Quarantiny – Chapter 7 – Day 7

09 Jul, 2020 by Farhadur Reza Probal

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Day 7 – Thursday 23 April 2020

“A winner is a dreamer,
who never gives up”

The moon was there last night, sun outside is still shining, the wind is still blowing, clouds are still travelling without any barrier, I am still surrounded by my favourite music, my beloved people with lots of love, as if everything is normal! But there is a ‘new normal’ around us. It is ‘togetherness in isolation’. We can feel it, we can adapt to it, we can hate it, we can adore it – but it is there!

Life takes us through interesting journey’s. Question is, do we really care about the destination? We do not, we just want to enjoy the journey with our children and with our family and friends. Life is a “mettho path”, which exposes us to new dimensions and achievements of our lives every day. Birth of our children is probably the most significant event in this journey of our lives. Getting ‘grey hair’ together as a couple is satisfying and containing. But when it comes to the fact that you cannot be with them even if you are in the same country, nothing can beat that feeling, even if we are in the midst of a Pandemic!

Very lazy start of the day! Woke up around 8:30am. Did not even realise when the door was knocked to alert the delivery of Breakfast. Brought the breakfast in, did not feel like eating any of the same old breakfast! Just made a cup of tea for me and decided to have lunch in few hours’ time. The phone rang around 9:00am. It was duty nurse Orla this time. Orla asked about my health condition, any symptom of the COVID-19 etc etc.

I thought the songs of Lata Mangeshkar could re-energise my day and it worked. The songs, the voice, the music gave me an eternal peace of mind sitting in front of the window. It seemed like diving deep into a pool of water to look for the hidden treasure. The outside weather was not that attractive today.

Suddenly my meditation was broken by the loud knock on the door, announcing the delivery of lunch. Reasonable lunch and I was happy to have that as my brunch with another puzzle to pass time.

While watching the news, I decided to do my regular walk inside the room. I walked around 3.0 km again. While walking, I realised there was a call from Yazdani vai (father-in-law of my elder daughter Kishoree) and lots of txt exchange going between Kishoree and Auditya. Finished my walking followed by one-minute plank. Checked the txt and finally wrote a message to all four (Nigar, Kishoree, Auditya and Tasneef) about last night signing the memo of a 40% pay cuts of all the staff members of Build Bangladesh. We needed to do this to retain the staff members with us. Incredibly sad but this was the only option at this point of time for a small organisation like ours.

This was the constant pain that I was carrying with me since last night. I felt a bit lighter after sharing the facts with my family.

Took a shower and decided to give some time to my only partner at this quarantine – my surface. Needed to address some urgent emails and write few critical responses globally to stress our presence and need to survive as a sustainable business.

It was a text from Reaz that diverted my attention. He shared some photos of heavy rain with hail in Manikganj. Bangladesh rain is always the best , the most attractive and romantic moments with the sound, water fall across the tin roof, the very wet birds on the trees and the smell of khichuri and egg fry is an unique characteristics that we grew up with. It seems like, particularly moments like this when you cannot choose your food, you crave for specific food, which probably go higher and higher every moment. Who will serve me khichuri, who will serve me egg fry?

I called Reaz, shared his excitement about the rain. The visit from Taskin (the Managing Director of Impress Textile) and Abeer (Reaz’s son) to sort out some serious advice on the future of the textile and garments industry. He also shared the frustration of Tanzim (Reaz’s other son) for not being there with Abeer. Tanzim blamed Abeer for not taking him to see his parents. Reaz managed by highlighting the visit as official rather than social. And shared some of the rain and hail with Tanzim as he loves the Bangladeshi rain. As a very proud father, Reaz was also extremely excited about the talent of Tanzim as an artist. He shared the story of Tanzim’s interaction with the Dean of an Art College in London, who offered him a different future. But after talking to Shereen, Tanzim’s mother, who totally rejected the idea of studying Arts! This is very much a typical ideology of any Bangladeshi parents. But, till today whenever Tanzim is alone or needed a space, he draws. He did few drawings recently and shared those with Reaz and that was the key reason for Reaz to be so excited. I wanted to see those drawings as well and I will when I talk to him next.

Knock on the door. Dinner. Instead of Khichuri and Egg fry, I got baked fish and potato with bread and a Fanta. Yes, there was an apple and the solutions of last two lunch time puzzles. But, the lunch pack also had a lovely note from the hotel about the beginning of Ramadan and what was their response to improve the service. Very impressive. What a good note to end your day!

It is the beginning of the month of Ramadan tomorrow. I even cannot remember whether I had ever observed first day of Ramadan without my family either in Bangladesh or in Australia! Ramadan in isolation. Hope things will not be that tough without water or any food all day in an enclosed room. It will be a totally different experience and I am probably looking forward to that over next few days. Oh well, I will try my best to keep myself busy.

It is already time for my daily prayers and then off to the Netflix Movie theatre. Watching The Last Kingdom. A slow movie, but the historic components are attractive, and I am very keen to see the end.