On the night of Amphan!

It’s about 7’o clock in the evening now but it feels like past midnight already! The entire city is in darkness due to the power cut. Amphan cyclone has taken over the city. My mum is huffing around, obsessing about the water flooding the bathroom floor or the scarcity of drinking water or about the news of a lamppost burning in the neighbourhood and other similar unpleasantries.

Image from Google.

My mind drifts. I close my eyes and, in a jiffy, I’m lying inside my little green tent - sometimes on the top of Mount Caburn or by the Jack&Jill windmills, sometimes in the valley of Blois or by the river Loire or sometimes on the slope of the Himalayas, eyeing the snowy Kedarkantha peak.

On the slope of the mighty mountains – I am lying numb inside a puffy sleeping bag. I can’t feel my fingers or toes, just a cold pain moving all over my body. I can’t put a finger on it. I’m supposedly asleep. But I can feel the things around me, like I’m in a drugged hallucinating state. Suddenly, the ice beneath me goes ‘creeek’. I feel a sudden tug of gravity. The make-shift floor of the tent just dropped an inch as the ice at the bottom of it cracked. What’s happening? I hear a roaring sound outside. I pull down the zip of the tent a bit and peep outside - a still bare darkness with an invisible restless wind that’s making the tent flaps dance and then suddenly - a blizzard! Ooh, my eyes!

In the valley, sitting cosy in the lap of the mountain walls – It’s raining cats and dogs outside. The sloshing sound of the overpour makes you want to go pee every half an hour!  But that’s not an option. Peeing means you would have to get out of the tent and walk to the toilet area. You get drenched and the moment you unzip the tent, the inside of the tent gets wet too. Instead, I sit inside, with a coffee in my hand and browse through my playlist. I tap on Annie’s song by John Denver and switches off the light on my phone. The distant tune sets a hearty ambience in this absolute darkness intervened only by the sound of the rain. And just then, my friend puts his flashy torch on and hangs it from a loop in the middle of the roof of the tent. ‘I’m starving’, he declares. Oh, come on man! I was just settling in for some soothing music. He puts some water to boil in the ‘camping’ saucepan on the little gas stove and throws some pasta in it. Tent food is awesome! Simple, bland and highly filling when you feed them to the hungry souls. It’s a bit risky to put the stove on inside the tent but what can you do? It’s pouring down gallons of water outside!

On the top of the rolling hills – One tent, limitless rolling hilly folds, scattered trees and not a single soul about. It’s just nothingness. It’s pitch black now. The only source of light is the dim torch that I flicker when I try to find something inside the tent. The wind picks up after midnight. It starts with a nice playful rhythm and soon, enters a frenzy interrupted by pin drop silence and then suddenly it unleashes the madness. The wind is howling like a mad hungry wolf. I clasp my hands and curl my toes and hug myself in a vain attempt to keep myself warm and stop myself from being blown away. It's so cold and the chilling howling wind is making it worse. It’s the month of May for god sake; I’m in a t-shit and a pair of shorts! Stupid me! I close my eyes trying to sleep. The rain and the wind keep up their crazy dance as if it’s a celebration of their freedom, a getaway from their mundane breezy days, a sweet release of their unkempt desire. I can’t sleep. Any second now, I will be blown away!

I open my eyes. My big toe suddenly itches. Sadly, it’s not the itchiness of the feet of a travel freak. I’m in my bed, back to the present, tending to my bacteria-infected itchy toe. It’s just over a couple of months now, the conniving Corona virus has grounded us. I haven’t stepped outside my home for a solid two months. And then suddenly, about 3weeks back, I was performing the extremely dangerous act of walking from my bedroom to the kitchen when my toe decided to bend itself in a precarious curl and produce a deep wound to bring some excitement into my otherwise corona stomped days. Enough of virus, I say, bring on some bacteria now! Entrée bacteria! They decided to feed on my fresh wound which I was neglecting until then. They spread all over my foot giving it a gorgeous makeover! What more can you want? Whilst I am limping my lockdown days away, juggling between the virus and the bacteria and hating my ever-increasing office hours, the Amphan cyclone feels like a fresh diversion when I’m forced to logout of work early and sit back and pay attention to the howling wind outside. I can’t really help by panicking about the destruction it’s causing, not yet! So, I close my eyes and I’m back in my tent again.