WRITER’S BLOCK

It’s been ages, literally ages that my pen flowed with words that clumped together to make sense, sentences and sensibility. Words that came to me in happy times, sad times and most of all, difficult times. Words that helped me to laugh in happiness and words that made me cry copious tears of nostalgia, sadness, pain and longing. Words that lifted that unbearable weight of expectations, lost opportunities, broken hearts, regrets and guilts. Words that were more often than not, cathartic, healing and peaceful. I had found sanctuary from the weight I carried in my heart in the essays I wrote, stories I published and articles I typed and stored. My own happy space. My inner world. My strength and my weakness, my conviction and my honesty, my mirror to my thoughts.

Last one and a half years have been incredibly difficult, scary and life-changing, not just for me but for the whole world. The situation has worsened with no end in sight and time is stuck in the sinking sand of fever and cough, Cytokine storm, Remdesivir shortage, Oxygen leakages, hospital beds, ICU, quarantine, non-availability of vaccines, deaths and innumerable burning pyres clouding the sight and scarring the heart. Each day that comes brings with it new fears, new rules of survival and new hope as the day passes by and you are relieved to be alive at the end of it. All one can think of as one retires into the dark night is, will I be alright tomorrow, or will I get up with fever and body-ache, or with a loss of sense of smell or worst, with breathlessness and air hunger! The mind and the thoughts are completely ensnared into the dark pit of the pandemic and all one can do is hold on to that rapidly desiccating thread of faith and hope that, you will be spared.

The emergence of various strains, the deathly clutch of the black, and now white and even yellow fungus, the rising death toll, the gory, inhumane sight of plastic cloth covered bodies floating in the most sacred of our rivers, the Ganga and all this beamed into our homes by the shrill of the media  who raise their decibels with each bad news as though the intensity in their high-pitched performance will shake the foundations of humanity and scare the country into cowering back into their tiny cubbyholes, afraid to see even the daylight. Believe me, they are right in what they think they are doing and how they are doing. With every high-pitched performance, there is a collective gasp of fear as we reel back with untold horror and fear of death and disease. The voices coming from behind the mikes make sure that our hearts continue to beat rapidly, our belief in the system to care for us shatter into smithereens and our hopes traumatized beyond repair.

Each day brings in new rules for us to follow making us unsure of where we are headed. The powers that are keep making new resolutions and those out of power keep opposing them, unmindful of how it is affecting the very people who have given them the high seat. The bickering, back stabbing and mud-slinging over health care issues, the drugs and Oxygen shortages, keeps getting bigger and fiercer even as hundreds of breathless patients let go of the only life they have, thousands of dear ones run from pillar to post, carrying cylinders and dying loved ones in their arms, looking for hospital beds and crematorium slots, leaving little time to grieve over their irreparable loss. The people who promised them a good governance, an honest and transparent system of work and ‘good days’ ahead, have meanwhile disappeared into their castles, behind the safety of masks and official positions, trying to make the most of the situation as only they can and know how to! Raking up non-issues to downsize each other, issues that can wait for the pandemic to pass, issues that should not take precedence over saving our people and politics of revenge have become the diversion technique for saving one’s hide and face in face of rising anger from hapless sufferers, who needless to say, have found their outlet for their frustrations. The life-savior, also called the ‘doctor’. Thrash him. Thrash her.

The year began with great hope after waning of the first wave and the emergence of the savior, the vaccine, that would deliver us out of this devastation. The ‘Knight in shining armor’ declared its debut in a highly publicized event, protocols were set for countrywide vaccination of health care workers and the system was oiled and shined to bring life to the dying hope of millions of Indians. Then as days passed, precious unused vaccine vials found their way into dustbins, myths circulated faster than a sandstorm and the flow of the life serum started drying up even as crippled, hypertensive, diabetic, frail and terribly scared old and young people stood in the vaccination lines for hours under the blazing sun and had to be sent back disappointed and vulnerable to the exposure of the virus.

There was chaos. There was mayhem. There was ineptitude of the system. There was failure at very high levels. There was denial at the highest level. There was commotion and conundrum in hospitals and Covid centers. There were rallies and speeches, shamelessly bringing lakhs of people together for that piece of pie as politicians fell over each other salivating for the chair while the man on the streets continued to run with oxygen cylinders and dying loved ones in his arms. 

In all this came the jab of hope but only for a flash. The Knight in shining armor suddenly threw up his arms and fled to safer havens for reasons best known to him, leaving hundred billion pair of eyes deeply shocked at what fate had just denied them, the uncertainty of it all. The wave raged, the fungus found its way into hapless eyes and brains, the vaccine lines grew longer, the internet sites crashed and the livelihood of all came to a screeching halt.

The shrill voice continued to capture the thought process of one and all even as I tried to find sanity and peace at work. The thought of my vulnerability, exposure to the deadly virus and the strength of my life line just overtook all other happy thoughts. In spite of having been trained to defeat death in most circumstances, here was one invisible enemy that had pushed our doctor community on the other side of the table. The sordid things happening around me, the frustrations of a broken system, the helplessness of people and the arrogance of powers that are took the toll for most of the year gone by as I grappled to keep myself safe and afloat.

Just like everyone else.

Words left me, sentences deserted me and meaningful writing abandoned me.

Till I allowed myself to be enslaved by the external circumstances.

 They forgot one important thing. I am a survivor; I am a fighter and I am the man on the street! Just like the million others who have struggled to keep their sanity intact.

It’s taken some time, some meditating and some sage advice from the one who holds my hand tightly in this tsunami. I have cashed on to the words to get back the life that was once mine. I have allowed them to take their rightful place in my mind which I am now slowly and meticulously emptying of what just keeps hitting us every waking moment.

Keep writing, they tell me. We are here.

It’s all about purpose and meaning!

It’s all about finding happiness and loving the one life we have.

 

 Reina Khadilkar