July 1, 2021
Since December 6th, I’ve been thinking about ideas for the next book. It’s main characters are a pair of twins and two girls who become close in college. The girls are in love with the male twin and the female twin is in love with one of the girls. The backdrop to this very inter-personal story are the years of Ram Mandir politics. I like exploring ideas for a book in a new notebook, and I’d looked long at a B5 lime-green folder at Tokyu Hands the last time I was there. Today I was going to buy it, after I visited the doctors for a review of my blood report from last week. I was also going to return library books, wander the stacks in the basement fiction section of the CPL, and savour a bowl of Hakata Ramen.
The blood report, after a year of red flagged ones, was clear. But my normal sinus congestion had worsened and phlegm was trickling down my throat making it scratchy. The doc’s forehead furrowed as I spoke about this. She keyed in a list of meds she would prescribe and put her stethoscope to my back. Her eyes scrunched, she said, ‘I will have to swab you. Everyone with respiratory symptoms is swabbed.’
It was done in minutes. A rapid antigen and a PCR. Two sheets of paper stapled together were shoved into my hands along with a bag of meds and nasal sprays. As I waited for the results of the instant test I read the papers—an MC for five days of leave and a set of rules to be followed. If I didn’t follow them I could be fined $10,000 and jailed. I was amused to see how many of us waiting there were studying these sheets of paper. It felt like half the people in the clinic had been swabbed. Nobody seemed worried.
Covid does feel like an endless madness, doesn’t it? The dilemma of continued alertness, testing and isolating vs learning to live with it is not something anyone has figured out. Though perhaps the EU seems to be making strides in normalising? I hear the fatigue people are feeling, the ways in which it has affected those most vulnerable to the effects of isolation, the uncertainty about making long term plans. I’ve cut down outside activities as my chronic sinus conditions have worsened due to extended mask wearing. A shroud of sadness deflated me.
Soon the nurse came out and said my test was negative and I was to go home and isolate till I got the PCR result. Do not enter Tokyu Hands. Do not pass the library. Go straight home.
At home, I ordered a burger with mushrooms. I chatted with my sister while eating. Then swallowed my pills and crashed on the sofa. Woke and brewed a pot of Champers Holiday White tea—with undertones of melon and white wine. Most soothing. Tomorrow I'll know if I too will become a statistic on Singapore and World Covid charts.
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