The Butterfly Effect
Encoded in every human being is the absolute necessity of understanding the reasons of any plausible danger and the imperative need to blame someone or something for the cause, the most popular theory right now is more of a vampire apocalypse than of the zombies. An inverted shadow wrapped in ravage must have waited for quite a long time on a branch of space and time, waiting for the world to approach it. Only last December someone must have thrown a stone at it. It must have crashed to the ground bleeding, been carried to the wok tied to the back of a bicycle and smiled at the whole of humanity seeing the boiling oil. How its body must have exploded when the demon unleashed itself. How unaware the humans self-proclaimed to the top of the food chain must have been.
For the last four months, the world has seen one of the ugliest statistics of the century. Apart from the death toll and stretched ventilators, COVID-19 has affected the entire globe in unimaginable ways; most of us have never witnessed such havoc. Indeed, IIST was no exception to this chaos. Among all gargantuan predicaments across the earth, this article focuses on the tempest in our college by the flutter of a butterfly.
Friday, the 13th
The sky of 13th March at IIST was as ordinary as an explosion in a bomb. The onset of the weekend was indeed fun but was stalled by the recently imposed restriction on leaving the campus and of course, by upcoming Quiz 2 the following Wednesday. Though the very first meeting in the amphitheater was to make everyone come to terms with the newly declared pandemic, little did anyone know where they were being sent right through the line of fire.
“Evacuate! Evacuate! Evacuate!” the pilot suddenly announced.
The notice from the director dropped like a stone onto a still beehive. Around six in the evening, everyone was out on the streets as if the campus was hit by an earthquake. Dazed and confused. But a muddled smile on every face was a common sight. “Meri to quiz 2 ki tayari bhi ho gayi thi!” someone barked amid the bedlam, I remember searching for a rock to smash his face. The next half an hour was spent on verification of the news.
‘Is it really happening?’
‘I told you this would happen.’
‘What about our quizzes?’
But most importantly,
‘What will happen to the academic calendar?’, as if IISTians were leaving an old lady behind who would haunt them all after her death.
After the confirmation, the news launched into small packets of happiness and crashed into different parts of the country. The sudden arrival of children never startles parents. Even though this trip back home felt extra heavy on some pockets who had recently managed to flee to their homes for celebrating Holi.
The Haunted Castle
I was among the last few students leaving the campus for home. In the past two and a half days, IIST had been a silent tree shedding its leaves before autumn. Unexpected thus unprepared. The dark thick bleakness had been poured onto campus drowning every inch of it. It had trickled down each street, vined up all steel railings in hostels and slid under every door. The mess was no exception. No babbles, no clatters. Every meal was a funeral feast.
With all of my friends gone on the very next day of the notice and after all sitcoms became unbearably mundane, I had no option left but to cross the next boundary in my proximity circle. I realized that I hadn’t talked to some since the first year and yet I enjoyed talking to them. “Tu kab ja raha hai?” was the conversation starter preceded by a smile of acknowledgment. The time of desolation staged some great anecdotes, heated debates, and intellectual discussions. The campus also mourned for Celine and Jesse who had to separate, that too before sunrise. Hurried kisses and cuddles tried hard to thwart the ticking of the clock but unprepared farewells were to be bid.
On my last night at IIST, I noticed that I was the only soul alive on the entire floor, the minus one. So, I decided to stay outside my hostel a little late but had to return to my room when outside was as scary as inside. IIST had become a city of the dead.
The Crown Shyness
I have never played a Temple Run as real as my journey back home after the shutdown. Every new face at the airport was SARS-CoV-2 in disguise. I realized how conscious I had become about little things that usually passed unnoticed. “I did not touch my eye, did I?”, “God, I just grabbed that armrest!”, “Who was that, who just sneezed?”, “Wait, I have to touch this door knob just after I washed my hands with soap?”. In fact, I once waited for someone to open the door so that I could slip out!
The key to reaching home corona-free was simple. Do not touch anything. Do not eat anything. And if possible, Do not even breathe! But I was prepared — at least that was what I believed then. I wrapped my mouth over with a green surgical mask, covered my hands in layers of sanitizer every few minutes, drank plenty of water and waited. That was my Z+ security of the moment.
I remember how I shouted ‘No!’ when my mom came to hug me at the door.
The Golden Cage
Beautiful sunrise, little birds singing outside my window, nice soft mattress, Aastha channel on the TV and yet there was one disturbing difference — my nose, which was running, quite fast! “A running nose is a bad omen” as they say now. I spent the rest of my day investigating symptoms of COVID-19 which fortunately did not include a running nose. Though I knew that sudden alteration of the weather must have caused this dysfunctionality, I was still afraid. I was more afraid for my family than I was for myself. For the next 14 days, I tip-toed around and locked myself even before the actual lockdown started. The very first thing I realized after my first week of quarantine was- ‘I like missing my home more than actually being here.’
I also realized what exactly I mean when I cry about missing home. It is not just ‘Ma ke hath ka khana’ or ‘the sweet family time’. Home has its boundaries not merely confined to the walls. They stretch past the streets where children shout ‘Howzat!’, past the parks where cold pearl grass awaits happy feet each morning, past those familiar faces that ask you “Tum kab aaye?”, past that crowded Sabzi Mandi where five rupees itself is insignificant but saving it makes you the Wolf of Wall Street and of course past those houses which you can call your second home.
I wonder if birds in the cages laugh at us now. Eat. Sleep. Exist. Repeat? Along with basic survival tools (internet included), I had plenty of free time for the first two weeks at least, and whenever life has gifted me ‘extra time’, things around me become scary. The unread books on my shelf that I once brought from the book fair start glowering at me. The long queue of fetus-ideas that I once decided to write upon stare at me like hungry children. The notes I brought from college to catch up with the subjects, laugh at me. And with this humongous pressure, I manage to do just one thing which of course is ‘Nothing!’. The truth is, boredom is never daunting but the realization that I waste my time so efficiently is. In all of this, I realized how much better it is to crave for ‘free time’ than to actually get it.
The Pixels — As Pixelated as last Dhanak
Sometimes I astonish myself for coming up with unusual ways to keep myself distracted from not being productive. Like counting tiles in my bathroom (213 on walls and 49 on the floor, and I counted each without using multiplication). When this boredom and AICTE mail about internship nearly pushed me into depression, Zoom entered like a hero. I was so glad for doing something now that it didn’t matter if it was just my old boredom in a virtual attire. A change of boredom was also welcomed. On the very first day of zoom class, I filled my bottle, grabbed my laptop, a mat and headed to the roof to avoid any network failure. I was all set with the mini room that I just created in the sun roasted roof shed. As soon I entered the meeting ID and the password, I realized that the hero struggles for each breath in my area. I could barely make sense of the things that I saw on the screen. But I made peace with it now. I counted the number of times my zoom gets disconnected; it crossed 10 in some lectures. But I was happy because I had something to do.
The Hope
With a wrecked academic calendar and uncertainties in our minds, we still hope that everything will eventually get back on track. People will cram the cafeteria counter again on Friday nights and lovers will again hold hands. Maggi will be made at the behest of late-night “Bhukh lagi hai!”. You will sleep through boring lectures with eyes wide open. But in all this, there certainly would be a line drawn between the world before and after one of the greatest pandemic to ever hit the human race. While we all have given up on our internship plans and study schedules, this time needn’t impose on you the necessity of being the most productive. Do not beat yourself over wasted hours, these are not normal times and the question is of survival.
Stay safe at home and take your time to cope up with all that is going around. We might not return to our normals but there certainly would be a newer world to look forward to.
P.S- Contact the writer for the name of the person who was prepared for Quiz 2.
