Hiatus

Anika Khan*

Lockdown comes. The koel in the palm tree behind our house calls so many times that it becomes hoarse. Little noisy sunbirds take over.

Suddenly, I am home every day.

My 6 year old daughter needs a laptop for her online classes. My 17 year old son needs a computer for his online classes. I am working from home and I have no device. I fashion a Spartan, miniature ‘office’ in a corner of my daughter’s room. My son is the person with the most electronic devices in the house. I ask him to donate his laptop, a webcam, and his old computer table. I find a chair that hurts unmentionable parts of my body and pad it with a cushion. Finally, I am set. I can work.

I switch on the laptop – what’s this? Where’s the Word, the Excel, the PowerPoint?

“Where’s Word?” I demand from my son.

“Oh, I don’t have it anymore on this laptop. Haven’t you noticed? It’s all set up for gaming.”

I sputter. “But you play games on your desktop! Why is this laptop set up for gaming?” He shrugs. He is meeting his friends virtually for a game of Overwatch, I no longer have his attention.

I go to my daughter. “Do you think I could use that laptop?” “No!” she says firmly. “This one has a touch screen and I need it for that reading game we’re playing.”

I mumble things that I hope are incomprehensible and use Google Drive.  Thank God for Google Drive.

Then the month of fasting arrives. My colleagues become nocturnal, their circadian cycles reversed. I remain stubbornly diurnal, rising at 4 am to start the fast and falling into bed at 9 pm. Our virtual meetings shift from 2 pm to 9.30 pm. I resist the shift but am outnumbered. In the mornings after meetings, I shake off the dopiness by going for walks and collecting seed pods. The meetings are frequent. I have enough seeds to plant a forest.

I get into the swing of things. I begin at dawn by tending my tomato plants. I am their slave. I water them, prune them, pamper them. I put up with their prima donna airs. They reward me by lavishly growing yellow flowers that fall off their stalks and do not fruit. I put out millet seeds for the birds. They liberally bespatter the little patio where I sit with droppings. I bake and cook. From 9 to 5 I glue myself to the lifesaving cushion on my chair. I can do this; I begin to think I can work from home.

* Anika Khan, MBE alumnus (2011), Part-time Faculty, Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture, SIUT, Karachi, Pakistan