Scenarios & Imaginings

                                                               

Drenched in with sweat, I woke up to the beats of the orchestra drums on a chilly December morning. A grand five- day fat wedding in our family brought all our close and distant relatives together. Happy faces, display of dresses and accessories was not what I viewed in my chilling dream. Rubbing my wet and sticky eyes, I checked and rechecked the calendar on the wall. Oh! It is 2020, the petrifying year I met in my dreams. My quaking fingers scrolled the Google to check the news and events. X-mas followed by New Year merriment and jubilation was everywhere around! I pinched myself repeatedly.” Hey! Come back from that horrid dream. I was trying to soothe myself. Was it illusion? Were we all hunkered down in the four walls of our haven?  I rushed to my closet to check the face shields, masks and sanitizers. To my wonderment, there was no such thing. Not believing to disbelieve the creepy dream, I again opened the web page and went back from the first to the twelfth month.

Each day of the 2020 calendar was like clockwork. I wanted to turn back the time I had travelled in the past eight hours. Everything was clear cut at the time. I rapidly took my notepad and jotted down the series of events I had dreamt. In fact, I had travelled to a world away from this world.

My short chronicles of a historical year were fresh in my thoughts and notes. What zest and fervor was in the air on the gala celebrations of 2020. Joy, exhilaration and thrill wrapped in fireworks, unwrapped the New Year. Two swiftest months passed in a snap. Life changed its meaning and form in the coming months. The world was in unison to the hard-hit Pandemic. Despite blame game and self -propaganda, the nations were under one umbrella of anxiety, pessimism and frustration. Humanity was ready to accept the new world order, a world of minimalist and just treatment to the species of the planet. Men in masks and gloves agreed that they were instrumental in bringing the imbalance of ecology, depletion of ozone layer and making this planet a garbage ball. The superpowers were the saddest hotspots of the Corona virus. Yet they were pretentious and hostile.

It seemed like Isekai world, where a character accidentally travels to some other fantasy world. I had chill bumps thinking what if this surreal was real! So many ifs and buts were alarming me. Assuming the after pandemic planetary order, how would we have re- started the life on this reset, revitalized and rejuvenated planet. Social distancing, the fear to stay indoors, preference to rural, avoiding urban life, reverse urbanization could have stood to be the new life.

My musings were broken up to the cacophony of the beats and the jarring music. The wedding feast was at full blast. I pondered what the life could have been then and there after, had we not improved the way of living.