What if

It was the autumn of 2019, and I had just started living the typical college life. I couldn't relate more to the song Young, Dumb, and Broke. Hailing from a small town, Mumbai was just working its charm on me. I was learning, growing, making friends, and most importantly living life.

It was a Monday afternoon, and a political science lecture had suddenly stopped making sense to me as the professor started talking about the ethnic cleansing taking place in the North-East part of the country popularly known as the Citizenship Amendment Act.

I turned to my friends sitting behind me and asked if they know what is the professor talking about. But all I got was a pair of shrugged shoulders. I started nodding to avoid looking stupid.

I went back home to find my non-media background roommates already talking and arguing about whose side are they on. I was still lost, trying to figure what exactly are they talking about.

While I was reading about the act, another notification popped up about some virus that had massively spread in China and had taken hundreds of lives. And Bingo! There was the topic for my news report and I was excited to share this with my friends.

On the other hand, I read about CAA and NRC and I started recalling the time about how naive I was when I voted for BJP. The proposition of this act led to protests and riots in the entire country. It was a really dark time for the entire nation.

I checked my phone to see the updates about the riots happening in Delhi and it was beyond what anyone could've imagined. I was introduced to terms such as mass shooting, stone pelting, vandalism, lathi charge, internet shutdown, and water cannons because all these things were being done on the orders of the government to calm down the protestors. Well, that's a great way to calm them down.

Oh but wait! Reality check! What is the virus doing in India? The last I checked it was in Wuhan, China, and a month later it had made its entry in the whole goddamn world! It feels every time the country is dealing with a situation, a new one comes out of nowhere. 

As the cases started rising in the country to 500, the government started planning for lockdown and all outstation kids had started prepping to leave for home. Well, my life had been turned upside down, suddenly going home when I was having the best time in my college and with my friends. All of us left the city in a span of two days and suddenly the city appeared half empty.

I got home after 4 months. Everything was the same except that people were roaming with masks on as the spread of the virus was getting serious in the country.

It was the 23rd day of March 2020 and we were waiting for the Prime Minister's address at its regular time. And just like that, the lockdown was announced. It was just like ripping off the bandage. Every morning, I used to read the paper just to see more people getting infected and more people dying than yesterday. It was just becoming unstoppable. The country, rather the entire world had come to a standstill. We were missing the life we were used to, the life that we used to crib about so much, the life that was taken away from us just like that.

I started breathing heavily, sweating panicking, not able to understand the situation, reading about thousands of people dying every day, and wanting to just survive this pandemic, where suddenly I felt a couple of hands shaking me, continuously, shaking me and I could hear my name in a strange voice. I looked up with tears in my eyes to my friends who were worried about what was happening to me. It took me a few seconds to come back to reality and I said, "Nothing. It was just a bad dream."