lockdown

My husband lives in Hyderabad and I live in Vellore. This has become necessary because of our divergent career paths. He wants to be in academics, I want to write, learn several martial arts and see a few patients in the time left over.

We met every weekend for the last seven years. Ther is something surreal about that. All the little niggling faults with made life together on a daily basis just about bearable without an explosion are bathed in a rosy hue. It also made the 15 kilos of dirty laundry that he brought a gift for me every weekend tolerable.

Then COVID struck.

Husband has been stuck in Hyderabad since March.

"How are you managing for food?" I asked. Are you able to get Swiggy?" (He used to take frozen food packets from Vellore.)

"No there is no Swiggy. "

"Of course there is," I said.

"My fancy apartment complex will not allow delivery."

"What about getting it delivered to your office?"

Apparently, his wards had been commandeered and made into a COVID ward. The delivery boys refused to come.

"How are you managing for clothes?"

"Do you know," he said, "I have enough clothes to manage for a month without washing. They are lifting the lockdown on April 14th."

The government extended the lockdown and the cloths situation started spiralling out of control.

"Do you think," he asked hopefully, "I can air out my clothes? We used to do that when we were in the NCC."

No wonder even parents did not hug NCC cadets when they returned from camps but greeted them a arm's length.

"You were younger then. Now you if you do that, when you enter the room people will start looking around for the over-ripe jackfruit!"

We decided that he should start doing his own laundry. I decided to guide him through the process using What's App video. The only problem was that the laundry room did not have good Wi-Fi signal. At every stage, he kept bounding into the hall like a jack rabbit.

"It won't come on."

"Press buttons 1 and 4."

"it still doesn't work. "

"Press in sequence after switching on the plug."

"It still doesn't work."

Exasperated I said ,"Did you turn on the water?"

"Why are you yelling," he asked, "you didn't say the tap has to be turned on!"

Finally, when the cycle was over, he said,"The clothes are still dirty."

He was beginning to sound like some of my older female patients who still felt that "hand wash" was better than "machine wash" and that the washing machine was an unfriendly alien surreptitiously waiting to destroy their clothes.

"Did you put in the detergent?"

"No," he said "you didn't ask me to. You don't know how to give instructions. This is all very complicated."

 (Did I mention he has a PhD?)

So it was my fault?

He had a brilliant solution.

"The roads are opening up on May 3rd. I will drive to Vellore with all the dirty laundry piled into the car."

I think he might just make it. No self-respecting policeman is going to want to venture too close to the car to check the validity of travel documents. The sheer odour will be overpowering.

Dr Gita Mathai

 http://velloretimes.blogspot.in/