The Burning Tower, by Archana Surana, Jaipur
Born and raised in Mathabhanga, West Bengal, and currently residing in Jaipur, Rajasthan, Archana is resilient, adaptive, and courageous.
It is the 30th of August, 2020. After a long day's hard work doing household chores, I am exhausted, so I decide to relax for a while in our terrace garden. My father-in-law is expected back home after two weeks of hospitalization due to coronavirus COVID-19. My mother-in law-is back home already, convalescing. My husband is still admitted.
I call a mentee of mine– a tarot card reader and healer. My eldest son Manan and I are seeking some good news. There is a moment of silence after she opens every pack of cards; with every spread, there is a burning tower.
After we hang up, my phone rings within minutes. It’s Ratan, the hospital owner and a friend of my husband.
He says “Bade Vakil saheb ka cardiac arrest ho gaya, he is no more with us.”
I’m shocked. I don’t know how I will reveal the news to the family, and to my husband, who has recently undergone a blood plasma transfusion.
My father-in-law lived a healthy life, with great virtue. A self-disciplined, daring senior lawyer, his everyday regime had for the past 50 years started with yoga. How could he not fight the devil coronavirus?
Before I reach the ground floor, I hear loud noises and groaning. My sister-in-law had come over from Mumbai, and she too tested COVID positive. Altogether, six out of nine tested positive in the family, including our domestic help.
For weeks now, our bungalow has been sealed by the health authorities. My driver Sunil comes as a guardian angel, bringing the daily necessities and driving to the hospital three times a day. Although I had not run around our three-storied bungalow doing daily chores for years, I am looking after the family needs, cooking meals, and managing the household, while serving an ailing domestic helper in isolation.
We are all going through suffering, but I am thinking and reflecting, I tested negative.
Never did the word 'negative' occur so differently to me. I am feeling immune. But have I really been negative all along, or did I take my turn while being mildly symptomatic?
It's equanimity, perhaps something that I nurtured through vipassana meditation. When I look at my family and the challenges as a businesswoman and design educator, I feel stronger with every passing day. Setting in place the online teaching and learning methods for continuous delivery of design education, dealing with guardians refusing or delaying the payment of tuition fees, waiting for payments for liabilities of a garment business … I feel immune to all the stumbling blocks posed by the pandemic grind. On this journey of being immune and reflective, I am infinitely positive, though indeed COVID negative!
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(This story was prepared for an “Imagine Another World” online storytelling workshop held October 16, 2020.)
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