Posts Tagged ‘lockdown’

Short Story: A Shield For The Security Guard

Posted: May 18, 2020 in Inspiring stories, Men, Short Story, WPrightnow
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Photo taken from the Internet. Source

Biman saw a big plastic packet sitting on the Security Guard’s table adjacent to the gate of the building. It looked like a few boxes of cakes. He could see the name of the bakery written on top of the packet. Not the usual ones that Swiggy brings into the building. This one must have come directly from the bakery in their van, thought Biman. He had been away from the gate on a washroom break.

Since no deliveries were allowed to go beyond the gate, things were left at the guard’s table usually, from where the residents picked it up. Not always though…

Many had become so lazy since lockdown happened two months back that they refused to walk those ten steps to the gate to pick up their stuff. They would inevitably make a call to the security guards and ask them to drop it off at their flats.

The company that Biman worked for, which had a contract with the building that he was guarding now, had strictly ordered them not to run errands unless it was emergency medicines for aging residents. So, when the calls came to deliver the pizzas, the biryani, the groceries left by Amazon, the fish left by the fish seller, to the respective apartments, Biman had to say a firm “no”. Then they would request, command and threaten him over the phone.

All for what, so that they didn’t have to step out of their front doors, thought a hassled Biman.

“They are shamelessly heckling the guards to make their easy life even easier. The morons never think I am doing my job and nothing else,” an irate Biman lamented.

Yes, the guards had a few jobs less now, of opening the gates when the cars came in, of jotting down the registration numbers of the Ubers, of getting the guests to sign the register, or keeping an eye on the maids.

But he had ensured that none of those para guys could walk in and ask for money from the residents as they had been doing in other buildings. And when some people came at night saying that they were from the Municipality checking every apartment to make sure no one had fever, Biman had repeatedly asked for their ID that they failed to show. He kept the gates firmly locked.

He had ensured every single person who walked inside the gates used the hand sanitiser, he had made sure the lift surfaces, the stair banisters were cleaned twice a day. He had taken on the mantle of the caretaker, who used to come in the local train. Biman switched on the pump on time, made the gardener cut the wild shrubs, maintained the lift, saw to it that waste was cleared from every home properly by the sweeper.

Despite that it was one undelivered pizza that became the bone of contention. The building president told him that he could have just delivered the box to the lady since she was single and old. Biman had retorted that her young niece had been living with her since lockdown, a fact the president didn’t seem to know.

The old lady had complained about Biman to the building committee. She had told them that she found him ogling at the women and watching porn on his mobile while on duty. The president assured him he didn’t believe her.

“I know you are a good guy. But it’s not in my hands. We might have to let your company know…”

“And then…?” Biman asked, the anger building up in his throat.

“We will see.” He said. His face gleaming with the power he felt on another person’s life decisions.

Biman’s cheeks were burning up. Now would he have to deal with a lifetime of shame for one woman’s laziness?

He thought of his everyday fight with his wife. She worried that he interacted with so many strangers and went back home to sleep with his 3-year-old daughter.

“Can’t you do something else?”

“What else?”  Biman would scream. “People don’t have jobs now. You should be thankful I am still drawing a salary.”

Biman sat at the guard’s chair, crestfallen.

*

“No one took that packet yet?” asked Monohar, Biman’s colleague.

Biman looked at the packet disdainfully.

“You should see them when the bakery van comes these days. They come down in hordes as if cakes are what they are living for. No social distancing, no masks, their tongues touching the ground in gluttony,” chuckled Manohar.

Piya was walking down the driveway towards the guards table. Biman looked away.

“God knows what this young woman thinks about me. A pervert or a good man?”

“Biman da, Monohar da, ei packet ta tomader (this packet is for you),” she said.

“What’s there?” asked Manohar eagerly.

“Some cakes and chicken patties for you,” said Piya.

Biman remained expressionless. Manohar had already opened a box. A grin lit up his face.

“Biman da tumi toh jhor tuleccho (you have raised a storm),” said Piya.

Biman looked at her stunned. She already knew about his shame.

“My mom said that all the women in this apartment have stood up for you in the WhatsApp group saying you are a gem of a person. All allegations against you are false,” smiled Piya.

“Nao ebare cake khao tomra (now you guys have some cake). Ma has ordered this for you.”

Biman looked down, at his own gleaming shoes. He couldn’t let Piya see his tears.

– By Amrita Mukherjee

Read More Short Stories On Lockdown

Short Story: The Maid’s Home

Short Story: A Teacher’s Lockdown Lessons

Short Story: Feluda And The Covid 19 Death Case

Short Story: In Love With Social Distancing

Short Story: Washing the milk

Short Story: A Teacher’s Lockdown Lessons

Posted: May 14, 2020 in Short Story, Teacher, WPrightnow
Tags: , ,
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Picture from the Internet

I am used to the morning rush. Everyone is, when they have kids going to school and a job to keep. But I find something unsettling about this rush hour now. I am up as usual at 5 am preparing breakfast, finishing the day’s cooking and cleaning up the kitchen before I rush…yes, rush nowhere.

The kids head from the bathroom to the bedroom; I walk from the kitchen to the sitting-room couch and my husband stays put where he is, at the dining table. We have only two laptops at home and we are those middle-class parents who want to give their children the best. My husband and I juggle our jobs on the tab and the smart phone, depending on necessity.

Today there was another necessity, one that was making me edgy. Singing has never been my forte.

I could see from the corner of my eye that bewildered look on my husband’s face. He has never heard me singing, and I had forgotten to warn him that I would be making an exception today.

Seeing his expression I felt laughter threatening to wreck me from within, but I kept singing keeping myself stoic.

It’s Rabindranath Tagore’s birthday today. If schools had been open, functions would have been held; we would have decked up with flowers in our hair and helped the children dress up for the stage.

My voice lacked rhythm, but still I sang with passion as if to hold on to that last bit of my root, my reality that has suddenly become boxed into the gadget that I was holding in my hand.

The mobile has become like my extended body part. It’s constantly pinging with messages and there are at least 10 WhatsApp groups, some of which have students, guardians and teachers in them. There have been a couple of mornings when I switched on the data and no messages came. I was pretty sure that very day I would be asked to put in my papers; I would be told of my inability to cope.

Or maybe they wanted to do to me what they had done to my colleague. Snatched away her classes because she had supposedly been fumbling and asked to log into classes held by younger, tech-savvy teachers and learn from them.

I instantly messaged a colleague.

“Did you get any messages?”

“None today. Very strange,” came her reply.

My stomach had already started tumbling like the insides of a washing machine. It halted.

There isn’t a moment in the day when I am gadget free. When online classes end, the training starts; how to talk, how to make PPTs, how to make online lesson plans, how to deal with the chats and emojis the kids throw up (the kisses and skulls being the favourite and the poop and the bikini occasional aberrations) and then there’s the psychologist as well telling us teachers how to stay calm. I look at the last one as the most important lesson of the day, because I do end up screaming hysterically for my husband or my elder son’s help if I am unable to make those PPTs or unmute the Zoom mic. Power Point was Hebrew to me till lockdown happened. Actually so many things are, still.

For starters I am competitive, but I really have not grasped what’s there to be competitive about PPTs. The slides are worked on, embellished and submitted with an attitude that these works of art will land us a space in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Then there are the relentless comparisons, praises and criticism. Sometimes I feel like laughing but then I have to put in my best. I can’t let my position as one of the best teachers slip. I have worked hard for it for so long. I can’t let a virus kill it.

Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels.com

In my 20 years of teaching experience the thought had never occurred to me that I would start teaching a new batch of students never seeing them in person for once, but I would know how their bedroom looks, I would marvel at the colour of their walls or make a mental note of the chic dressing table design to be passed on to my carpenter, some day.

Neither did I have a clue that one day I will have to see some of my students’ fathers without a shirt.

Some of the fathers have developed the habit of hovering around the kids in their boxers showing off their rotund paunches in their shirtless avatars. The first time this happened, I can’t even begin to tell you how shocking it was. I complained. My colleagues complained. The management sent out mails that guardians should not be around kids. It stopped for some time. Then someone would suddenly appear in the frame by “mistake” and move away only after ensuring that you are unnerved enough by their uncouthness. Within weeks we learned to mask the unease and carry on as if nothing had happened. There is too much on our plate anyway, a half-naked guardian couldn’t possibly merit our precious time.

And then there are the moms. You would know they are sitting next to the ward listening in intently. Your instincts just tell you they are there, helicoptering. Isn’t this like a dream-come-true for an obsessive mom, the ability to sit next to her child as they take the class? In my online classes I have faced more questions than I have answered in my entire career, needless to say, all prompted by the invisible helicopters.

I have always prided myself to be teaching in one of the elite institutions of Kolkata that comes with the best facilities and best marks. But now I often wish I worked in a lesser-known school that has not been able to put their online act together because they lack the infrastructure, finances or even the will to do so and wish to wait it out till schools re-open.

People talk about spotting rainbows in the sky, click photos of the cottony clouds bathed in the hues of a pink sunset, see the flowers bloom and marvel at the appearance of new species of birds on the window panes, but I have failed to notice any of that. I only know the day has glided into the evening when the fights over the laptops start. My 14-year-old son needs to get the worksheets done, my 10-year-old daughter has to send back her homework and prepare for her impending online exams and I need to make the PPTs, send back the reports of my online classes and sit in at the zoom meetings.

We argue over who gets priority on the laptop like we are fighting for a piece of bread in a concentration camp. But they always win, inevitably.

“You anyway have to help me with my homework, ma,” my daughter says.

Life has done a volte face for her too. I soften instantly thinking who is finding it harder, she or me? The bored, sleepy, yawning faces of my students flash through my mind.

So I am up till late in the night finishing my work when the house has been silenced by slumber. My day never ends. The morning rush goes with me to bed.

*

I had finished my classes yesterday when suddenly my daughter came rushing to me.

“Ma in my Bengali class they are asking for opposites. I don’t know these, please help.”

Without even thinking for a second I jotted down the opposites for my daughter so that she could answer in “class”.

I then realised what I did. I just prompted my daughter in her class. Like the helicopter moms.

– Amrita Mukherjee

 

 

 

 

 

Short Story: Washing the milk

Posted: April 28, 2020 in Indian Women, Men, survival, WPrightnow
Tags: , ,
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Picture taken from the Internet

7 am. The doorbell rang. It took her a bit of time to get out of bed. The young man at the door knew that. So he waited patiently.

“No bread today?” she asked him.

“No supply. But I got cream rolls and cakes,” he said.

Devika Roy liked the idea. At 75, her breakfast had suddenly turned from the usual butter and bread to cream rolls and cake. Apart from the sweet swirl the cream rolls produced in her mouth, she liked the fact that it meant one job less of putting the bread in the toaster and applying butter.

“Did you wash the milk?” The daughter-in-law emerged from the bedroom. She was wearing a frown, the urgency in her voice, disturbing.

“Wash the milk….?” Devika couldn’t quite understand what that meant.

“It’s been a month now and I still have to check. If I don’t check I know you will not do it,” she said gruffly.

Without a word, Devika put the packets of milk under the tap.

“With soap…wash it with soap.” The daughter-in-law commanded.

Devika found her intolerable. Even a month back she was the one taking all the decisions at home. Her daughter-in-law would leave for work, return late in the evening, look after the boy’s homework and retire to bed. Milk packets and groceries were never her thing.

Now she would stand at the kitchen all day like a slave master with a whip and one slip and there was no escape from her fury. All packets brought from outside were cleaned with Dettol, all veggies washed immediately in warm water, she would keep telling everyone to wash their hands, she wouldn’t allow the kid to even go to the terrace, because other residents were going there as well and, she let go of the maids, even the full-time maid. When she wanted to go to her village pre-lockdown, her daughter-in-law just agreed without discussing it with Devika. She found that unacceptable.

Had it been some other time, Devika was sure that her daughter-in-law would have been sent to an asylum, but now her son was beaming and lauding her constantly for keeping the family “safe”.

Mad paranoia, that is what it should be called, thought Devika with a smirk. To someone who had survived diphtheria and cholera as a child, four bouts of malaria in her youth, typhoid in her middle age and dengue in her old age, how could some vague virus really matter?

She even shouted like a mad woman at Devika a few days back when she opened the door to the building security guard, who had come to tell them that he wouldn’t be reporting to duty since he was burning with fever.

“He was saying he had fever and you were talking to him? You even told him to wait and you would get the medicines? Are you crazy?” she shouted.

Crazy, she had called her crazy!! The tears had clouded the corner of her eyes, but her daughter-in-law had completely ignored it. Her son had come to her room and told her to take a break from dish washing for a few days instead.

“I will do it Ma. You rest,” he said.

“You? Your father never did it. I have never seen any man do it in our family,” said Devika.

“It’s okay. Times have changed Ma. You just take rest,” he said.

Devika had stayed in her room since then. Just taking the morning milk remained her job. She didn’t go out much anyway. It was the street below her bedroom window that had always kept her entertained. The street had suddenly died like her daughter-in-law’s emotions.

Her son called her to lunch. She expected the usual boiled potatoes and dal. Her son wasn’t going out to get fish. Her daughter-in-law wouldn’t allow him to go to the bazaar. For the first time in her life, Devika had lived without fish for a month.

Devika sat at the table with a straight face. She didn’t want to get into any conversation on cleaning, sanitizing and the rising number of Corona cases. It nauseated her.

There was rui maccher jhol (rohu fish curry) laid out on the table.

“We got a guy to deliver fish. I know it’s been hard for you,” said the daughter-in-law.

Devika noticed her face had softened, probably for the first time since lockdown.

The overpowering smell of Dettol came from the surface of the table. Devika usually puckered her nose and went through the staid reality called lunch. But now the smell of freshly-cooked fish transcended the pungent odour. Transcended everything.

– By Amrita Mukherjee