It was a time

It was a time when people frantically criss-crossed the city to find the oxygen their loved ones needed to survive as they lay gasping for breath. It was a time when people abandoned corpses at the gates of the crematorium and ran away, unwilling or unable to take care of the last rites, when half-burned corpses still wrapped in shrouds floated down the Ganges and came ashore outside unsuspecting villages. It was a time when a Hindu politician objected to Muslims being present in the crematorium grounds, because they defiled these final sacred moments, and it was a time when a Muslim taxi driver turned to the distraught young man in his van, who was taking his brother’s body to be cremated, and explained to him what a Hindu had to do for someone’s last rites, because no one had ever told the young man, he was not supposed to know this yet, not for several more years. It was a time when young children, their clothes in tatters and their heads shorn ran after shoppers asking for food or milk or dal or chaaval, anything, as if someone had forgotten to tell them that they now lived in times of plenty and needn’t beg for food. It was a time when neighbours left food outside the door of an ailing resident and rang the bell so that she could at least eat. It was a time when young couples with little to spare gave up all they had to buy food for those who had even less. It was a time when the already tenuous bonds that held society together began to fray and other, hopefully stronger ones were formed. It was a time when new scams and forms of deceit were invented but also a time when companies and NGOs and governments came together to do what felt right. It was a time when once omnipresent leaders went into hiding, their narrative rudely interrupted by a virus that wouldn’t listen. It was a time when the world felt as if it was standing still, but it wasn’t, it was still spinning on the fringe of the universe, we were just watching our own demise in slow motion as the parakeets flew overhead and enjoyed the undisturbed sound of their own chatter.