Even when the heart cannot sing

Published in:  Medium

A peach-orange hibiscus

When I looked through the windows, I saw only the all-white landscape during the long winter months of Wisconsin, but a peach-orange hibiscus bloomed for me inside the house many times. Even though scentless, the hibiscus brings the scent of my land to me in this foreign land — just like the “scent of a woman”! I take solace in its ever-comforting nature, and I remember summer is not far away.

Today, my hibiscus has bloomed again to take my mind off all the coronavirus madness surrounding me. Normally, disasters and catastrophes do not bother me much. I always feel, somehow, it can be fixed. From childhood, whenever my plastic bead garlands broke, as they often did, I used to find another bead. When I found a green bead instead of a blue one, I’d tell myself, “Well, it looks unique!”

I guess part of my belief that things could be fixed is because my generation survived the liberation war of Bangladesh. My generation fled our country, became refugees, hid in trenches, and lost their parents. I grew up watching the Pakistan Air Force fighter jets, bombers, and military tanks destroy everything around us. There were blood and corpses.

Now, those nightmares remain in my generation’s memories. Tragedies and misfortunes have made us strong — but I guess not so strong that we forgot to fear death. During the Bangladesh liberation war, death was chasing us, and it took just one second to die. That’s how long it takes for a bullet to pierce a heart. Today, the coronavirus is chasing us, and it is going to kill some of us. But now it takes a little more than fifteen days because that is the time it takes for the virus to incubate.

Just yesterday, I was searching online for the difference between RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and ATOM(Atom Syndication Format ), both long-time web feed standards. Actually, I wanted to go to the network solution tips blog site to learn how to reduce Blogger feed size. Yes, you guessed right — I had written too much on my blog site and it overflowed. This word triggered a memory of how I used to get punished in school for talking too much in class! Sometimes I feel like an overflowing volcano — Mount Vesuvius. It feels as if lava is bubbling inside of me. I have so much to tell!

As I said, I wanted to know the difference between RSS and ATOM. But when I started typing in my search terms, “difference between,” Google prompted me with the “difference between ventilator and respirator”. Instantly, I was back to the depressing talk about the pandemic. Until now, I hadn’t known anyone personally with a confirmed case of COVID-19. But now my best friend Sushmi’s aunt Iva Phuphu is on a ventilator, and she has been sedated in the ICU for the last three days in New York City. The city that never sleeps has become a morgue! I have known Iva Phuphu since I was in second grade. Now, even without having the coronavirus, it is becoming difficult for me to breathe.

To tell you the truth, the pandemic didn’t affect me in the real sense until this happened. I am working from home, but I regularly do this anyway. And I am more than happy to be with the kids and my dog 24/7. I have always dreamt of this kind of life. I am cooking many meals for the kids and treating them like royalty.

For the first time in a very long time, I cooked vegetable pulao and kosha chicken the other day. To make it as healthy as possible, I used only a half stick of butter instead of two sticks. I also didn’t fry the rice in ghee before cooking it, which is typically the way I make any pulao; instead, I made it in a rice cooker. I put the butter, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves in the water itself. When the rice was almost done, I mixed in frozen broccoli, cauliflower, peas, and carrot because my kids hardly ever eat vegetables. For the kosha chicken, I used only three teaspoons of oil to fry the chicken. As the scent of vegetable pulao with cardamom, cinnamon sticks, butter, and bay leaves filled the house along with the kosha chicken with lots of garlic, onion, turmeric, ground coriander, pepper, and cumin, our dog Poppy ran frantically from room to room. Poppy was born on a Wisconsin farm; the breeder was about one and a half hours away from our home. I bet she had never smelled anything like this!

Vegetable pulao and kosha chicken

With all my extra time in hand, I am teaching Poppy all her toys’ names. I am also able to do the experiment on how to call Poppy effectively. Normally, she comes running to me when I call her name. Sometimes, though, she is very naughty, like a terrible two-year-old toddler, though she is not one year old yet — she is still a puppy. So, many times, she would be busy downstairs somewhere, sniffing, investigating around, and destroying her toys. She would not come when called. Her favorite thing to do is to go to the unfinished part of the basement to explore. She can open the door to the basement with her nose. But even though she’s a Border collie, she can’t return because the door only opens one way and she gets trapped. But now I have a new technique — I loudly crinkle a chocolate truffle wrapper. Even if I am upstairs in the bedroom, Poppy drops everything and comes running or barks from the unfinished basement. All these are signs of soulful thriving!

— 

I overheard my daughter, Tathoi, talking with her friends on the phone about the cancellation of the high-school prom. I know she had planned to rent an Airbnb with her friends after the prom to celebrate the end of her high school year. I see her playing video games with her friends using FaceTime. She even carries around her phone from room to room and shows her friends how she is making coffee. To mimic the scenario of visiting someplace outside, she puts on eyeliner and lipstick and goes from one room to another. Tathoi has her sleepovers with friends online. She pops popcorn and sees movies with her friends despite them staying in their respective homes. A new term has been added to our vocabulary: social distancing. Tonight, Tathoi popped popcorn and I watched a 2004 Japanese animated film with her — Howl’s Moving Castle. This fantasy film is written and directed by the famous Hayao Miyazaki. My Google search told me, “Influenced by Miyazaki’s opposition to the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, the film contains strong anti-war themes. Miyazaki stated that he ‘had a great deal of rage about [the Iraq war]’, which led him to make a film which he felt would be poorly received in the US. It also explores the theme of old age, depicting age positively as something which grants the protagonist freedom. The film contains feminist elements as well, and carries messages about the value of compassion”. And Tathoi told me, “It is about a world where magic is real.” I loved the beautiful misty sky, the ever-happy fire, the heart of the house — calcifer, and beautiful Haul’s emerald earrings. Tathoi also did not forget to tell me by pointing out the bombs falling from the sky, “Those are the signs of war.”

Yes, I know the signs of war from my childhood. But today, no tank missiles are attacking us; there is no threat of nuclear weapons. We are being attacked by a nanometer-sized virus that we cannot even see with our eyes. All these years, humans have ruled nature with their might, roars, barking, and inhumanity. They declared themselves as the king of the hill and tried to grab the universe and keep it inside of their fist. Humans have sent dodo birds to extinction. For their greed, polar bears are losing their habitat. They themselves are driving fancy Jaguars, but they are sending nature’s black jaguar to extinction. Pandas, royal Bengal tigers, snow leopards, sea turtles, gray wolves, emperor penguins, river otters, arctic foxes, snowy owls, and many other animals are suffering from the existential threats. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has a long list of animals from which we can adopt so that they can protect them. Now, it is nature’s turn to take revenge! But nature is very kind, I am sure it is going to forgive humans even though they are more ferocious than the killer whales. Nature is not going to send humans to extinction. It is, as my friend Viji says, just a timeout!

I am scheduling virtual happy hours with my colleagues. I am not only doing Zoom conferences with my employees but with my cousins and other families. My dearest cousin Prova has made a chart with everybody’s time in Australia, England, Norway, Canada, Portland, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Texas, and Madison.
Sunday Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: XXX-XXX-XXX

Next Meeting:

Bangladesh: Mon 1 am

Australia: Mon 6 am

London: Sun 8 pm

Texas, Wisconsin: Sun 2 pm

Canada: Sun 1 pm

Portland, Los Angeles: Sun 12 noon

Norway: Sun 9 pm

Ours was kind of like a joint family where all the aunt, uncles, grandparents, and cousins lived kind of together. All our cousins grew up together in Bangladesh but adulthood has taken us to different places. Till now, we used to call each other and talk to them individually from time to time over the phone. But now, we are meeting three times a week over Zoom. Fear has brought us closer. We are getting back our childhood laughter and cacophony. We are even switching to the video mode; we have to see each other! Moutushi, my very prim and proper cousin with her matching dress and matching shoes, is logging into the laptop at one o’clock London time — with uncombed hair and in her pajamas.

Poppy has influenced me and has transformed me into a busy bee, the love is truly mutual! Now, as there is not a lot to do, I have changed my Facebook cover picture with my precious dog Poppy’s photo. The world must see her before the great apocalypse! Being a notorious border collie, she explores around the house like Curious George. In that picture, she has gone under the Grand piano and she is sniffing the keys as if she is going to play the Moonlight Sonata tonight!

Border collies have been especially bred for one hundred years for rounding up sheep, herding them up and down the hills and open fields with their intense gaze. There is a saying that this high-drive, high-energy dogs move faster than the speed of gossip. It is kind of true. I have seen Poppy running in the dog parks. It is a sight to behold!

But being the most intelligent, intense, workaholic, and energetic dog breed, I think Poppy is a misfit for our lethargic and lazy family which goes to bed at 2 am, gets up at 12 pm, and hardly ever takes up any athletic endeavors. Being our shadow, Poppy is also getting up at 12 pm from her good night’s sleep these days. Poppy is doe-eyed. When I look at her soulful, big, hazel colored eyes I am unable to tell her “no”.

Poppy is very observant and takes good care of the house she lives in. The other day, our faucet malfunctioned and the floor and carpet got flooded with water. Poppy came running to me to inform me about the catastrophe! Though I have an engineering degree, I am not like my other friends who can fix the household electrical connections, broken laptops, leaky ceiling, and plumbing. I prefer writing poems! But in the time of the coronavirus, what should I do? Should I call a plumber? I did not know the answer, so I just kept on soaking the water with towels!

After learning from the trainer, when Poppy was very naughty, once we gave her a timeout in a closed room for one minute. We closed the door, came out, and found that Poppy was standing by our side. She was able to open the round doorknob even without having opposable thumbs. Poppy follows me around and tries to learn all the household work I do in a day. I guess that’s what they do — they learn from their parents. I feel so helpless and sorry for Poppy most of the time! It feels like I do not know what kind of work I can give to this miniature nuclear reactor! She is just too smart — like the kid who gets sent to the talented and gifted (TAG) programs at any public school! In fact, once I have caught her imitating me and trying to light up the gas-stove!

I have heard that border collies can go into clinical depression if they become jobless. I read, “Depression doesn’t discriminate when it comes to your capable canine companions. When you think about depression affecting dogs, you typically wouldn’t think ‘herding breed dogs’. They are happy when busy and busy when happy. Herding breed dogs are always on the move, tackling missions, and basically thriving in their no-nonsense world.

Can’t you just picture your herding dog ticking off the items on his/her to-do list? “Let’s see…Round up sheep, check. Keep puppies in line, check. Race around the perimeter of the back pasture, check. Round up sheep in round two, check.”

Unfortunately, keeping busy and working like a dog doesn’t keep herding breeds from succumbing to the darkness of depression. Even though these dogs are happy doing what they were created to do, life can get in the way and they, too, can develop depression — canine depression.” (https://guildofshepherdsandcollies.com/clinical-depression-in-herding-breed-dogs/ ) I seriously got worried about Poppy, our sweet puppy. Especially as the dog parks got closed because of the long Wisconsin winter months.

But now, even with coronavirus, I am able to take Poppy out for three long walks and a few small walks. Poppy chases after the dried flying leaves, the crows, the bunny rabbits, and the cars passing by at full speed. I am able to peacefully cross the roads that were once very busy. I am able to play a lot more with her also; at least once a day she is getting to do the smart-dog-puzzle I bought for her. Dog toy companies rip off the owners by selling these high-IQ puzzles for the dogs. In the puzzle, she has to slide the knobs, flip the covers, and then only she can get the treats. Poppy can solve the puzzle in just 57 seconds! Yes, I know; all my life I have bragged about my kids and now I am bragging about the puppy!

As Poppy gets into mischief quite often, we need to keep an eye on her constantly. When all of us go out for a few hours, we need to keep her in a crate. Previously when we gave her a run of the house, she ate potpourri and needed to spend six hours in an animal hospital! Nowadays, during the coronavirus, all of us never leave the house together. So, she does not need to go inside the crate, which she hates anyway.

Spending all my waking moments with Poppy is such a pleasurable experience, a great treat! It is kind of hilarious too. Yesterday, I took her to the baseball fields. Some kids were playing and each time they threw the ball, Poppy was thinking it was for her to catch! She got too excited and started bobbing up and down, “Am I on your team? Am I on your team?”

Lots more toddlers are on the path these days in their Burley Bee Bike Trailers, canopied strollers, and scooters with their cow-motif sunbonnets. These are Poppy’s favorite barking targets. Poppy thinks the world is her oyster and she is the owner of it. So, anybody coming within a hundred feet perimeter of her gets barked at. “Why are you here? It is my territory!” Well, not only Poppy but the neighborhood path we take also have those notorious, bark-machine dogs in almost every house. So, Poppy starts the song with my neighbor’s Chihuahua and then her gang joins in. At that deafening moment, to take my mind away from all these dog barking, I think of coronavirus. I think how somehow, at last, nature is controlling the barking of human civilization!

But today on our walk, Poppy found a golf ball in the baseball field. I saw the sign, “Fields are closed” and felt a pang in my heart. Poppy carried around the golf ball in her mouth the whole time of our walk back home for almost half an hour and did not get a chance to bark at the Burley Bee paraphernalia. Why did not I think of it before? Golf balls are a perfect size, not too small so that Poppy can gulp it, not too big so that Poppy cannot carry it in her mouth. They are quite hard for Poppy to chew also. It sounded totally dog safe, though after coming back home it proved otherwise! She chewed and destroyed it completely. Besides being playful, Poppy is very compassionate too, which I have not seen in people lately. If I sneeze slightly, Poppy will come running from another room and vigorously start licking me and comforting me. She looks so very worried! Dogs are man’s best friend!

I hate going to grocery stores. It is second on the list of my least favorite places. Diamond stores are first on that list. I remember the first time I went to the grocery store after the coronavirus hit, I could not buy the rice I always buy; the shopkeeper informed me, “Indian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani people are stockpiling almost six months’ worth of rice in their home!” So, I had to bring home a small bag of diabetic rice, though I do not have diabetes. I got another bag of Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood Superstar rice from another store. The racks for frozen bagels in the supermarket were all empty. So were salt, sugar, and flour racks. There were no bananas. I couldn’t find the eggs we buy. It’s as if the fall of the Soviet Union is all over here again!

The second time I went to the grocery store, the situation progressed for the worse. I found there were blue-tape markings on the floor. We have to stand six feet apart. Normally, I always make small talk with my fellow buyers while buying eggs and milk. This time, I couldn’t talk to them about the Wisconsin sky. So, I asked the proletariat, “Where is your owner?” The working bee answered me, “They are hiding inside the house.” I get it; not only are the doctors the front liners, but these grocery shop salespersons are also front liners too. They have a mask on, they are using hand sanitizer after every sale; I guess their company is providing masks and sanitizer, believing that they are taking care of them that way. Proletariats never have the option of working from home, most probably they do not have any 401K plan, but back home their family is waiting for food!

Nowadays, I go to grocery stores every two weeks instead of every week. I did not want to do that even, but I needed to go basically for milk. As a kid, Tathoi used to drink nine glasses of milk a day. Even now, she survives on milk. So, for our household, I need more than a gallon of milk for a week. I was skeptical about going to the big grocery store, Woodmans, as I did not have any mask or gloves. My ancestors have taken them away! As Wisconsin is still cold and I had my leather driving gloves still on, I felt safe. Also, I did find some wood-working masks in our toolbox. Though the garage is flooding with all the woodworking tools, I do not think we ever needed to use the masks; by that, I am sure you can understand how much sawdust we generated over the years! For coronavirus, our masks came to good use. Mask clad, we went to the drugstore, Walgreens, to buy milk as I thought it would have fewer people than the typical grocery store. But the tragedy is that the pharmacist informed me that Tathoi and I were wearing the mask upside down. Well, did we ever think that we needed to be prepared and trained for a pandemic in our lifetime? I told Tathoi not to touch anything in the store — normally, she will try out all the free samples of perfume, eyeliners, mascara, foundation, concealer, blush, lipstick, and lip gloss; this civilization is only for window shopping now!I have heard and seen that all the prices are going up due to the Coronavirus but that is not always true. Typically, I buy my orchids from an orchid house and they are quite pricey. Last time, they took some forty dollars from me when I bought the lady’s slipper orchid (Paphiopedilum). Interestingly, I went to the grocery store the other day. Surprisingly, grocery stores are also selling orchids these days. Woodman’s sold me the same orchid for just three dollars! I guess our civilization is buying toilet rolls at this time, not Paphiopedilum orchids!

Paphiopedilum orchid

Last Saturday, the first thing I heard from my friend Sharmista over WhatsApp after getting up from bed was about the upcoming water crisis. It seems from washing so much hand and face from Coronavirus, the next calamity is going to be there will not be any groundwater. I got alarmed and changed my WhatsApp ‘about’ (status) to, “What a relief! Parachutes are for sale!” I normally need to explain my jokes after I tell them! This one means I am in the state of free-fall during this corona time and there is still hope. I copy-pasted my WhatsApp “about” to my FaceBook status! Then I got so busy solving the world’s upcoming water problem that I missed my online Zumba class. This Zumba class not only teaches me different exercise moves, but it has also opened up a plethora of Bollywood knowledge for me too. The other day I heard and saw the song, Genda Phool; it is the latest craze and in this song, there is more to see than to hear! I googled “Badshah” and “Jacqueline Fernandez”, as I heard those names for the first time in my life. America had her share of easy on the eye actors a lot. Brad Pitt was America’s heartthrob for a long time; so was Macaulay Culkin before he became doped. So did Bollywood. But looking at Badshah’s acting and looks; I kept on wondering what made the cut!

From childhood, I always flaunted around my pseudo-intellectualism and stayed far away from Bollywood extravaganza. My dearest friend and Bollywood buff, Viji, teaches me from time to time who Poonam Dhillon is! When the same me was appreciating the Genda Phool song and telling all about it to Viji and Mala, Viji rolled on the ground laughing and told me to send her a video clip of me dancing with the Genda Phool song! Who knows, in this corona time, I just might!

In the pursuit of staying busy, I have changed my FaceBook profile picture also — it is my white garden chair. The picture is from last summer. It was a beautiful summer morning. I was trying to read The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy. I was sipping my cup of tea. And then, there were these petite red flowers around me. To spread the ever contagious hope, I quoted my favorite verse from Emily Dickinson-

“Hope is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops — at all -

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet — never — in Extremity,

It asked a crumb — of me.”

In the comment, Anisa apa wrote to me that it is one of her favorite poems too. I worked with Anisa apa in Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission for two years. Facebook brought us together again, as I lost touch with her when she went to Nova Scotia and I went to Kolkata some twenty-seven years back. I remember I cried a lot when Anisa apa went to Canada. Emptiness engulfed me. It was my first job. We shared the same chambers; in my first job only I had a chamber, after that I just had cubicles and now all are open spaces. I guess the IT industry wants to follow the FaceBook workplace trend — the world should be one open, wide public place! It is okay, even if it looks like a warehouse!

Recently, we are having many sunny days. Whenever the sunshine comes through the windows, my mind’s barometer rises high and I become very joyful. I spotted the first robin on my walk, I saw people stopping by the little free library with kids and taking books. Snow has finally melted in my polar-bear land, Wisconsin, at last. I saw the emerald colored grass after many months. Poppy got to roll over on the grass. I found that crocus has started bursting out of the brown soil here and there. Nature has its own way of showing love even in a frightening time. Flowers can break through the snow. I believe nature only will give us a way to survive through this coronavirus disaster, the one we have brought upon us from our own doings. Each year, in April, when I see these purple, white, and yellow jewel-like crocus — the harbinger of spring, I always automatically recite to myself,

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”I remember one year I even saw some crocus blooming through the snow!

Crocus blooming through the snow

But yesterday, I was so surprised to suddenly see an article popping up on my cell phone from National Review (https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/april-is-the-cruelest-month/) and it is talking about T.S.Eliot’s famous poem, The Waste Land!

Eliot wrote his most famous work when Europe was in a dying and crumbling state from World War I. April was the cruelest month. Spring was the month that brought signs of new life and renewal. In that article, writer Madeleine Kearns recommended listening to the reading of Waste Land by Alec Guinness. She compared The Waste Land to this corona time. I was very happy to find the mention of The Waste Land in National Review, but at the same time, I started trembling! How will you feel if you see in the stock markets’ monstrous screen, if they start showing the Schindler’s List? Surely, your heart will melt seeing that little girl in the red coat at the forefront of those Nazi soldiers in their grey silhouettes. But at the same time, you will sob.

As I needed to remain calm, I took refuge in my favorite poem — The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot yesterday night; I recited it aloud –

“There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.”

To take my mind away from this disturbing time, not only my favorite poem, I listened to the audio reading of my favorite book too. It is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and narrated by Russell Tovey.

“The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.”

These days, I truly have all the time in hand to read and re-read the books I like, the poems I like, the novels I like, and the plays I like. I can visit and revisit my heaven.

But just after getting up in the morning today, I saw that Tathoi is roaming around with her phone; the doctor is going to call her! Tathoi has a regular doctor’s visit today. It will be online. It was the last straw that broke the camel’s back! I started getting claustrophobic. I felt like I have to climb aboard Noah’s ark with my friends, family, and even with my enemies!

Life is too beautiful; I have to breathe even when I am unable to breathe.

Perhaps I shall go to the basement and find my paintbrushes to start a new painting- a peach-orange hibiscus bloom!