Lockdown Diary by Namita Gokhale: Uncharted territories, when masks are more precious than roses

Something I have learnt, both in my observation of the world and my personal life, is that cause and effect are not always in expected synchronicity. Difficult times can yield unexpected joys, while the fruits of good fortune are often unexpectedly bitter.

Most of us have been granted a reprieve from our daily lives and work schedules, even as we are confronted with new challenges, new responsibilities, new rosters of duty, at every possible level.

The privileged elite, who for no fault of their own have to suddenly cook and clean and look after their own mess, are stuck with Netflix and Amazon. I do not mock them, for they too have to confront uncharted territories, to face bewilderment and anxiety, to contemplate the fragility of the lives they have been leading.

The economic apparatus that keeps them in comfort has collapsed. Financial certainties have crumbled. The notional value of things is in flux. Surgical masks and toilet paper are more precious than roses and chocolates. The carefully nurtured masks of identity, the faces that we put on, have given way to unfamiliar visages that confront us in the mirror.

About the less privileged, the poor, the marginalised, all those living in the edge, the dimensions of the unfolding tragedy are of such distressing and unforeseen proportions that it is difficult to register or even comprehend the many dimensions in which it is playing out.

At another level, the haves, the creamy layers and the entitled are suddenly realising that they were only the hollow half of the picture, and that their good fortune and well-being depended always on the efforts of the invisible others.

How this will play out in the new normal that will establish itself remains to be seen. But they - we- will perhaps realise what is common to them - us- all our vulnerability, our mortality, our humanity.

As for nature, she is smiling. Mother Earth seems happier and more content than she has been for some time. I am in the heart of an Indian joint family as we lock down, together and alone.

I am a writer and comfortable with solitude. It’s strange not to be packing and unpacking though for the eight different editions of the JLF international literature festivals. We are presenting a digital version - the Brave New World, to reach out to our audiences.

I have been able to work on a new novel at a pace unimaginable in recent years. Also, the perspective from which I am observing and writing is radically different from before. So many earlier givens and certainties have lurched across the boundaries of possibility. Speculative fiction and dystopian writing seem out of date. A new visual grammar is presented to those of us who struggle with words and meanings for our livelihood.

Word, image, text, merge seamlessly with each other. They can all be manipulated, maimed, distorted, by anybody’s will, anywhere. Everybody is speaking, everybody is listening. The borders of selfhood have never been so fragile.

We are all urged to get out there, to the digital outdoors, to push and peddle the stories we told ourselves in silence. We are losing something, we are gaining something, and both loss and gain are amplified in these days of lockdown.

As for me, I am still tallying what I have lost with what I have gained. I have stopped colouring my hair and am watching the grey take over my sparse crop. I look wiser, more wizened, with seven hairs of wisdom sprouting on my chin. Yet I feel lighter, more rooted, than I have done in years.

I write by hand, on lined notebooks. I am running out of ball pens and the shops are all closed. But I have pencils, and a sharpener, a rubber eraser. I run out of note pads and resort to the blank right sides of scribbled-over spiral notebooks where I have laboured over previous novels.

I have my iPad. If, when, cyberspace implodes into itself, when words run out, I will write invisible stories, which will join the library of all the forgotten narratives in the world.

(Namita Gokhale is author and Festival Director at Jaipur Literature Festival)