The Year of Covid: Documenting Via Poetry

It came upon us suddenly, inexorably, the intimation of mortality. A virus from Wuhan that skipped from body to body circling the world and felling 7 million. Rumor filled the vacuum of knowledge about how the virus killed and what one could do to avoid catching it. Rather, being caught by it. We washed our hands for twenty seconds, singing Happy Birthday To you; the lyrics seemed to have been timed for manual hygiene.

People responded to quacks and leaders of states alike with enthusiasm, creating a din with plates and metal utensils at an appointed hour to drive away demons. Amidst all of this was the reality of shortness of breath, of a loss of taste and smell, and even after recovery, an inexplicable sense of loss of wellness. Around us the world succumbed to the casual brutality of the state and law. Workers, abandoned by employers, walked, and cycled blindly back in the direction of their homes, following railway tracks. Elsewhere, in another democracy, police brutality against young black men; one death caused by men in blue kneeling on a man’s neck till he could breathe no more. Even as around the world, young and old gasped, checked their oxymeters and reassured themselves that they were breathing still.

Amidst the chaos of the world, was the stillness of homes under lockdown; a “hard” lockdown that stretched from 21 to 35 days (from 27 March to 30 April 2020 in South Africa). A month in which individuals and families were incarcerated at home. A benign house arrest sustained by home deliveries of food and furtive drops of cigarettes and alcohol by enterprising individuals at astronomical prices. A month in which families were thrown into each other’s company with no school or office routine to give them respite from each other. Some broke under the strain, others reinvented themselves, rediscovered love, and the pleasures of routine. Days were interrupted by Zoom calls as people tried to adhere to work routines, speaking to a panel of dazed faces and blank screens. People rediscovered cooking, brewing, DIY house repair. And they scrolled, doom scrolled, watching the toll on human life around the world, blurring distinctions between the North and the South. There was a search for routine as much as discipline as the days piled up along with the laundry and resentments.

Locked at home with my family, there were some routines that came to comfort one: reading, cooking, listening to jazz. And there was more time to do all of this, rather than in the interstices of the passing of days tinged with the anxiety and guilt of work, done, and not done. There was only time. I sat every day in my wingback chair, looking out at the garden and read, with a Bose speaker resting on the panelled floor, that made the wood hum with the notes of the trumpet and saxophone. I also began to write; a poem a day and continued to write till I needed to write no more. I realized this only when I sat down one day and realized that my fear of mortality had passed. No longer did I need to capture the grain and texture of every day, inscribing every sight, sound, and smell as if it were my last. I had never written poems before; at least not with so much intensity. And the world continued to intrude with its bad news, the distant echoes of deaths elsewhere. However, these words helped to shore a sense of self and of connections. They were a record of life at home, family within earshot and flitting back and forth as I sat still for hours on end, reading and writing and listening. These poems are a record of that intimacy as much as the penumbra of fear that tinged all our lives. A fear that seemed forever until it was no more.

This slim collection of poems is titled Quo Vida, a double pun. The obvious one is the resonance with Covid, the affliction. The other slightly more layered reference is to the words “Domine quo vadis? “ (‘Lord, where are you going? ‘) which were spoken by St. Peter. Fleeing from Rome, he meets Christ, who replies, “I am going to be crucified again.” Peter goes back to Rome, where he is martyred. It raises the question of the imponderability, and unpredictability of death. Quo Vida – whither Life?

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Also, visit: Dilip Menon Speaks about “‘Quo Vida’