In response to “The Word”, Paromita Vohra responded with this beauty of a piece, so located in the moment, so resolutely insistent on living all of it.

A DRINKING PROBLEM

She feels she may be developing a drinking problem. No, not the kind you are thinking of.

She only permits herself to drink on weekends during the Lockdown. She’s trying to keep a routine, she’s trying not to fall into the well of people who wake up at noon and eat chips for lunch (they have eaten up all the Maggi in the market).

She’s so good at To Do lists. She has experimented with various formats, most of them successful. Lists and bullets, boxes and tabs, all of it works, works too much it works so much she works too much. They wrestle, she and the To-Do. To Do wins a lot.

But not in Lockdown. Now it is boxes and ticks, boxes and ticks, and tick tick tick goes the brain, an uptick of attentiveness to what’s going where who’s saying what.

The drinking problem? Right, ok. She is worried she will get drunk and write, as she calls it, antt-shantt all over Facebook. She is worried she will be-gin to hit enter instead of backspace on comments. She is worried she will wake up and see 503 likes and 99 comments saying “we do not expect this of you” “you disgust me” “what a hater” “what happened? Can I help?” because she posted last night “Get over yourselves already.”

What a to-do there is online. So many thoughts, more thoughts than ever and yet even fewer. Prim scoldings, unoriginal rants, greeting card epiphanies. Band karo yeh bakwas! She might say. Sab kuchh jala doongi! she might declare.

If someone writes, I am leaving social media because it has become too toxic and my tender heart needs to outrage in private, she might write, oh please (eye-roll emoji). And next day when the person hasn’t left, she might write, kya hua, tusi gaye nahin?

She might notice eye contact on an Instagram live and yell, get a room! Oh sorry, forgot, you can’t, lockdown. But I saw that. Ok? I saw it.

She might publish all her unsent tweets.

She might write things like – “stop being so spiteful!” to people who are mean about other people’s cooking or stitching or opinions.

She might reply to emails about collaborations with “Really? What will I get out of this?”

She might say “don’t be stupid” to someone who is being stupid, instead of “I see where you are coming from” and thinking “from Stupidland” only in her mind. Or “what nonsense, this makes no sense!”.

Scroll scroll scroll and it’s cannons to left and right with every sip and it’s a drinking problem.

But all of a sudden, there is a baby. A child, new, small, light, as flowers are light, in the arms of a new parent, whose face is full of light, as the full moon is light, defying all quarantines, unlocking all lockdowns.

By mistake she says out loud to the Facebook post, ‘ohhhhhh’ her body and heart opening like a hibiscus at 10 am.

God yaar she thinks, stop being such a khadoos so-and-so. How does all this matter? Tereko kya hai? Do your work. Eat a mango. Have another drink.

She does. She’s smiling too.