There Will Be No Hugging

What do you do now that all plans are off, all hopes are replaced by the one hope that you will survive?

- Annie Zaidi

WE make plans, don’t we? Dinner plans, holiday plans, life plans. We don’t usually plan against death. Or, indeed, against the upsetting of our plans for ourselves. Plan Bs are also just more of the same—plans that will allow us to envision success or indulgence or celebration or growth in a particular direction. Some of us even have plan Cs and Ds. Few of us have the heart to plan permanent farewells to the people we love, or indeed, to our own recognisable selves.

In all innocence, the poet (Mirza Ghalib) asks— Maut ka ek din mu’ayan hai/ Neend kyun raat bhar nahin aati The day of death is preordained / Why do I lie awake all night?

As if he didn’t know! The thought that death is sure to come for us is not what keeps us awake at night. It is not knowing whether we will be able to survive and acquit ourselves well in the time that is given to us. It is being afraid of wasting time, and of losing the people we love, or failing to give them the best version of ourselves while we can. What keeps us awake is grief, regret, and plans for salvaging and restoring something while we may.

What do you do, though, now that all plans are off? All hopes are replaced by the one hope that you will survive, and so will your beloveds, and hope is all you have because cure there is none. The novel coronavirus has stripped us down to the basics—food, shelter, clothing, including masks, gloves, shoes. Ambitions and acquisitions from two months ago feel hollow in confinement. That smart linen jacket, all that jewellery in the locker, that colleague you were jealous of, that invitation you were so thrilled about, that destination wedding. At this point, a wedding at the registrar’s office with ten people in attendance seems like an impossibility.