A Boring Catastrophe

I wrote this poem during the peak of the lockdowns imposed due to Covid-19. I was angry at the pandemic for many reasons, the one that this poem is based on was the isolation it brought with itself. The blinding speed with which our days moved had come to a halt & it felt as if there wasn’t anything left to say except for the latest updates on the pandemic. I was angry at the running-out-of-topics-during-conversations, the awkward silences… the absolute loss of variety in life, which felt like a catastrophe.

Don’t Forget to shut yourselves in your homes.

Forget yourself if you’re without a home,

God remembers all.

Blessed are the ignorant, they shall be redeemed first.

Or not- It all comes down to the human heart (or lungs),

the cells inside you, how well they fight,

how good they are at killing.

It’s always a new war inside,

the outside world is more civilized after all.

Cars, buses, trains, planes cough no more.

People do. As if cigarettes weren’t enough,

as if they were too slow, too much fun.

A crown-shaped miscreant smiles in the distance

(the limelight making it invisible), somersaulting

in the clean air of the empty chowraha,

like she owns it.

‘She’ because it’s always the female ones. That sinister lot!

Pandora, mosquitoes, corona. It’s all the same.

The ashtray is now shifted to the balcony.

Taking in the ashes, with the nostalgia, it complains

‘that bloody catastrophe!’

It is bored. Since now you talk of nothing else but that virus.

It sends curses with smoke to the sky. It is hungry

for the stories. Tell it-

there are no new stories,

Only the dead thrive inside walls. And rats,

cockroaches… maybe the next few viruses.