“It was on May 17th 2020 a message popped in my inbox. I opened it up to see that it was from a stranger saying “Hi, you have accepted our matrimony request. For further discussions contact this number if you are interested”. Little did I know that he was going to become my fiance. Like every other girl, I too dreamt of having a posh wedding with my kith and kin right beside me during my happiest moment. Having romcom dates with my future partner, celebrating a bachelorette bash with my posse taking a stay-cation believing 2020 was going to be my year. But COVID had other plans. After struggling hard, he got an e pass and visited us. We were scared to the core due to the pandemic. Still, we pulled ourselves together with our trust on hand sanitizers and disinfectant sprays. Three months passed by, with no proper dates, we spent our time on calls and messages. Instead of talking about our personal interests and hobbies, we mostly discussed the affected counts and the vaccine trials.
Though we took it as slow as possible, we couldn’t postpone it anymore. The day finally arrived when we had to do our “wedding shopping”. It’s chaos to shop on a normal day and with the virus around it increased three-manifolds. We made a timeline with invites in Chrompet to shopping in Mylapore, T.Nagar, finally meeting friends in Anna Nagar. Though I couldn’t keep up with time, still I almost fulfilled the to-do list.
As I stepped out after 200 days, I stared out my window just to see faces not wearing masks or social distancing! The thoughts flooded in taking me into a spiral – is there even a silver lining for this? Is this going to become the new normal? Just how we checked for headphones, phone, wallet and id card, should we also add in the sanitizer and mask to the list? Will I have the confidence to walk past a third person? Will I be able to take trips like before? Or will I ever have the confidence to face the world like before?
As this continued, I lost my excitement to step outside for no specific reason. But something changed in me for the first time in a very long time seeing the people at retail outlets who couldn’t stop even if they wanted to. And it’s a job where you have to meet the customers, address their enquires and assist them for almost 12 hours every day. That gained me the power to buckle up and take the ride. Every visit to the outside world brought in more courage, I started eating out, I ordered online, I stayed in a hotel, I went to the salon. And finally the day I hoped arrived with count rate dropping from 6000 to 3000. Though it didn’t go off completely, it made me realize that there’s still hope. And here I am jotting these down with a few days away from my engagement. With little fear, a lot of nervousness and a tinge of happiness filled with a roller coaster of emotions to meet the happy faces after 8 whole months. It’s a fact that life is full of surprises. It can be a good or bad surprise, but all we have to do is barge in headstrong boasting full of strength. Time does heal everything. Hopefully, the same “Time” heals this too.”

#Marriage #Family #Love #Covid19 #CoronaVirusPandemic #Hope #SocialDistancing #People #IndiaFightsCoronaVirus #Life #Healing #Shopping #Life #NewNormal #Madras #HumansofMadras