Too much freedom to handle

After locking me up in my apartment and warning me to stay put, the authorities have now set me free and I do not know how to handle my freedom.

Suddenly, the night curfew has been lifted and I am told I can do what I wish; go to a movie, workout in a gym or go shopping for veggies, which I have to learn to do all over again, as the grocery shopping was done by some guy in a shop and brought to us by a ‘delivery executive’ in a huge backpack like the ones army guys take on a gruelling hike.

In Toronto, where we had gone for the Christmas holidays, and as the snow slowly piled up at the front door, my wife would call a number on an app called Fill Your cart, and she would track some elderly guy or a well-dressed woman, going to the store and picking up things for her.

Sometimes there would be a flurry of messages between the woman and my wife: “Cannot find ‘snake gourd’, can I get a zucchini?” Or, “They have never heard of ‘lady fingers’, can I pick up bamboo shoots?”

One day we got an extremely large parcel of toilet paper, left at the front door, and it seemed like it had 100s of toilet rolls, something only a deranged person would pick up at the local Costco, thinking that buying in bulk gives him a massive saving.

I was embarrassed wondering how to casually get it inside, as the neighbours watched us from behind their curtains.

But I digress. Lifting the night curfew here in Bengaluru, actually does not mean much to me because my wife would never let me out at night: “It is dark outside,” she would say, as if we lived in a scary dystopian world or in a post-apocalyptic earth, where people never went out when darkness fell.

One day, as I was sneaking out while silently picking the front door key from the key chain rack, I heard my wife from another room saying: “Don’t forget to take your phone. But don’t expect me to come and bring you home from the police station.”

It was wonderful to be out at that time; the air was fresh, there were no cars honking or scooters zipping around crazily, or birds chirping very vocally.

Ahead, I could see a bunch of policemen, their faces blue from the reflecting light from their smartphones, and there were metal barriers put up on the street, in a way that you would have to zigzag between them if you planned a quick getaway on a scooty.

If I had turned back now, it would have caught the attention of the police guys. I was not sure what the penalty of breaking the night curfew was, and I did not have any ID documents with me.

Using my agile mind, I went into the shadows while calling out, “Come here Sheroo, good boy. Sher Khan, let’s go”, hoping the cops would think I was walking my dog. Nobody called out, nobody rushed towards me with raised batons, so I just walked back home.

The worst thing is that now gyms are open and you can go for your regular workouts. Pre-pandemic, I would take a year’s membership and maybe went a couple of days in January and again at the end of the year in December.

Now my athletic wife says joyously: “Let’s go to the gym,” as she affixes weights to her arms. My excuse that wearing an N-95 and exercising will give me a heart attack, does not move her.

“Let’s try out this restaurant”, she says after eateries have been allowed to have sit-in customers again. Then, as we are served, “Can you please put your mask on back while you are chewing your food,” she admonishes.

I miss the old days when I learnt to do productive things while sequestered at home. All this liberty and no government clampdown, is too much to handle.

Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi