has a destination? I am not sure. But it is the journey that is important. And one must enjoy that journey.
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."Henry David Thoreau
My agitated mind was looking for an anchor to hold on to. And my writing came to my rescue. With nothing much to do, I started to write. It is more to quieten my agitated mind than anything else. The more busy and focused one is, the less he thinks about the unfairness of life, and the less he worries about his future.
My family and friends applauded my initial tentative efforts. More, I presume, to pamper my ego than anything else. They are now realizing, to their horror, that their indulgence has given birth to something beyond their comprehension. They are now forced to tolerate my writings even when they do not want to.
The euphoria of being somebody wears off fast when one realizes that, to be that person, he must continuously do something specific. So if I want to be a writer, I must write. Is there any short-cut?
Circumstance and ability are eccentric bedfellows. Life forces one to do strange things, broadens one’s horizon, and brings out one’s hidden abilities. So, here I am writing these posts. Never had I thought in the past that one day I would even contemplate being a writer.
"I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within."--Gustave Flaubert
My long years of reading habit have tuned my ears to the sound of well-written words. I know I am far away from achieving that standard - when the words flow one after the other to touch the readers' hearts. Till such time you all have to bear with me.
Like so many changes happening around us due to this pandemic, I am also part of this change. Perhaps, this is the only truth in life – that change is continuous.
As for me, this pandemic has been a portal.
“What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that.”
Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days