Safe passage from uncertainty

I stepped into the future this week as the deliverance I had been seeking came in the form of a flight to Milan, ending days of anxiety

I have muscular memories of the profound anxiety I experienced last Friday. When I woke up I felt like a displaced person. I was disoriented. I missed my writing desk and my swivel chair, and where they were located within my apartment, and the view the window in front of them looked out to, and the birds that passed by every now and then, and the sounds I would hear of my neighbour downstairs teaching her young students online.

Even though I was taking shelter at an old friend-s gorgeous apartment, which boasted a small terrace with a vegetable garden and luminous views of treetops and an ensuing daily morning tableau of birds flitting from branch to branch, I was missing having agency in my own kitchen, being the person who deliberates on what is to be eaten for lunch and dinner, and all the daily negotiating with vegetable and fruit vendors; the whole economy of maintaining a house.

How long could we go on like this, I wondered, feeling homeless, trying to invisibilise our presence so as not to invade my friend-s routine, yet unable to make ourselves disappear because we didn-t want to expose ourselves to potential infection and thus risk infecting our host.

I was feeling the weight of the limbo that comes from being exiled. I shared my anxieties with my partner, who listened to me and tried to evolve solutions so we could tackle at least one basic problem that could alleviate the gravity of everything else — finding a place for me to write. We got through the day, we even did some German lessons, and we were getting ready for bed, when, around 10.30 pm, we received an email from the Italian Embassy informing us of a flight we could take that would not only get us as close to home as Milan but was also within our allocated evacuation budget.

The flight was scheduled for Monday, leaving us with two days to prepare. This was exactly the scenario we had, in fact, been readying for. It was why we had decided to vacate the apartment so that when we caught wind of a potential flight, all we had to do was pack and leave.

My partner was able to fall asleep that night. I wasn-t. I spiralled down a nebulous vortex of fear and insecurity. The deliverance we had been seeking was finally here, and yet, here I was, filled with anxieties about whether it was all too good to be true, whether we could even complete the bureaucratic formalities so that my partner had the green signal to exit, given the state of his visa, and whether Italy would allow me in with my residence permit, and when would I get to see my parents again, and my best friend, and would my friends forget me in my absence...

We were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and so I was able to crouch towards the window and gain easy access to the full moon whose brilliance glared back at me. I remembered the German word for moonlight: Mondschein. It was one of those nights when I began to feel like I was being watched over by the moon.

Despite not having done so for months, I decided, why not quell my anxiety by reading Susan Miller-s June 2020 predictions for Cancerians, and of course she spoke not only about the significance of that night-s penumbral lunar eclipse but also about the new moon solar eclipse on June 21. "One thing to realise with an eclipse is that the only way to go is forward — there is no path back to the past. Eclipses are final and non-negotiable, and they force us to adjust to new circumstances."

I haven-t configured the exact location of the moon in Tramin. Three nights have passed since we made safe passage here on a ten-hour-long flight. Even though we knew it would entail a financial loss, since we already had a booking on another airline, we knew this might be the best time to travel, when, in all likelihood, our flight might be the only one leaving New Delhi and one of the very few ones landing in Milan, when Italy, too, had recovered from the burden of the pandemic and had declared itself safer to enter.

Besides, we could no longer continue as guests in friends- homes, grateful for any charity we were handed out. We took a leap of faith and undertook the strenuous journey telling ourselves that we just needed to get to the other side.

With every second that passes in quarantine, I can feel the loosening of my body from the grip of all the anxiety. I still flit between feeling blessed because of the opportune timing of the flight and experiencing immense guilt for having had the privilege of leaving when the shit had really begun to hit the ceiling in Delhi.

We monitor ourselves every day and we try to eat well and sun-bathe when we can to soak in its cosmic nourishment. Now that both the central and most state governments seem to have washed their hands of their duties towards citizens, more than ever before, it is imperative that we look out for each other.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D-Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx

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The views expressed in this column are the individual-s and don-t represent those of the paper

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