Page 22 - Resurrection Magazine

NOW WE WAIT....

n Anjana J Nair
t has been four months since I stepped out of the house, I think to myself. Four months since I had seen
Ianyone other than my mother face-to-face.
Scurried trips to buy weekly necessities didn’t count, I tell myself as I curl up on the balcony with a cup of
coffee and a book. High above, the sky is piled up with storm clouds, thick and grey. The light dims. I think
about sneaking out of the house with my face covered like a thief, avoiding all of my fellow human beings as
I struggle to push dwindling necessities off empty shelves and into a shopping cart. How many things did we
take for granted? Breathing the air in, smiling at one another, touching hands without immediately rushing
off to sanitise. The freedom to pick and choose from an endless array of products on shelves. Friends and
family shuttling between houses, schools and universities now lying empty, sterilised of all signs of life.
A single virus made the quantum leap from animals stuffed into cages awaiting death - and now humans too
hunkered down in their houses, their new prisons. Death waited outside, invisible, reaching out to the most
vulnerable amongst us. I think about Italy, the thousands of elderly who died. An entire generation whose
memories and experiences were gone in an instant. Grandmothers and grandfathers we simply assumed were
as everlasting as love.
Protests. My television is now a window to the world, not just entertainment. Days pass by like slow
blinking of eyes. I see people in cities across the ocean refuse to wear masks. I see people shoving, crying,
buying supplies in bulk and leaving none for others. Miles away from me, desperate migrants trudge home
in the blinding sunlight. Their plight mocks my safe home and soft clothes. Hospitals are filled with the dead
and dying, the doctors and other health workers work round the clock until they collapse. I am a witness to a
silent war, one which is all around me and yet far away, imprisoned in a screen.
In the middle of all this, my grandmother breaks a leg. I am acting as a part-time bystander. Every day I join
the ranks of hundreds who trudge to hospitals to battle a new wave of possible infections. Their armour is
masks and gloves and PPE kits. Their weapons are sanitisers. I have never seen doctors and nurses as warriors
before but now they are fighting on the frontlines.
Suddenly the importance of small things like good health and doctors rises in public consciousness.
Scientists throw themselves into the fray. New vaccines and tests are developed with unheard of speed. Minds
from around the world join together to battle Death itself instead of creating it on mundane battlefields. This
is resilience I realise, and the indomitable nature of mankind.

My phone vibrates. A new protest in America. Deaths in Saudi Arabia. A teacher and daughter dancing
in faraway Korea. As I shrunk into my home, the reach of my phone expanded. Human beings from across
the world reached out to one another across time and space, oceans and mountains, clasping each other in
electronic embraces. People sang, danced, and entertained one another, reached out to comfort those they
could not see. The Internet is a giant meeting place now, more so than ever, now that the freedom to meet in
reality is gone.
Now we wait. Above me the storm clouds also wait, a pregnant pause that encompasses the entire world. It
is human nature to always look for the silver lining. It is our ability to learn from our failings (and there are
many) which makes us, as Sir Terry Pratchett once famously said, “the place where the falling angel meets
the rising ape”. The world awaits an uncertain future and only dedication, co-operation and perseverance will
carry us through this crisis.

So I wait. And so do you.

22 RESURRECTION