24th March 2020

Yesterday was a really long day. I started by needing to go out and buy medicines - I hadn’t noticed that I was running low till Saturday. I was a bit scared to go out since my neighbour told me that the cops were out near the police station beating passersby with a lathi. I asked my pharmacist and he told me not to worry - he was open the whole day and buying medicines was a legitimate reason to be out. I also keep forgetting that now that I have stopped colouring my hair, I look like a harmless old woman - not a likely rebel out for kicks. Appearances are definitely misleading! I took all the inner roads - I have never been beaten with a lathi and I think I can live my life without that experience. 

I broke all the rules about seclusion yesterday. When I was at the pharmacist, I got a message from a friend asking if I had enough food stocked up. As her house was on the way back, I dropped in for ten minutes, sat about 6 feet from her and chatted for a bit. Then I stopped at another friend’s place. She had added on a couple of scamsters as her Facebook friends and they had sent me a friend request. I had called her on the phone to explain why she should unfriend them, but I realised that this needs to be done in person. Of course, she is smart enough not to get scammed by them, but there were others who had agreed to the friend request merely because it came from her friend. I told her the story of another friend who had almost been cheated of a fair amount of money a couple of years back by a similar scamster. After a refreshing glass of kokum juice, I went home. 

Afternoon siesta happened in bits and pieces. I guess this is anxiety. I couldn’t sleep even though it was hot outside and I had the AC on. In the evening I went for a walk - met another friend who has a broken shoulder. Again I sat far away from her, checked in that she was fine and went home. 

I had promised to visit a couple of friends who look after many abandoned animals and also run a catering business. I needed to return their dabbas and also talk to them about how to raise funds to stock up on cat food. At least, that is how I justified the trip. It takes me ten minutes to drive the 5 km to their house. For half the distance, everything was shut. Then in Ecoxim, all the grocery shops are open, the temple is open and life is normal. It was a relief to see the bustle while of course, the rational side of me wondered at their foolhardiness.

After dinner I got home and I absolutely could not sleep. Was it the coffee that I had had in the evening or was it anxiety? I listened to new meditations on Insight Timer. Very calming and helpful - basically reminding me to breathe. I realised then that I had been taking very shallow breaths for much of the day. And I was very stupid to go visit so many people, however good my reasons were. No more of this. Evening walks yes - but it is enough to smile at people from a distance. No need to go to their houses. 

As I lay there, trying to breathe deeply, I could hear the sound of some animal walking on the tin roof of the shed next to my room. A cat? A civet cat? Monitor lizard? Or just maybe the leopard that is supposed to live nearby? With all this quiet, maybe they were beginning to come out? From there it is but a step to going through all possible apocalypse scenarios - one of the perils of reading AND having a vivid imagination! 

Thankfully I seem to have fallen asleep during those ruminations and woke up to a sound I couldn’t quite place. The sound of the fan is so loud and this noise is just behind it. Was it thunder? Or planes taking off? Fighter jets bombarding us and wiping us out before the virus does… And I slept on. 

A cloudy sky when I woke up - so it was probably thunder. Or my imagination. Breathe. Deeply.