February — The month we moved
A belligerent virus quietly enters the stage
“We just about landed in Dharamkot
with a swagger like Truman Capote
less than two steps we had taken
when we heard a great wheeze-in
and now all i can get out is a croak”
It has been a while since I have written anything. There has been one storm after another passing through, and one of those was an actual storm. Well, more like torrential rains that lasted almost the entire month of February.
Early in February, we packed our bags and took a few flights (this was before flight taking became dangerous) and one cab to get to a village near Upper Dharamkot. From there it was a steep walk uphill with our luggage and then a shorter walk through a stepped mustard field, a cow shed, and a narrow walkway among other things and we finally got to our place of stay.
When we first got here, we settled into a routine of sorts, which involved walking to the meditation center for our morning sit and then to the Himalayan Tea Shop for chai, walks around forests of rhododendrons and pine trees to Mcleod Ganj for vegetables and lunches, cooking meals in the shared kitchen, endless momos at any given opportunity, and both of us working remotely.
In February, this place was mostly sleepy and cold. The temperatures ranged between 0-8 °C and there were a lot of rains and different kinds: there were hailstorms, the pissing kind of rain where as you are walking you are just coated with just enough cold water to feel uncomfortable but not enough to run and take cover, and of course there was the run-and-take-cover kind of rain. Usually as soon as it stopped raining, sunlight would pierce through some clouds creating a celestial effect and in the evenings the horizon would be full of silhouettes of mountains cloaked in shades of pink and purple.
I have been getting better at walking inclines, but just when i think i have gotten the hang of this walking business, i see these old grannies carrying huge loads of twigs, branches, and leaves on a contraption that rests on their upper back, speeding up and making me look like an old wheeze. A thing that took me by surprise when I first got here was the amount of construction that was happening everywhere. I think this is true of India, there are things being constructed everywhere, we are expanding. But watching the scale of construction happen on the side of mountains is pretty impressive.
The other thing I am loving about being up here are the dogs. They have been an absolute charm. All of them long-haired and shaggy with big expressive eyes and have the kind of relationships with people that I imagine the cats have in that Turkish movie about cats — Kedi. They are mostly found sauntering about the place, playing with the other dogs, eating Parle-G, and sunning themselves.
The original plan was to stay at the homestay for two weeks during which time we would find a place to live. We had a few criteria while looking for place: It needed to be close to the Vipassana center, with at least two bedrooms and it had to be pre-furnished. This turned out to be a bigger ask than we previously imagined. We saw enough places in Mcleod Ganj and Dharamkot to have a good idea of the setting (in terms of what was available and how much it cost) and after about a dozen places looked at and a few near misses, we changed our plan and decided to move to Sikkim where we had a reasonable place to rent.
Steven was going to take a Pali course in Jaipur for two weeks with no access to the internet, starting at the end of February. And amidst slight murmurs about a viral pandemic and rains, he left to Jaipur. The plan was that when he returned, we would pack up and make our way to Sikkim. It was a calm moment in time, we knew where we were going to live and we were excited at the idea of having our own place. And until we moved, I was going to spend my time in this idyllic valley learning natural language processing, working, going for walks, making meals, and catching up on Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
Little did I know that everything was about to change. Soon after Steven left, the news of the virus took over causing major changes to governments and governance (all of it with good reason)
- First flights from certain countries were cancelled and since Steven was supposed to take five flights out of the country and back in once he was done with the course, I was keeping a keen eye on these changes.
- There were changes to rules about visa extensions and renewals and I needed to keep an eye on those changes.
- Inner line permits and later all travel into Sikkim was put on hold -indefinitely.
- And finally, travel and in and out of Himachal was becoming increasingly difficult.
But there was a certain dissonance between everything I was reading and watching and consuming and my life here.
While the world on instagram was suddenly washing their hands, maintaining social distance and not leaving their houses, panicking about this virus that was going to infect 80% of the world’s population, in this little village with a hundred people, it was business as usual:construction, groceries, farming, raising cattle.
So, after a brief feeling of certainty, I started March with everything up in the air again but now with a pandemic on the loose.
Books being read
Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies — Geoffrey West
