Yet, there is hope. History tells us that during the worst times for the world is when the best inventions were made, including penicillin. And we are already starting to witness breakthroughs from the top brains in the medical world. However, we know there is still uncertainty around when a cure will be established scientifically. It may be long before a vaccine is available to public. Meanwhile, we know thousands more will die. It is inevitable.
In such gloomy times, even the most optimistic folks are hard hit mentally. It is hard to not think about life in such times. Ponder about the things you have accomplished and those that you couldn't. All the happy (or sad) times you had with family. Old memories come to life and one gets lost in the merry times to get some respite from the reality.
It is funny that I can't really tell what my oldest memory is. Can you? I have vague memories of early childhood - mostly beating the hell out of a soft toy and launching it over our gate outside. Of course, there are other memories captured in pictures - but I can't really remember any of those. As I grew older, me and my brother Abhijeet had some weird tactics to keep ourselves busy. Of course, this is when he wasn't troubling me. Mostly it was playing cricket inside our house compound. But I clearly remember one of our devilish "ideas" was to come up with a chemical formula to kill red ants - because those are bad ants! And our genius invention was to mix whatever chemicals were available at home - and mix them up and test it on the poor ants. Mostly the poor creatures died from drowning in water than from our genius solutions. In an another unrelated incident, I had killed a black ant. And my brother convinced me that the ant's ghost will haunt me tonight.
But I also liked to play alone. I remember I had a yellow plastic box (some discarded box from my dad's automobile shop) where I kept all my toys. Cars and action figures! And like any other kid, I used to cook up stories and play with the toys. Until one day, when my brother hid one of my cars. Hell ensued. I had a Yankee Doodle sticker on my small wardrobe. And my brother said he hid the car BEHIND the sticker. I can't believe how stupid I was. I actually TORE the sticker to find the car while in parallel crying the hell out. My brother on the other hand was laughing his ass out on his idiot sibling. Post that it was WAR. I took one of his car, went to the terrace and threw it over from there. After that it was parental intervention that caused the ceasefire. But there were peaceful times as well. We did not stop from playing cricket inside the house. There was one small room which was never used by anyone - and was typically our playing area. I clearly remember playing with a steel rod and plastic ball. We used to 'swing' the plastic ball and hit with the rod so hard that at times we could see sparks flying from the tiles. I remember both of us looking at each other stunned when we saw the sparks.
Summer holidays were obviously the best. We usually went to our uncle's place in Mumbai. Of course I was always given some maniac holiday homework. I distinctly remember writing tables from 1 to 20 some 20 times! I can't believe I actually completed that work. Cruel. However, I did get time to play cricket with the kids in the apartment. We did break a few windows and ran away frequently. When not in Mumbai, we used to play some stupid games like creating a garage from old school book cardboards. Or creating some 'homes' in the terrace under the coconut tree leaves. It's hard to believe that we were once so dumb and innocent at the same time.
As we got little older, we graduated to colony level cricket AND video game! I remember shopping for 64 bit cassette games in Manish Market in Mumbai. Those typical 999 games in 1, out of which we played 9. Duck hunt, Mario, Contra, Circus and so many more. I was amazed (and still am) that I could shoot down a duck with a gun pointed at TV screen. Well, we also graduated from running around everywhere to getting cycles. That led us to go to cycling on most evenings. And I clearly recall once we went into an adventure to go cycling into some weird farm with a really old structure. We were clearly lost and it was getting dark. To top that, we saw bats in the structure. Hell. We just cycled like crazy from that farm till we finally reached the road. What a nightmare. Of course, when we got home we got some nice shouting from mom.
Life was good till this point. Then came the serious phase of 7/8th standard when I somehow got hooked on to studies. I used to consistently rank beyond 13th in my class before this. Somehow, the graph went up after that and I fell under the trap of "high scoring" and tuitions and what not. Basically the rat race. A group of us even went to Kota post 10th for ambitious IIT coaching. This HAS to be the worst phase of my life. I hated that place to the core. I struggled with the way things were taught and executed there. Plus we were staying away from family for the very first time. I didn't have time to cope up with the immense pressure. I was just lost in another rat race, and I wasn't winning this one - I wasn't even close. I was never the one with immense self belief - inspite of doing well in schools I always doubted my ability. Before every exam in school, my typical note to mom was 'Im going to fail tomorrow'. When I came back from Kota, all I had was a huge relief. It was not a place meant for me and I was happy to be out of there. Yet, it did give me a life time of lessons.
Life at the moment is pretty much like Kota (ok way better than it, but you get the point). We are all stuck in this situation that no one wants to be part of. Its not a place meant for us - yet it will give the entire world lessons that we will never forget. And we will survive this - just need to keep looking back on the good times for relief and humour!
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