{R.H Quarantine Diaries #1}
For me, it all started that one day in Jan’20 , I happened to watch a video on CNN and it said ‘mystery pneumonia-like illness outbreak in Wuhan, China’ and I didn’t know it at the time that this new mystery illness would change all our life forever. Just in few days later, virus landed in US for real and first ever case gets reported in Seattle, Washington.
My spring break vacation plans got cancelled, school learning after the spring break shifted to ‘distance learning’ in full mode. Overall nothing changed effectively, but everything connected to me got transformed into new form of life, without any human contact. My room is now my classroom and I look through my room windows and wonder ‘when will I go out and meet people’ ?
I felt my thoughts and feelings needed to be recorded, so I let my heart pick up a pencil and write. Until this pandemic, there wasn’t even a crumb of terror that existed in ordinary people that they could be a victim of a pneumonia-like lung disease that would start in Wuhan, China and spread across the globe, killing hundreds of thousands of people. No one knew it coming and no one prepared for the corona virus, what billions of people knew today. This isn’t a dream, this is harsh reality.
In my journal, I described the second to last day in March 2020, a Monday. In our usual daily life, Mondays are always hectic — People rushing to work, kids going to school, and that early morning dread of waking up early. But..this Monday was different. No people filled their offices, no kids took their knowledge in schools, and everyone was at home, all day long. This is like a “day in a fiction movie” — businesses closed, empty highways & roads, and all the malls deserted. Never in a million years would I have predicted this at all. I heard the stories about past pandemics taking millions of lives, but never imagined to see and live through one myself in my lifetime.
I do miss my daily routine, meeting my friends & teachers at school and so did millions other kids around the world. Internet took over the world, human touch turned into a curse. Everyone talks about “new normal” life, but no one knows for sure what it will look like? I discovered few new hobbies for myself, more time to spend with my loving family.. hmm, may be that’s a gift .. why whine about stuff ?
What else I can do to soothe my disturbed mind? I decided to find a music piece, a way to express yourself though pitches, voices, and tones. I went online and I found a song that would absolutely never leave my head, even at the most exciting or tragic moments.
This song I’m talking about is a beautiful one called A Quiet Life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqTjbassv3g) . The talented songwriters are Teho Teardo and Blixa bargeld. This song describes the sheer terror and fear the whole world is experiencing right now. The lyrics, in my point of view, can represent the Chinese government trying to pick up the broken lies and getaway scot-free unsuccessfully.
….. to be continued :-)
