These days it feels like I am dragging my body, coaxing it to perform routine tasks without spilling over, without allowing my anxieties to get the better of me. Especially when I am obliged to be present on Zoom conferences and meetings as if the world I have known all my life isn’t crumbling, as if the fires aren’t raging, as if the freshly dead were still alive. I am confused. I am enraged. I am afraid of all the grief that still awaits, all the collective trauma of this moment that has yet to manifest. 

In June it’ll have been a year since I arrived in Italy. More than half of it has been spent with little to no social interactions. We have been so careful, especially when the virus knocked at our door, especially as we witnessed it spread through the town of Tramin, especially at the beginning of the year, when people selfishly let down their guard to celebrate the carnival. We heard the funerary bells remind us of the death toll. It was difficult for me to talk about it then because at the time in India people were beginning to enjoy a semblance of freedom after the tough first wave. Some friends told me that in India everyone was behaving as if COVID was over, not surprising, considering the messaging that was being sent out by the 
administration.