I

I like the sound of rain. It’s calming when it just pours on, at the same tempo. It’s thrilling when there’s thunder, amazing when ice cubes hit against the window in a hailstorm and better when there’s a breeze, and I’m looking on from the inside.

When the pandemic began, after the first emergency meeting at work, I went back to my desk in a tsunami of thoughts, attempted to continue working, wrote something in my work diary and then finally, I circled around the ATM, two supermarkets and finally went home.

Our toddler was busy pushing new boundaries, pulling, grabbing, smiling, running, as if his caretaker had not changed three times in three weeks. In February, the woman I had entrusted my baby with for a year had left without notice. She had left me on a rainy Monday morning. It was not the kind of rain I enjoyed. It was a start-stop kind of rain, the kind that rushed and then stopped, poured and then run dry. It made you run out of the house, splattering your clean shoes with drops of mud and just when you reached the car, it whipped you. It whipped you until you managed to fit your umbrella through the door. What was the use of Monday morning rain anyway? Rain is best when you have nowhere to go.

“Should I go to work today? I don’t know if others have gone and I have anybody to ask.”

Tuesday had passed and already none of the emergency rules were being followed. Nobody was sending notifications about their schedules. Two people had been coughing on Monday. They were sent home during the meeting but they stayed until the end. I wondered, with irritation and fear as to why they had come at all.

“Stay home. What did you have to do?” He said.

” I have a few things here and there.”

“Are they urgent?

“Not really…Maybe, I’ll go tomorrow.”

The Lunch people stopped coming on Wednesday.

I managed to get myself to my desk on Friday. One workmate shuffled in and out of his office.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Staying at home won’t make me money,” he laughed. “And I would rather die of Corona than die of poverty. Besides that, I can’t stand being in the house all the time. I can’t stand the sound of screaming children.”

“And you? he asked. “What are you doing here?” “You too? You can’t stand being home either?” he seemed to say.

“No, I just wanted to check on a few things I was working on.”

“This is what you asked for, you know. You wanted more time with your child and now you have it.”

“I did… I know.”

I went home.

On Saturday, the alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. Bright white light and a figure pulling up his work pants. I stared at him through half open eyes. My remarks were always surgically honest in the morning. But this morning, they just ran through my mind. I think you would choose your work over me. Why do you have to switch on the brightest light in the morning and yet at night I switch on the dimmest light for you.

I grabbed the keys and started the engine. The newspapers had said Social distancing would save us, but there was a bar open opposite his office pickup place and inside, drunk young men in faded clothes and some in old winter jackets with half finished sachets of waragi in hand hurdled together, singing and rapping. I took a video and drove away.

I checked my Twitter before I got out of the car. The first case of Corona virus had been confirmed. The person had been on a flight from Dubai. I stayed still, looking out through the windscreen at an early cold grey morning. So, it was here. In the week before the announcement, the Health Minister had tweeted nearly everyday saying, “By the Grace of God, we still have no corona virus case here. We are certain that we have no corona virus cases here. We would like inform the public that we have no cases of corona virus in our country. ”

The next Sunday, the airport was closed. On Monday night, the President gave what would soon become regular addresses. It gave me an unexpected form of comfort to see him there, in his white house, smiling, drinking tea, making jokes. He looked like God, unafraid, all powerful and all knowing. He shut public transport and private transport down. He shut down all businesses too, except food markets. It was official.

The Friday before the airport closed and transport got suspended, he came home early. Standing at the door with his heavy duty shoes, he towered above my head.

“You’re home early.”

“I left early.”

“How come?”

“There was a car… I think everyone who had not yet left has been locked inside. For the next three weeks. I told you this might happen.”

But you also told me that if a lock down happened, you would have to remain on site indefinitely. I looked away. He would be leaving soon then, to join the rest.

He didn’t leave. I came to understand him more than I had in the past two years. There was a picture of who I thought he would be and then there was who he was. And there was us, having changed from two to three. And there was me.

In the mornings, I heard our child laugh. Oh, that laugh. And I was there to witness it. I contributed to it. I was a main part of his life again. In the evenings, when we put him to sleep, we watched our favourite show. And sometimes late in the night I baked or cooked. And we stood in the kitchen talking and cooking under the kitchen light, under a starry night. Soon, everything else floated farther and farther away from me.

But every time, he got a phone call, there was an air of uncertainty, fear and hanging in balance.

“Is everything okay?” I would ask.

“Yes, everything is fine. I’m still here with you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Two days ago, it was raining, the 21 days had come and gone. 14 more days had come and gone. We were waiting for ‘God’ to tell us if our world would change back to the norm. If we could live in our offices again and meet at night for formal greetings, our ‘How were your day?’s and to put the child to sleep.

But in that moment, it was a time of COVID. He had nowhere to go. I had nowhere to be. The blanket hang warm and heavy around my neck and shoulder. The rain ran like a cool shower breezily white-noising everything around us. Daylight had broken but the shadows still had somewhere to hide.

I wanted to stay cosied in, but I jumped out. Because real life was coming.