Category: COVID-19
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Existential Angst
The New Year started with a wave of positive COVID cases around me, in my neighborhood, in my family and possibly in my home. As we rode out the cough, cold and the seemingly common cold like symptoms, I was beginning to feel like maybe, just maybe, this new Omicron could be the vaccine the…
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Everyday Anxieties
I wake up with the alarm, I realize two of my three girls are in bed with me. I push the youngest away, cover her back up with the quilt and sleepwalk my way to the bathroom. In an hour, the coffee pot is half over, idlis steamed, cut, smothered in molaga podi, and packed…
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COVID-19 Diaries: Yearbooks
I spied my youngest through the window. There was a bounce in her step and a book in her hands. Her backpack jogged along as she hopped, skipped, and ran her way home from the bus. The excitement was catching as I opened the door and she thrust her yearbook in my hand while talking…
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Relentless
The words are relentless. They appear on my Twitter feed. They show up in my WhatsApp messages. They sneak into my FB Messenger. Sometimes, they even make their way into my now largely defunct email inbox. Each word, each sentence is a life. It is a friend. It is a friend of a friend. It…
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COVID-19 Diaries: A Rough Week
It’s Friday evening at last. I should be feeling relieved, looking forward to a break from the treadmill that this week has been. Yet, I am back in my study after prying apart tweens going at each others’ throats over an eraser. I had to assuage adults whose tempers were flaring because of being cooped…
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Goodbye, 2020. Welcome 2021.
It is New Year’s eve as I write this. My morning has been productive. I’ve cooked an elaborate meal of vendekka morkuzhambu, beans parupu usili with ample help from Amma. I have two batches of Jalapeno bread proving in the oven, I also have four rounds of laundry in various stages of the pipeline from…
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COVID-19 Diaries: Dilemma
I lace up Laddu’s new hi-top shoes. She tests them out tentatively. I force a fleece jacket on top of her already cozy top. Her school bag is heavy. Her literature anthologies, fundations journals, composition books, iPad, charger, water bottle and lunch box weigh her down. She is ready though, masked, eyes twinkling and raring…
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COVID-19 Diaries: Rollback
Late afternoon yesterday, I swapped out the static page I have on my blog from the book landing page to my regular About page. It was bittersweet. From the beginning of the year, I counted down to my book release. I made plans and unmade them. The adrenalin rush between the release on Kindle and…
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COVID-19 Diaries: Baking Away The Blues
Earlier this year in May, when COVID had just taken on the pandemic status and we were all bound to our homes, Instagram convinced me that I was missing out on life because I was not baking. Most of my baking over the years has been restricted to one of two recipes I knew off…