Confessions of a COVID-coward

Krishna Sharma

Writer Krishna Sharma

COVID-19 has sent me home from my socio-professional life and has hunkered me down for the past one and a half months. And I am not alone in this saga. Entire humanity across the world is at home as soon as COVID took the helm of the outer world. The only person this monstrous disease has allowed to be with me physically is my own Krishna Sharma.

You do not know much about this guy whose parents had chosen his name after a Hindu God so that they could remember the deity every time they yelled at him, literally. Mr. Sharma has agreed to stay with me so that I do not go mad, seeing the sudden uncertainty of life due to COVID. Before you know how I am coping myself in self-isolation, I must tell you what the hell of a guy is Mr. Sharma who I am forced to live with like a person destined to live with his own shadow.

Mr. Sharma and I wake up at the same time every day in the morning at 03:45. A few minutes after he opens his eyes and kisses his face with the palms of his hands. Then he gets up slowly from the bed. He sits with his legs hung on the floor while his hands work as crutches on the bed. He believes the medical professionals who say that one should not immediately stand up and walk after waking up. Then he turns the light on for me in the room, which I hate, and goes to the restroom. After using the restroom, he washes his face with water. Then he looks in the mirror and smiles to make himself feel good. After brushing his teeth, he leaves the restroom and goes straight to the kitchen. He warms the water and drinks almost half a liter of it and then comes back to the room.

At 4 am, he goes to the floor where there is a mat waiting for him to sit by the window. There he does Pranayama for about 45 minutes: Bhastrika Pranayama (Bellows Breath), Kapalbhati Pranayama (Skull Shining Breath), Anulom Vilom (Alternate Nostril Breathing), Bhramari Pranayama (Bee Breath) and Baahya Pranayama (External Breath). Then he does Naadi Shodhana kriya (deepest breathing exercise to purify blood, strengthen the respiratory organs, balance the working of the Nervous system, relieve headaches, migraine, nervousness, anxiety, and stress and improve the concentration level of mind. Then he chants some slokas (stanzas) in Sanskrit wishing for the welfare of the entire mankind and the animal kingdom.

And then he sits with himself doing nothing. He goes into the meditative state. He says he brings all his attention to the tip of his nose and observes the air going in and out of his nostrils (thanks to the 10-day Vipassana Meditation retreat in Delaware in 2015 that taught him this art). He says thousands of thoughts try to enter his brain while he is in this state. “Some enter and try to stay there but I take them out and close the door of my mind and find myself at the thoughtless state.”

“It’s easier said than done to enter into the thoughtless state. However, it is not that arduous to not get it. The simple technique to be in the thoughtless state is to simply close the door through which the thoughts usually enter your brain. There are thousands of thoughts that pass through our brain. The strong thoughts do not let the weak ones to come near them and they usually possess our brain. And the strong thoughts are mostly resulted from our daily routines, daily challenges and the desires. It is thus difficult to remain oblivious from them. However, it is important that we keep ourselves away from such thoughts at least for the time we meditate. The only challenge is to resolve that such stronger thoughts too have no place in your brain as you meditate and are thus, subjected to be out,” he says.

As he meditates, I see him sometimes falling asleep while still sitting. When he opens his eyes, I see him smiling at himself. I like the way he smiles. If you see him smiling at himself you will fall in love with him and never fall out again. Be careful: his smiles are contagious. But they are not as contagious as COVID. The only thing that bothers me is he does not realize that he is with me. He is with himself all the time.

Then he gets up from the mat. Does some sit ups and stretches his body from toe to head that he had learnt during his retreat at the Osho Center in Kathmandu long ago. Then he goes to the kitchen again after about 15 minutes; Squeezes lemon on a large teacup and then puts a spoon full of honey along with fenugreek and black pepper and pours the hot water and stirs and drinks like coffee. Then he cleans his power glasses that he has started wearing lately. Then he sits at the reading table and picks the book he has been reading for the past three days – The Looming Tower, the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Lawrence Wright which chronicles Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11.

He is now on Page 415 that describes agent John O’Neill’s funeral in his hometown in New Jersey whose mortal remains were discovered from the rubble of the world trade center on September 11, 2001. His eyes become watery as they move from left to right to left and then to right and so on and so forth. When he turns the page, a few drops of tears roll down from his cheeks upon finding out that his funeral was greater than his life.

He closes the book and then he takes the reading glasses out of his closed eyes.

He is afraid of COVID as hell although he knows fully well that he would, one day, have to leave this beloved earth like O’Neill had some 19 plus years ago and come to me with his signature smile at himself.

I try to explain to him that he should not worry about COVID or even his physical death since physical death is like changing of clothes in the greater gamut of life cycle. But he does not listen to me. He thinks I do not exist. So be it.