Our corona diary.

[Text and photo by Asmita Singh]

I close my eyes in self-isolation from corona… and I see myself staring into the mirror, same as yesterday, same as the day before.
She stares back at me. She is not I.
I wonder if she too, is stuck in her reality as I am in mine.
I wonder if she wrote another book or did she sink into her mind?
I wonder if she is a bad feminist on some days. I wonder if she hates someone she loved or has she realised that hate is an enervating thing to hold on to.
I wonder if she feels the same guilt as I do. Will Ayn Rand forgive me for leaving Atlas Shrugged on my shelf half read?
Will I forgive myself for it?
‘You’re too hard on yourself’, a friend’s voice echoes in my head.

‘Why don’t you like change?’, the reflection asks me. Her voice is like my mother’s when she asked me the same question two nights ago.
I say nothing. ‘I can tell millennial exasperation and existentialism when I see it’, she says.
‘Does that understanding change the fact that we’re all messed up, insentient, waiting for oblivion, and that that realisation hurts like the dickens?’, I ask her.
‘No’, she says.
I laugh at her, mockingly. My laughter is fake. I know now, that she is I.
I stare into my abyss, and the abyss stares back.

“We the Isolationists” series urges folks from any part of the world to share a brief diary starting with “I close my eyes in my self-isolation from Corona… and I see…” Not more than 100 words. With a horizontal-sized selfie, along with your city name… please mail to me at mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com.