Day 12 of 27 — Vaccine passports

July 2, 2021

I wouldn’t make a good diplomat. Yesterday I watched a debate around vaccine passports. I’m not on twitter but apparently twitter had exploded with tweets about this after the EU excluded Covishield the Indian manufactured AstraZeneca vaccine from its vaccine passport. Both are exactly the same chemical formulation. A lot of people were calling this move racist and akin to having a ‘coloniser’ attitude. On the debate several Indians including a doctor, a spokesperson for the ruling party, and a journalist hotly stated this. 

 

The European Medicines Agency explained that it hadn’t received an application from Covidshield for certification. Somebody on the debate argued that this authorisation was for permission to vaccinate in the EU and not for a certification to travel. The Indian Foreign Ministry said they would refuse to accept EU vaccine certificates if the EU didn’t accept India’s certificates. Covishield has been approved by WHO but the other Indian vaccine, Covaxin, has not yet been approved. 

 

The only person who kept cool was an ex-diplomat Neelam Deo. She said such things are procedural and take time. India should make the applications and wait before making reciprocation statements. The BJP spokesperson on the other hand said this was beyond racist. It was a move by Big Pharma to block India from continuing to be the biggest vaccine provider in the world. 

 

Neelam Deo also said that this was a problem for the elite, those who could afford to fly and that we in India should be focusing on the dismal vaccination rate and the looming third wave. She listened calmly to the others and never interrupted. There are issues like false vaccination drives, false negative certificates etc. that also need attention. This calling out of the EU by the Foreign Ministry feels a bit of a diversion to me too. 

 

Yet it is one of those nuanced debates. It is true that vaccine passports will create an elite class of people and further discriminate against lower income countries that  are still struggling to vaccinate their populations. It will also exclude the people who do not want to be vaccinated. WHO does not recommend vaccine passports. But it is also true that if a place has been vaccinated or has controlled the spread of covid why should it not have its own certifications and mandate quarantines of people arriving from places where there are huge outbreaks so that their residents can get back to normal. Would love to hear thoughts. 

 

My mind and body are woozy. It is the strong meds I am prescribed but also the sense of plans being constantly interrupted. This has been happening for several months and it is hard to plan or commit to things. Many friends in India speak of their inability to think long term as the covid situation lingers on. Getting the negative PCR text from MOH was a get out of jail card but in light of the bigger picture uncertainty created by covid, I often feel trapped and unmoored.

 

Day 11 of 27 — Go Straight Home

 July 1, 2021

Since December 6^th, 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. 

Day 10 of 27 — Wednesday Evening

June 30, 2021

It’s Wednesday again. The same time of day as when I wrote last week, with the same sort of setting-sun light. Today only parts of the green canopy and very few buildings seem dusted with light gold powder. The ones in shade seem sad and neglected. I guess it's never the same light over the same landscape ever; nor is the observer the same, even when they are. 

 

I started writing a post late this afternoon. I wrote—

It’s so hot but a light breeze cools the sweat on my body. Soon I will need to draw-shut the curtains of this North-West facing room. The sun slants in strongly here in the afternoons and bakes the space. I’m one-third through my twenty-seven day challenge. Last week I was anxious, I wondered if I would be able to write a daily entry. This week I feel relaxed. That trust about writing that dissipated during the pandemic seems to be returning. 

 

I wanted to spend some time exploring what this trust that I could not concretely describe, just feel, was. But I was interrupted…. By a message from my sister… that made me spin… she was going for a lung CT scan.

 

We had spoken long about it earlier in the day. I had explained why she didn’t need it (her oxygen levels averaged at 97, she never had trouble breathing) and why it was dangerous too. She had agreed and then suddenly she decided to go.

 

It’s been a struggle to support my sister in following a course of treatment and tests I myself would shun. I feel her confusion and her sense of ‘no other choice’. She’s been struck with having to figure out how to handle her own, and her helper’s, covid infection. If this had happened a few months ago it would have been easier. Our family doc lost his life to covid a month ago. A huge loss to many, beyond family. He never overmedicated and only used additional tests when absolutely vital. We trusted him. He was a true healer. She’s been following the guidance of a new doctor whose ideas I don’t like. It’s hard to quiet my own opinions and remain open to her choices. Harder still when it is about health and when it is my only sister. 

 

Earlier, I shutdown my laptop, and pounded my feet on the treadmill, then cycled at a high intensity. An hour later, I felt calmer. Calm enough to share my views in a way that we didn't argue. 

 

I am trusting my words, whether on paper, or on the phone. I am trusting I have the right ones and the right tones to say what I want and be heard. I am trusting that even if they go silent for a bit they will find their ‘voice’ again.  

 

An hour ago white clouds formed a porous roof over the city. Now pink-orange clouds stretch into the distance while an artic blue sky peeks between. I want to paint this.

Day 9 of 27 — Conflict, My sis and I

June 29, 2021

My sis has been in the midst of a conflict since one day prior to the day she tested covid positive. A friend, F, whom I often felt was exploiting my sis’s helpful nature, demanded that my sis part with one of her helpers, because, ‘You have two and mine is leaving.’ 

 

When my sis told me about it I said, ‘WTH, she has cheek. Don’t do anything of the sort.’ My sis on the other hand was considering the demand, though she agreed that she would have preferred if it had been a request.

 

The next day my sis tested positive and Bombay Municipal Corporation sealed the house. Nobody could leave and everyone would be tested, they said. When my sis told F this, instead of showing concern, F exploded. She said my sis was using this as an excuse to avoid sending her helper over. My sis tried to explain but F accused her of lying, threatened her with a police case saying she had imprisoned the helper, etc. She sent several WhatsApp’s a day, left voicemails and called the land line which my mum answered as my sis was isolated in her bedroom. 

 

I fumed from afar, and wanted to phone F and tell her off. My style of dealing with conflict contrasts that of my sis’s.

 

The helper tested positive and F’s messages changed. She started saying, ‘We forgive you.’ I wondered what F had to forgive my sis for. My sis maintained her silence. F began blaming her for spoiling a long friendship and decided to block her. 

 

My sis avoids all conflict, while I charge in like a rabid animal. But after several years of conflict resolution training, reading a ton of books about facilitation and spiritual resolution methods, I’ve tempered my approach. I still like to clarify the conflict as soon as possible. I will say what I feel clearly and strongly, but I also listen and journal trying to feel into the other side—things said and unsaid, accusations and feelings driving the differences, and what’s common on both sides. I don't believe that 'time will solve this', but need to have it all out in the open, and can only move forward once I’ve talked with the person involved. 

 

As you can imagine when my sis and I fight it’s a mess. I insist she talk, and she withdraws into silence—shaking her head, crying sometimes because she cannot or does not want to express more. I hate her for it, I hate the distance it creates. I need to feel the closeness again.

 

In the past I always thought that my way was better, because it lead to connection and better understanding of each other. Today though  I  told her that she showed me in which situations her way is best. I would have got angry, fought with F, and prolonged the fight. I couldn’t resist adding though that probably her style is not best suited for conflicts with loved ones. She giggled. 

Day 8 of 27 — Bootless

June 28, 2021

 

Freeing myself of morning pages opened up time for other stuff, but I missed waking to the creamy blank pages on which I write with a different ink—on Monday it’s magenta in my oldest fountain pen—each day, while sipping a strong Assam black tea blend called Irish breakfast. But habits are made to be broken when they become bootless.

 

This blog was a hope, that through the constancy of daily blogging I would shrink the gap between what I feel and think and want to say, and what I manage to say. Then in the first week of writing I realised that this writing was revealing the eddies and snarls my mind and emotional states got into during the pandemic. 

 

Life is lived unidirectionally from past to present to future. Time flows linearly and in equal intervals, or so measuring devices tell us. Sometimes though we experience it differently, slow, quick, circular, entangled, incremental, sharp etc. And storytellers use time in various ways to tell their stories. They move between times and places and peoples to create the most impact. I love stories with unique structures and so when I began the second of my novel attempts I chose a structure of a book I had just read to experiment with.

 

I began the story on April 17^th 2017, sitting at the Cedele—which no longer exists—at I12 Katong. The experience of writing it was completely different from the fantasy books. It was constantly interrupted—by death, forced travel back and forth from India, illness, a newly rescued feral cat, and finally my daughters marriage. It was only in 2018 after the wedding celebrations were done, and a short trip to Naha made to train in Higaonna Sensei’s dojo, that I finally began writing the book. About two-thirds through the first draft I realised the structure I had chosen would not work. I had loved the structure so much that for a bit I tried to hammer my story into it, but to no avail. After a workshop during the writers festival that year it became clear that  I would have to rewrite from scratch. I wrote in a frenzy and managed to finish the first draft by December 28^th 2018.

 

I revised this draft through 2019, which also began with a death and two SOS trips to India, followed by the Koh Samui gasshuku, gall bladder surgery, the Gishiki in Naha, a holiday in Sapporo, another hectic trip to India. Not many months of continuity but I finished the second draft before the year ended. 

 

Today’s blogging was like the writing of this book – interrupted constantly. I wrote the first words at 11 am. Urgent calls from Bombay relating to the covid situation in my sister’s home dispersed my day. I cancelled plans to be available as things unfolded there and put off writing until now, 8:38 pm. Two wispy clouds blend into the night sky.  This is all I have today.