Sanjida Tamanna
May 2020
Dear Future,
I hope this letter finds you well and you are living with good health and spirits. I imagine you are in a world where viruses live in devices instead of human bodies. I pray that in your time, nobody has to hide their broad smile behind a mask. I pray that in your time, you isolate your toxic thoughts instead of your entity, and you can hug your loved ones without worrying about maintaining social distance. I hope in your world — pandemic, lockdown, quarantine, contagion, super-spreader are mere words existing only in Merriam-Webster dictionary, not in real life.
I am leaving this letter to you, which I am writing in the cursed year, 2020. It’s almost 71 days since we are locked in our houses. If we go out, we return with an unwanted guest named corona virus. Many of us have lost the battle with this lethal virus and many are still fighting with little hope to survive.
Today is Eid. Our elders used to allure us by saying that Eid was different in their time. They always brag that Eid from their time was more joyous than ours. And this trend is going on and on through generation after generation. Unlike them, we are probably the only generation which is telling the juniors that our Eid was worse than theirs.
Yes, we are celebrating an Eid as if we were in prison — an occasion in which nobody can go out to meet and greet their loved ones. We are stuck at our homes; just trying to get the feeling of being outside. We are dying to smell the earth, breath the air outside, and hear the chaos — which we have always taken for granted.
On this Eid, most of the people do not have new clothes to wear, and everyone is hindered to give hugs saying, “Eid Mubarak”. Furthermore, most of us are financially insolvent to celebrate after one month of fasting, as we are broke and mentally broken. Either we are in search of bread and butter, or just praying to live with freedom again. Somewhere the air is heavy with grief, and somewhere the sky overhead is ominously cloudy.
Do you know, in this situation, what makes us normal? It is, accepting that nothing is normal like before. But the harder we struggle to be okay, the further away it gets.
We are hoping that one fine morning the earth will be kind again, and mother nature will wrap around us with the same love and care. Therefore, we believe every morning comes with a new sun, and things are always better today than yesterday. Till then, Eid Mubarak.
Best Regards,
A survivor who is still alive
Sanjida Tamanna is struggling to be a perfectionist like Monica Geller with her OCD symptoms. Send her cures at [email protected]