27th February 2020
Insomnia hit me at night and I wasn’t able to sleep. I woke up to the sound of my sister jumping on the bed. I wondered why on earth she wasn’t at school. “Schools are off because of some government measure about Corona!” my sister exclaimed as soon as my eyes popped open. It was around 10 am. Shit! I exclaimed, jolting out of bed. I had a TA class I had to attend at 9 am every day and my regular class was at 10 am. I checked my phone quickly and it turned out that IBA wasn’t off.
“Thank God!” I murmured and messaged my professor about meeting her, apologizing for missing my TA class.
I quickly got ready and entered the Aman tower. The society I was managing had a session today regarding urban and political issues. But it had been cancelled by my professor. I entered into her office to discuss that. She explained that she didn’t want anyone to get infected, we discussed the quizzes and ERP management and I left, wondering if cancelling the session was a good idea.
I spent the next two hours in excruciating pain. The urge to pull out your hair when trying to grapple with the IBA wifi was real. For one, I couldn’t figure out how to upload the bloody 78 quizzes lying in front of me. For another, IBA’s internet was so slow that it took around eight minutes for one grade to be updated on my screen. I had no 3G and none of my friends were around and the Aman floor felt awfully quiet and lonely.
My nerves finally broke down and I summoned the will to physically walk to the ERP office in NBP building only to find it empty. Aaj ka din hi munhoos hai, I murmured to myself wanting to slam my heavy laptop on someone’s face.
A friend of mine finally arrived. We decided to go to Karachi University to meet professors of different departments and market our upcoming conference. The Literature department was having some kind of academic discussion which would be a good place to meet professors. We had booked a car from IBA since it was society related work and none of us were passionate about dying from a heatwave in KU’s streets. Like always, when I stepped out of the car I became cognizant of my privilege as an IBA student. KU was nothing like IBA. There were no ACs and no fancy cafes and too many burqclad women. We got lost in KU’s literature department trying to figure out where the conference room was. One department led into another one and every corner had a similar bush. It was super confusing and my friend and I raced around twice only to arrive at the same place. We did find a room which was labeled the “Girls common room” and plastered with posters that said “Modesty is a woman’s beauty” and “Shyness makes you beautiful.” We both cringed at the door and found another poster that said “Bijanib Islami Jamiat Talba” which made complete sense. After 30 minutes of trying to find the literature common room we found out that the session we were planning to attend had been cancelled. Wow! Qismat hi khuraab thi aaj!
I have no clue how tense things were back at university, I just remember coming back dehydrated and tired and slumping myself in my history class only to hear the news that IBA is closing down.
“Not today! I did an extra effort to do makeup today!” My friend said angrily.
My teacher entered our empty class and expressed her disappointment at the cancellation of the class. I still had not figured out how to upload those bloody grades on the ERP so we decided to visit our professor. My friend had to submit her assignment and I could ask him to explain how on earth ERP worked.
When we were outside of his office and I tried to enter, he said, “Dur! Dur! (far, far). Then he said he will be back in a minute and came with a contorted N-95 mask on his face. I felt it was absurd. One should not be this paranoid! We quickly asked him what we wanted to do and got out of Aman tower since everyone seemed to be acting insane.
We trotted back to the Writing Center. We had no intentions of going home. I settled in the chair and started doing some work for my part-time job when my friend, Majid entered and asked why we weren’t leaving.
“Because we are bored and we don’t like our homes!” I said, annoyed.
“How much money do you have in your wallet?” He asked.
“Um. around Rs. 120 I believe. Why?”
“You should go the ATM and take out some money like 1000 rupees. There is a huge line outside of the ATM btw.”
“Why….. ?” I asked him, genuinely confused.
“Because in a post-apocalyptic scenario, you should have money in your wallet,” quoted my friend, being the profound writer that he was.
I was super annoyed by his explanation; the world was not ending and I was getting a bit sick of people around me overreacting. Amidst all of this, the peon of the SC building came in to tell us to leave the campus as it would be closed down soon. I was fuming now. Did they want to kick us out???
My friend who had overslept called me to tell me she was on her way, I told her IBA was closing down and she should stop somewhere midway like the bank so I could pick her up.
Then the head of the Student Center offered me some nihari, “I just ordered it from Zaahid Nihari,” she said.
“What if it is infected? I don’t think we should eat stuff from outside now,” I answered. For the first time, I was finally registering the crisis was brewing around us. My classes had been randomly cancelled, my society’s session had been called off, and one of my professors refused to lead me inside his office without an N 95 mask on his face.
“I already ate it though!” the poor woman exclaimed.
I called my friend who was at the bank and asked her to buy a hand sanitizer for me. “I have booked my Uber and will pick you up soon!” I told her. I booked my Uber, like all annoying Uber drivers my Uber driver also messaged instantly “kahan jana hai,” to which I replied with my standardized feedback, “Hanif bakery.” Like every single day, I had to call him twice before he recognized me standing at the IBA Main gate and like every single day the driver was annoyed at the prospect of stopping somewhere for my friend.
But unlike every single day, I reached home at four- knowing perfectly well that I wouldn’t be out to uni for the next two weeks. I was deeply annoyed but that was it. I don’t remember being sad or confused or stressed. I was the Karachi student who had grown up in Altaf Bhai’s days of glory. I had been to school even when half of Karachi was in riots or lockdown hartaals. I had been to school the day after APS’s bloodbath had happened. I used to be in the afternoon shift at my school and I remember that once Karachi had a very heavy rainfall and I was stuck on Hasan Square and had to walk out of my van and soak my socks upto the knees on Karachi’s flooded streets as my van driver took a lift from a guy in a land cruiser. It was dark at that time and I remember reaching home at 10:30 pm with my friends’ dad who had contacted the nice land cruiser guy and picked us up midway. This wasn’t the first time that I had woken up to a random closing down of offices and schools so I was going to be okay. I just had to figure out a routine to deal with this for two weeks, I thought to myself as I entered my house. Little did I know it wasn’t going to be two weeks.
13th April 2020
I don’t know exactly when and how the last few weeks passed away. I remember the first few initial days I made a list of intellectual pursuits that I had neglected for long and could go back to right now. I remember making a list of anime that I wanted to watch. This was followed by me logging into Goodreads after what seemed like centuries and downloading Scribd and fantasizing about the audiobooks I could now access. I remember thinking about finally learning how to cook and started an exercise for getting rid of my non-existent double chin. I remember scribbling a daily routine on my sticky notes to keep me in touch with my online classes and courseload. The world still seemed to be functional and normal for me.
I was too involved at that point fighting the holy war of feminism and supporting my Aurat March participants online to pay attention. Pakistan was more concerned with the slogan, Mera jism meri marzi at that point than COVID and so was my household. I cursed the calendar when it told me Aurat March was on Sunday. How on earth was I supposed to go? If there was one thing which this bloody quarantine had taught me, it was the fact that I needed strategy to leave the house. I needed a particular cause- unlike university where I could just walk out-(un-surveyed other than the five cameras on the main gate) I could not do so at home. There were explanations to give and reasons to cite and all this was getting on my nerves. My mother being the typical Delhi wallah mom, threw a bunch of dawats for my relatives and I was occupied spreading dastarkhwaans and frying chicken tempuras the day that Aurat March happened-cursing my relatives and hoping they get food poisoned under my breath.
Then the announcement that classes wouldn’t commence until 31st May happened and it shook me. I was not supposed to see my friends for that long! I was not supposed to go to university for that long either! Then I remembered that my dad had an event management business which rested solely on people hiring him for wedding decorations. This meant we would be financially screwed until the virus ended. How was I supposed to pay my university fees?
Then it was panic. I don’t know how many adults out there can claim they have good wholesome relationships at home but I was certainly not one of them. And I know a lot of youngsters don’t like classes and studying the way I do. I love my major and my courses and my professors and my student society. WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HAVING THE BEST CONFERENCE EVER THIS YEAR. The realization that it was probably never happening made me livid with anger. Then the second realization hit me, I couldn’t intern at the webseries company I was planning to this summer. I couldn’t learn the filmmaking process like I wanted to……. At least not this year. My classes were also suspended until end-May and now the only thing keeping me sane was also gone.
The worst thing which the quarantine brought out in me was the facts that it made me confront. It became more and more obvious to me how painful and forceful my relationship with my parents was and how much it rested on performativity. Dinners became a pain. Everyday my family elders grappled with a new conspiracy theory: Some days Imran Khan was a Jewish agent, some days COVID was a conspiracy started by the USA which had horribly backfired. My father being the religious man that he was felt that things had been good in Pakistan. “It’s not that bad here. Our temperatures are higher, the virus wont survive here for long.” Some days my mother would advise me to drink hot water and demonstrate to me how drinkable it was by consuming it herself. Other days my dad would ask us to eat kalonji because the Prophet said that everything other than death can be cured through this. I started going to the rooftop every day to get some space from the madness which was my house. To experience some notion of the outside world.
***
To my surprise, kites have found a new market during this time. Almost every other house in my street has some kite runner in it. Kids still play in the streets. My uncle who lives two houses away jogs everyday on the street with his headphones inside his ear. The security guards are still on their duties–albeit with masks on their face. I see icecream men and sabzi wallahs running around everyd ay. But other than that, it is usually quiet. The street where I live in is behind a double road which is filled with schools. Every morning you could hear the national anthem playing in every school along with verses of Iqbal: Lab pe aati hai dua bunke. There was a coaching centre which had classes until 9 pm every day. There were all sorts of boys hanging out on bikes there and sometimes they even got into physical fights. None of that is present right now so I know the calm and quiet is not natural.
I have experienced anxiety and insomnia since classes ended. I have found ways to deal with it but initially I could not sleep at night and when I did, I had the weirdest dreams. Demons, monsters, parents finding my profile on a dating app-you name it. All kinds of horrible scenarios and dreams seemed to be making it into my brain except bloody sleep. Being the annoying student that I was, I looked it up and apparently I was not the only one. Everybody was dealing with sleep issues and weird dreams and anxiety. And then the uncertainty of everything hit me. I loved planning and using my sticky notes and making schedules and cute little reminders on my notebooks. I had already researched and planned out the two places I wanted to intern for my summers. One for corporate, one for filmmaking and I was already pursuing the research one. But I could not no longer rely on the red little pocket notebook I kept with me because everything was uncertain. I don’t know how many people can understand the crazy way that a control freak’s mind works but the lockdown is a control freak’s nightmare.
I have tried to calm down and tell myself the world isn’t ending. The historian in me has tried to reason with my anxious brain: this isn’t the first epidemic, there was the Spanish flu. But tt is the first epidemic of its kind in the 21st century and I just happened to be around when it came. It will go away eventually, there will be a vaccine developed in a year, and things will be fine, I tell myself. BUT PAKISTAN HAS NOT EVEN DEALT WITH POLIO EFFECTIVELY SO HOW WILL WE RECOVER FROM THIS? screams my brain . The feminist in me thinks of the women going through abuse because of this quarantine and I feel helpless. I’ve even started wondering about the lives of housewives. How miserable must it be to stay in the house all the time? I decided to ask my mom one day, hoping this might bond us. It didn’t. It horribly backfired and reminded me why this quarantine was bad for my mental health.
I am happier now that my classes have finally resumed online (I know other students hate me for my nerdiness but they need to understand that some people don’t have a life outside of studying 😆)
I am occupied with loads of work and courses which keep me busy as a bee. I still haven’t completed any of the intellectual pursuits that I fantasized about. And I still have no clue how to deal with this. For now, I have the privilege of a Netflix account and a steady internet supply to distract me.
–Ek Gainda
April 13, 2020, Karachi
Profile: Finicky, bored Aquarius. I like to wear red lipstick and cuddle with cats when I am not busy cursing the capitalist heteropatriarchy.
Covidnaama
If there is anything worse than quarantine, it’s probably fasting in quarantine. I had become quite good at faking fasts and barely fasted for eight days last year. Since IBA had taken the decision to have our exams in Ramadan, there was no way I could fast and study and maintain my productivity and sanity during exams. Unlike others, I was not a night owl and cannot study at night. I remember distinctly how I had to eat my food discreetly in IBA because the cafes were closed down and eating at the library (where I mostly sat) was prohibited. The day my Pakistan history exam was held, the vending machine stopped working because of the amount of kids who were jamming their money into it every second and we all headed in the examination hall, cursing IBA’s administration for banning cafes.
But now I have to fast. Yesterday seemed okay but today my head has been buzzing around since morning. I could barely do any part time or university related work and now I am dreading all the assignments and the TA work which has been lining up. I can’t pretend to fast at home; the effort and strategy needed to pretend outweighs the benefits greatly.
I have also made peace with the fact that getting good sleep every day during this quarantine is not possible. So I should stop fretting about it and just suck it up. I detest everything now. Everything. I badly want to deactivate all my social media accounts and surround myself with a typewriter and just read screenplays and attempt writing one. I don’t want to know about the bloody corona and its victims or how the economy will be awful once things get better and how my grad school chances are going to suffer. Sometimes I watch a drama or a show and when I see places like Northern Pakistan or Turkey, I wonder if I will ever be able to visit them. I had planned to visit the North this year and Turkey next year but now with the virus and the financial situation I don’t know. Sometimes I am watching a show and suddenly, when the protagonists are hugging I almost scream, “Don’t!” and realize how crazy I am getting. I feel like even if we get out of all this, how will we get over the anxiety of it? How will we walk and talk normally and not fear that there will be a random announcement about Corona returning and we would all have to lockdown again?
The only thing which gives me some satisfaction is that I have a part time job and I haven’t been fired yet. But every time I have a meeting with my employer I fear he might fire me because of the ongoing crisis.
My father still hasn’t given up congregational prayer. He told me how the imam of the mosque asked the few people who turned up if he should proceed with the taraweeh. WELL OF COURSE IF THEY BOTHERED TURNING UP THEY WONT SAY NO WILL THEY? And when they said yes, he continued. My father narrated the story with great pride while I cringed. This was illegal under the current regime of Sindh government but obviously nothing is illegal with these mullahs. I threatened my father that I will report the mosque to which he confidently replied that nothing will happen. When I highlighted how irresponsible this was to my father he replied that Pakistan was exaggerating its Corona cases to get money out of IMF. I slammed my head in frustration. This was a more sensible conspiracy compared to his last one though in which the USA had started Corona (I mean they are screwed right now why would they do that?)
My brain feels fried most of the time. I can’t seem to watch new shows or interact with anything teven slightly intellectual or requiring concentration or brainwork. I feel nauseous and dizzy randomly (I assume the dizziness is fast related but nausea is probably because of anxiety). Oftentimes I fantasize about the food that I had daily at Karachi university. The shawarma for Rs.100 which was the best shawarma I have ever had in my life, the cheese paratha for Rs.100 with chicken tikka botis lined inside with a generous helping of cheese (albeit the hygienic quality of the paratha can be questioned), the pizza fries of pharmacy canteen which only cost Rs.150 and had generous layers of cheese, olives, jalepenos and garlic mayo dumped onto it. Whenever me and my friends felt bored, we would just randomly hop on a rikshaw and go to PG (which stands for Prem Galli) for the tiniest, most delicious samosas on this planet sprinkled with chaat masala on top. We also found a new spot, Baba Khan Canteen recently where we would go to get khawsey and daal chawal (a generous and delicious helping for only Rs.100/plate). I even miss the bloody PE (Personal Effectiveness) sessions which were held at City Campus at 9 am sharp on Saturdays. We would all curse the timings of the class and run after the IBA shuttle at 7:30 in the morning, and have a cup of tea at Café Mubarak before heading into a two hour session dedicated to teaching us how to sell ourselves after graduating. But this would be followed by yet another delicious and cheap meal at our beloved Irani café. I miss it so much. *deep sigh*
I badly miss that food and the ability to just chill with my friends and I don’t know when I can have it again. Sometimes I also feel bad for having such first world problems like not being able to socialize or eat KU food when people are literally dying from starvation and I try to redeem myself by random acts like tipping a Foodpanda guy generously or donating money to some NGO.
My neighbor also died recently because of kidney infection. I felt extremely sorry for them because of the hassle of trying to arrange a funeral in these times. They put up a tent in the street and I watched as an unmasked and ungloved pair of boys dragged a daig from the truck to the tent. Other than these two, everyone seemed to be wearing a mask, and was sitting in the tent at a distance from each other. It looked like such a depressing scenario, straight out of an episode of Black Mirror. My neighbour’s son who lived in England also arrived and visited the funeral. I am assuming he did not quarantine himself upon arrival but how can I blame him? How can one miss their mother’s funeral? It was an extremely unfortunate time to die.
I can’t remember the last time I stepped out of the house. I think it was to go on a crazy binge and hoard as much junk as I could. I remember going to the petrol station store and buying an endless amount of chips and chocolates. Now with deliveries resumed, I ordered Kababjees chips again and watched as my mother’s eyes grew in wonder at the cavernous size of my order. “How much will you eat and spend on this?”. I shrugged and didn’t reply, I don’t even feel hungry but spending Rs.500 on chips in one go feels oddly therapeutic. (Or maybe I am just a slave to capitalism).
The thing is the virus has now stepped in our stories too, which is making it harder to neglect. I just found out a classfellow from highschool buried her dad recently because of Covid, another TA student of mine messaged me to tell how her best friend was diagnosed and she was extremely worried. It’s getting worse and I can only watch in horror.
I can’t wait for this semester to end so I can finally deactivate myself from social media and hide in some corner and nourish myself in denial and ignorance. That’s the only thing I look forward to. The future looks dark either way.
Ek Gainda
26th April 2020
