Fiction Diary #2: Thousand Days of Lockdown
It is October 2023 and you're still living off Doritos.
I wrote this as an assignment submission for Amit Varma’s clear writing course. The prompt was simple: you are writing this in October 2023, three years into an extended global lockdown.
“Nachos and ice-cream! Got a party, sir?” In my rush, I hadn’t noticed the face behind the billing counter. I looked up and replied, “Not quite a party, Mr. Ganesan. Just felt like some good food!”.
Mr. Ganesan has been a cashier at HyperMart for more than ten years. I have known him for seven. Going by his skin and hair, he must be in his fifties. His shirt and trousers are ironed to perfection, with creases like in a school uniform. He is kind and helpful, curious to know if you are doing okay. When I reciprocate with the same question, he nods with a smile that beams through his face-shield.
In the last three years, his store has been a saviour for those living nearby. It has survived the lockdown without a break in services or shortage of supplies. The door to his store feels like a portal to an older world. Between paper clips and Pepsi, there is very little that you could need but not find on his shelves. I wonder if some people go to his store to hear what hubbub sounds like.
Mr. Ganesan packed my stuff into two carry-bags. A week’s worth of groceries in tow, I drove back home. It was a quick drive, usually not worth the effort or cost of taking out the car, but I wasn’t going to lug two heavy bags for a mile. I parked my car, and just as I was stepping out, the dog from the empty plot in front came running. He soon rolled over for pets and belly rubs. The brat knew I couldn’t resist him either. So I just sat down on the porch and gave him a long pet. Like a good masseuse, I even threw in some head scratches and back rubs. I wish my flat didn’t have bizarre rules against allowing street dogs inside.
The Chennai sun was getting sharper. I got up, gave the dog some biscuits, and walked inside towards the lift-lobby. After reaching the third floor, I unlocked my door and stood still for a minute, admiring my one-room studio. It looked pristine, like the pictures on tourism listings for a hill-station villa. Of course, nothing had changed in the forty-five minutes that I had spent outside. Maybe it was the rare activity of seeing my house from the other side of the door that almost made me reach for the phone camera.
I began stacking items inside the fridge. I first arranged butter slabs in a rack and placed cola bottles height-wise in the lower compartment. I then reordered bowls according to the colours of their caps. The nachos went to a drawer so that they aren’t in my eyesight, but always handy. After this complex Tetris routine, I changed into a t-shirt and shorts, grabbed a bottle of water, and walked over to my desk.
Outside my window, sunlight was bouncing off walls. It was the time of the day when air-conditioners across the city would beep into power and sip electricity until sunset. I opened my laptop to check for emails and found nothing but a tab full of spam. There were WhatsApp notifications on my phone. I tapped to find two groups teeming with memes and replied to some of them with the laughing-tears emoji. It is my favourite for most situations.
I scrolled up to find the bar with Priya’s name. I had been thinking of texting her. We had barely spoken since she moved to Delhi four years back, but some attraction remained. I didn’t know what to write except asking how she had been. There wasn’t anything to talk about, no topics to bond over. We didn’t share much apart from the pretence of connection frenzied date nights can often lead to. After a couple of minutes of pondering, I kept the phone down. As the screen light was dimming, I saw a message from Tinder but ignored it as spam. I hadn’t swiped in a while, so there was as much chance of me showing on someone’s radar as there was of Faber-Castell sponsoring me for life.
My to-do list had no time for loneliness. It had been screaming at me to complete a Noire Batman artwork for ComicCon. The deadline was still a few weeks away, but the dislike I held for ComicCon’s editors drove me to account for extra time. I was happy with how the early drafts of the Batman artwork had come along. The sketch I had posted on Twitter got me a few hundred retweets and likes within hours.
Social media is funny like that. The sketches I did for The National Correspondent and OpenPress Magazine were tougher and, I dare say, carried more meaning. But then again, Batman is the king of pop-culture appeal.
I had kept my day free of calls or meetings. But, as much as I tried, I couldn’t keep my phone away. Every few minutes, I unlocked it to check for notifications. I refreshed my inbox and spam folders multiple times but found nothing interesting.
It was already mid-afternoon when I finished sketching the Batman artwork. I clicked a picture and sent it to the editors. One of them replied with a thumbs-up emoticon. I hadn’t realised that three hours had passed since I last opened my phone or laptop. I had also completely forgotten about the frozen, ready-to-cook chicken tikkas that were waiting in the freezer.
I walked over to the kitchen and kept the tikka packets out to thaw. As I was coming back to the desk, my phone rang. I unlocked it and saw the notification I had been waiting for all day: a mail from Netflix India titled Artist Contract Confirmation. I hope my neighbours didn’t suffer too much.