While heading towards Delhi from Siliguri, I began getting sick, real sick, with fever, severe cold, and paralyzing dizziness, the cough was so bad that it started hurting so badly, every joint was filled with ache and pain. I thought it might be due to sudden exposure to one of the highest altitudes at Indo China border, or possibly I ate something which I shouldn't have and will go away soon. That was my notion, because, I don't get sick often. But this was something entirely different. I decided to instead stay in Calcutta for a few days before pushing ahead, it didn't help and after a few days, I headed towards Delhi. I was asleep the whole time, the taxis, the plane, the staff at the airport, the taxi drivers, the air hostess, all of them had to wake me up. The shortness of breath, fatigue and cold combined with high fever took me down like never before.
I couldn't help but sleep continuously throughout days and nights. And then one night, I saw a dream of me travelling on a large ship, myself infected priorly with a viciously infectious disease which made me touch the nose all the time, unknown to me at the time of boarding. It spread like wildfire on the ship and soon all the people in the ship fell prey to this. All the people on the ship were touching their nose all the time. It was not fatal, not causing any medical contingencies, just making its victim touch their nose all the time. This dream made me feel so awful in my dream - while looking at people, I knew in my heart, I was the cause for the spread of this beast.
Whatever antibiotics I had taken so far proved ineffective and I hadn't bothered to visit a doctor despite having medical insurance. The next morning, the first thing that I did was to visit a doctor and asked for a full body checkup. It came nothing except for the possibility of air pollution being the reason and was advised to leave Delhi at once and stay in a village for a while, I came home. I did recover without any medicine, but it took more than two weeks. Big cities are not my thing anymore.
Only after a few months, I got a call from home to return immediately because a new virus, COVID-19, had come around in India. I was already in Kerala, too far from home, the place where the first patient of Corona was officially found. Was that a sign? Some say the universe gives us signs every day in our sleep, in our timeline, in our conversations, in the cloud, in epiphanies. However, only when we pay attention to them and piece them together, we notice a pattern. The universe is communicating with us, perhaps. Epiphany tells us a tale, which we often don't listen, perhaps because we are neither listening nor observing, but instead, we talk over one another, many times we don't even listen to our own intuition. Our societies encourage us to lead the conversation. When was the last time you really listened or someone really listened to you? When was the last time when only this moment mattered to you? I call it one step at a time - this moment just one purpose, one thought.
"Does anybody ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?
Saints and poets maybe. They do some." ~ Thornton Wilder, Our Town [https://amzn.to/34QDeBN]
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