A day in the life of a Corona scared poet

Well, I have believed in the principle of putting down my tail under my legs and back away, almost running off the scene of issues and confrontations. Condemned as an escapist, I still find it feasible and practical beyond words. It stops the cascade effect of further build up of untoward scenes. Most importantly, it pacifies many egos. Little do I care, if their pacification of ego has to stand on condemning me as a coward. However, this strategy works when you have the tangibles visibly confronting you. What to do when the opponent is invisible like Little Master Corona?!

It may come from any direction, through any possible mean and in any form. As an escapist it literally means running away from each and everything. I feel like burrowing the deepest hole and hide there like a scared centipede fearful of getting crushed by rampaging boots. How many precautions to take? There are so many Donts that life even for someone ascetic-type like me appears cramped. Precautions raised to the power of infinity equals paranoid fear. Still I try to keep the raised power within manageable figures to maintain it within the limits of sanity.

As many Donts as possible imposed like a dictator on my own self. A bit of sense of safety creeps in as I ponder over my own disaster management. Not going outside too much. It is within my grasp. Usually I keep within my house. Walks through nature. Yea, I love that more than anything else in cosmos. That’s my strength. Trees are guardian angels. But how will you dodge rough peasants accosting you with bear hugs as you walk to your guardian angels, especially if you have been smiling and cordial with people. Running away from them won’t help. They will take it as an invitation to athletics and catch you as a trophy. That will be even more serious. Putting up a grimace on your face as you come across them to avoid them will create concern and hence they would poke you until you giggle. So no outings any longer. Painful yea, but what to do. You get a call over the phone and you have to sound like that the person on the line just stole your buffalo, otherwise you will get some invitation and the resultant dozens of excuses you have to offer. So straightaway sound like you just found that fellow sleeping with your wife or girlfriend. So launch a sort of ambush. A merciless beheading of cordiality. Self preservation is the topmost priority man, what else to do?!

Someone left his body in the village, and I offered my condolences in silence. So mean of me, I know. But it’s better not to add to the heap of ash waiting gleefully, especially with its buddy Corona ready to help it to become a little hill, in the village cremation yard by falling easy victim to the deadly invisible army by marching out like an unarmed soldier in a somber, peaceful, grieving party. If you wear the mask on the way to the cremation site, people will accuse you of blasphemy for being so clinging to life, the traitor that has to be taken dirt cheap. While on the way to the crematorium, you have to walk like a lifeless body who isn’t interested in life anymore. Show any type of zeal or precaution for preserving your life, it sounds like an insult to the dead. So if you commit this sin of showing your craziness for living among the ash heap of the dead, you are sure to be condemned as the cheapest rascal who holds life so dear even with this fact of death written so prominently in the form of the body being carried for the final ritual. So very prudently I dodge this eventuality and chuckle at the mask that I had to literally bribe my friend to grasp tightly in my hand like the best lifejacket has fallen on you by itself and the aircraft has fallen in the seas. He had two by the way. But I am so lazy. Now my laziness is legalized by the governments world over, by the way. Laziness is the key to survival! So like an old sullen monkey when I forced him to donate one to me, he gave me a look as if I would be the cause of his death, not this idiot Corona, if God forbid that happens. Anyway, self-preservation again. What to do?

An elderly sturdy peasant woman delivers purest of cow milk to my home. A real gem of a woman, a real motherly Bhabhi who is very caring and considerate. And see what my overblown precautions are forcing me to do. Her son has recently commuted to Delhi in congested local trains. And this has again spoilt the game altogether. The motherly, nourishing aura around her has dissipated suddenly. I am scared of the word Delhi. There are more than 20 million people cramped shoulder to shoulder there. ‘Some gallant sneezer must have sung his nasal apocalypse song right into the boy’s face!’ the calculus of my precautions swiftly let loose the rampaging horses of panic.  He is a good boy and carries more than average respect in my eyes as he wishes me Namaste almost reverently when he sees me. But I change colors like a chameleon and take him as the sturdy carrier horse of the enemy Corona. The elderly sturdy Bhabhi also appears a gallant swift mare carrying the enemy forces now. I have abandoned politeness lest she spends even a single extra second at my place after handing over the milk utensil. I hold the milk container like a bomb diffuser handles the deadly wires, slightest mistake, an explosion and the end of the world. I boil the milk extra hard to decimate the enemy. Poor milk. I must be burning all its nutrients in my fight against the virus. I rinse the milk utensil so hard that it might get scared to get holes in it.

Oh, the newspaper! How do I tell you how scary it has turned? It arrives from Delhi, hundreds of hands touching it all the way down the supply chain. Their collective animosity gets coagulated into the honest and diligent delivery boy. I ask him to stop delivery till my further orders and assure him of payment for the intervening period as well. He but seems to carry the honor of the newspaper industry on his shoulders. He agrees with an unwilling yes. But wait. He isn’t ready to budge from his stand. I find the deadly weapon, almost a mortar of Corona, dangling in the grills of the gate. My request has just made only this much difference that he fixes it in darkness to avoid the chances of the repetition of my precautionary request. I see it as someone is planting bombs on my gate stealthily. What to do? I take the scary thing with the minimum pinch in a corner, holding just the least portion that would enable it to be lifted and straightaway throw it in a corner in the yard where the sun will beat the Mickey out of the virus. Instantly I run to sanitize my hands. Scared all this while that my fort walls have been breached by the enemy soldiers and they are scaling the walls and I have to launch the fusillade of my protection cannons. So here I rub my hands as vigorously as possible. Throughout the hot sunny day I enjoy the sight of the paper literally baked to a funny dish. It’s only the next day I touch the newspaper, half assured that the idiot Corona has been decimated by Father Sun. So I keep myself updated a day behind. Patience helps man. Update and updation is hardly effective anymore.

Today when PM Modi requested to bang utensils and make scary war music at 5 in the evening, to scare away the monsters, I jumped into the fray from the safe premises of my house and beat my heart and soul out on a worn out, dented dung container vessel of my grandfather times and made such noise that for an instant I myself got scared! Offs, this Corona idiot will drive me crazy. More specifically, I am turning irritated also. Today I chased away a cat like it came to my house as a spy from Corona side. Almost hit it, and shouted at it, even though it must have been trying to breakfast on a little mice that has cut down the soles of my leather shoes recently. A monkey that was stoically sitting on the compound wall met the same treatment. I behaved so weirdly that even the monkey looked at me seriously like a sane human being. OOfs! What to do? Horrible times!