There is a deluge outside as the sky has opened up. Rain splashes on my unsuspecting windows and doors as I breathe in the fresh air, wind blown, wet and coping with the strong breeze. I am overwhelmed by my sudden rush of memories.
Children are out, even during the lockdown, laughing, playing and splashing themselves in the rain water. As I smile at them I think of how time has flown. I was always dragged inside by my mother when I overdid my jumping around in the rain.
Climbing trees was my passion. Up as I went, slipping and climbing, all scratched and bleeding, a mixed feeling of pain and joy came with it. Pain caused by the wounds and joy for having done what was tough for most.
As years doled out lemons, making lemonades became easier with time. Being a perfectionist gave me an opportunity to grow and stand up with my wounds, bleeding and torn inside, but carrying on with life nevertheless.
In came the pandemic second wave and took with it my peace once again. Losing near and dear ones is something I have immense experience of, but it is terribly traumatic every time. So was it now.
In hot and sultry mornings, afternoons and nights, I got calls asking for help. Friends, acquaintances and people I hardly knew. Sometimes help was difficult to give even though I desperately wanted to. It was never enough under the circumstances. Although it meant that we kept from emergency stocks to human support at beck and call as a routine. What we could do was too little. We lost so many people to Covid or its aftermath. It was agonising.
Slowly the calls lessened and I was able to feel less distraught. Stocks were given back to the owners and my infrastructure got time to go home.
In these distressful months what stayed with me was the unconditional support of those few who made it all possible for me. Distance, money or time were never deterrents.
As the pandemic eases and my self healing process begins, I am reminded of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, ‘I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is not happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.’
I was not a writer