Love in the time of Corona

Here's to the ones who are staying away from their family, the coffee you kept on your table for the last fifteen minutes is cold now. The songs that you hear on a loop is nothing but your heart missing your home.

Cooking meals is like tasting memories in one go. You wonder how things are at home, and if your neighbor has stopped complaining or the dog you once loved is still alive? Is ma again doing the same household chores? Is baba helping her this time? You miss them, but you don't tell them.

You check your gallery on the phone and see old pictures of them and smile at your stupidity. Calling our family back home feels like a script laced with advice and assurances with a discussion on food. We disconnect the call without telling them how much we miss them and fixing a date on when we can again meet them.

We sit in our apartment and hear our silences which goes quieter than ever, and we wonder how our office looks on Thursday afternoon and whether the cigarette shop has stopped keeping your brand. We read books on poetry and wonder if our dreams slept beside our pillow? We thank our loved ones and quietly pray for our family with hope in our hearts.

We thank the stars and the moons for existing. We hear the songs on love and think of the times when we would meet our loved ones.

We have learned to befriend loneliness long time back- we are prepared for this. The reason we keep sinking in love.

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About the Author

Poonam Chatterjee is a 26-year-old budding author, pet lover, and foodie. From a tender age of ten, she found her calling in the written word and since then, has been scribbling away her unconventional ideas, sometimes in the last pages of notebooks and sometimes on online blogs. Writing gives her happiness like no other thing.