Outside my window during a pandemic, I see.

It has been so many days since we have been locked up inside. And truth be told, we don’t know when this will end. The world looks so different all of a sudden, doesn’t it? The phrase outside my window seems so much more relevant now. Outside my window during a pandemic. Outside my window during the lockdown. But the world that we see now is so different from the one that we had taken for granted. So, now that everything appears to have changed, what is it that I see outside my window? Or, what is it that I don’t see outside my window anymore?

The pandemic has changed things so much that I don’t see the world I had become so used to anymore. Remember last time I talked about the guy on my bus who always wears black? I haven’t seen him for months now. I haven’t been on a bus or for that matter any vehicle for months. Well, okay, a month and a half but it seems so long. I haven’t seen the uncle on the terrace visible from my desk at work. That reminds me, I miss my desk at work. The huge windows that overlooked the city. I could just turn when exhausted staring at my system or when bored in a never-ending meeting and the sky would perk me up. The scene outside my window has changed so drastically now. Who would have known how the simple things in life, things that you don’t even consciously think about are what you are going to miss the most when that gets taken away, suddenly?

Outside my window, there is a new world which I want desperately to go back to normal. I don’t want to live in fear. I don’t want anyone to live in fear but that is all that I see outside my window these days. The masks, the distance, the air laden with mistrust and anxiety.

Outside my window these days, I don’t see kids playing. I don’t get to hear their laughter and their cute voices. I don’t get to see M and her friends riding their bikes. I don’t see them acting as Avengers. I never thought I would miss that noise. The noise of happy children. What I wouldn’t give to have that back again. And soon.

Outside my window, these days is a world with a new kind of normal. The masks, the distance, the air laden with mistrust and anxiety. #covid19 Share on X

Outside my window these days, I don’t see the elderly sitting and soaking in the sun or talking to each other. I feel so bad to see them stuck inside their homes. I don’t see them on their morning walks when they used to listen to chants. They deserved a time to be carefree but they are in the throes of a pandemic instead. The other night while it was raining, I opened my front door for some reason and far in one of the corridors I saw an uncle and aunty taking a walk. It must have been around 11:30 pm, the only time probably safe for them to be out. Sad, isn’t it?

What is it that I don't see outside my window anymore? #lockdown Share on X

Outside my window these days, I see the housekeeping staff in our apartment continue to do their work while chatting about everyday life. I like that their talks signal some sort of normalcy. The din of their gossip gives me peace. I wonder though how elitist our society is that in the times of distress, the people who were neglected the most or never given importance are the ones taking us safely from one day to the other. Outside my window, therefore, I see the ones who matter.

Outside my window, I see an eerie silence sometimes broken by the cry of an ambulance or a police vehicle. You must wonder how I see silence for it’s not something tangible. But think about it. The silence I see is in the quietness that greets me as I sit in my balcony. The silence I see is in the doorbell staying silent for days. Though I’m all for silence, this one being the aftereffect of something that probably changed the course of our lives forever doesn’t give me peace at all.

Outside my window, I see a world that wasn’t at all anticipating this crisis. I see a world which can never go back to the way it was and it makes me sad. It makes me sad because had I known, I would have gone out more. I would have not said no to meeting friends on weekends owing to traffic. I would have soaked in that world before it was never to be. And also would have bought a dishwasher but that’s neither here nor there.

Many, many years from now there will be books written on this time that people will read and wonder how it must have been to have all the freedom suddenly taken away for fear of something unseen. It seems strange to be living in a time which will be different from the ordinary and not in a good way at all. All the plans for the future that we all would have made, who knows how much that will change? I worry that the security that we had built up would no longer exist. It puts into perspective a lot of things, on what’s important and what’s not. So, what I’m trying to say is, the world outside my window has changed so much that I worry it may never go back to being what it was.

So, tell me, what do you see outside your window these days?