When I look back at the first half of this year, it is seems so ironical that I chose the phrase "A year of hope" to address 2020. A lot has changed in the way we look at everything; publicly and privately. Hence I have decided to put "A year of hope" on ice. If I keep using that phrase, it would soon start sounding very sarcastic.
I want to use this space on unpack - January through June. I want to put events in perspective without getting intimidated by the scale of them. I want to do that in my own style of being casual, direct and honest because all of us could use some shots of sanity right about now. Let's begin.
Honestly speaking, I didn't want to leave San Francisco on NYE 2020. Life was good on this little patch of land. Probably the best it has been in quite some time. Work was great. By the way, considering the world in June 2020, I still think work is still great, We will get into that later. Social life was eventful. Yoga classes were keeping me on my toes, literally.
The situation in India was a bit unsavory at that point. Well, it was what we called unfavorable at that point in time. The Indian Parliament had just passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Cities in India were reeling with protest from the public. At the sidelines of the news cycle was a tiny note about a virus outbreak in a wet market in China. We didn't pay much attention to it. We thought that the maximum impact it would have is that the hipsters would make a bit of noise about the delayed shipments of products that were made in China. So we moved on to other things.
I saw friends and family in India after 2 years. I worked for a few weeks while being on the road. Smaller towns in India have amazing 4G internet these days. That helped me extend my vacation. Around mid January, I saw that the Ministry of Health had started putting up checkpoints in airports. I didn't bother much. They said that one needs to be screened only if they had visited China in the last 14 days. So we moved on to other things.
The paperwork at the US consulate went through on time and I had my travel documents stamped. It was rather smooth. I texted my friends and colleagues in US that they could expect me back in a few weeks. I was so ready to come back to SF and resume my life from where I had left off. I think I that did happen for a while. The first few weeks of February were a bliss. It was like I had never left. SF was still cool and windy. The Yoga classes were still keeping me on my toes. Work was still good. We celebrated. We danced. We went on with out lives like nothing had changed. We thought we have moved on to other things.
Here are some pictures from my visit to India that didn't make it to any social media. I post them here because, well, I want to.
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| (Pictures in my mother's study, Dhanbad) |
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| (Lunch like a Royal, Bangalore) |
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| (Game night, Bangalore) |
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| (The first mug of coffee after return, SF) |
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