Image credit – dreamstine.com

Behind the glass panel Rhea saw a shape. The shape took many shapes. The moment in the room shifted, transfixed. It was a death toll, like visiting a house of haunted spirits during Halloween. Father said, like war time, when the missiles landed, only worse. Father saw things differently. He was so far gone that summer when he said it, none could guess if he meant World War I or WWII, or some other more recent enemy engagement.

A few days ago they had finalized travel plans. Rhea was finally flying home. Having secured a brilliant job in IT, the family were in full celebration breakout for their soon-to-be-returning-from-California beautiful daughter. Their modest bungalow in the outskirts of Bangalore had been somewhat renovated to suit the fanciful tastes, or so they imagined, of their America-returned daughter, after fourteen years. Relatives far and wide had been dutifully informed, more to the point, summoned. Holiday was expected to be short, but a daily treat, just two weeks. No more. Mother was putting on a brave front. She did not want to jinx the moment by letting herself feel too much happiness. She could not be like her own mother, Rhea’s grand-mother, produce easily eight daughters at twenty-month intervals. She had only one, Rhea, who was everything.

Rhea was in a whirlwind of preparation. She had amassed a variety of gifts and trinkets galore, for different members of her household, plus extras. For Mother she had a lovely pottery piece, carefully boxed, painted with butterflies on the glazed surface. Gifts were not unheard of, now that she was a full-fledged working woman and independent.

The sledgehammer blow with which the corona virus struck the world was deadly. Its devastating blow had hit Europe first. Slowly little by little the signs had seeped into American daily life, such that Rhea’s long-awaited holiday had deteriorated. Just about everyone she knew had cancelled travel plans. The months ahead looked bleak. Airlines were grounded. If she flew in haste she would be stranded. She could not return. The family forbade such desperate measures. Mother would not hear of it.

Rhea held back. Working from home was not her schtick, but at least she had her job, for which she was grateful. In a fast-changing world where people were out of jobs, businesses were closing or shuttering, her every other day thing were these endless Zoom moments. It was zoom, zoom, zoom, or bust. Endless yak-yak-yak! But that was all she had to hold onto—a fake reality of sorts—this mixed media everyday look at life.

Then came the day when Rhea could not focus. Her computer screen was playing tricks. Technology which should have been the link of connectivity between their physical worlds so far apart in the two hemispheres her family was lodged, was glowing bright pebbled pink. It must be the computer screen she thought, having its moment of fatigue. She blinked rapidly to clear eye-strain. She could see mother in a trail of glowing light. One moment she! Another moment the pink butterfly lampshade she used to wear as only she could, shaped to resemble a bonnet, clinking Chantal glasses with a plethora of heeled and coiffed “aunties” who were aunts, but not real aunts. How skillfully mother could weave hyacinths like a costume designer, crotchet roses into lace doilies… Rhea’s cheeks were wet with tears.

When the family were all together it was rain, seaside, hill ranges, historic sites, mangoes, train journeys, movies, crows, bulbuls. They held the household together. Now Father was in space, Kala, her childhood friend, wanted to be left alone, in Italy, where the virus had struck the worst, Mother had turned critical and was on ventilator, and Rhea was behind the glass panel. None could pivot, least of all Rhea. None could walk away unscathed. The staple of the world’s covid diet had become this measureless cephalopod type monster with tentacles that had usurped their lives.

It was said in hindsight, no one saw the crisis coming. No one saw the magnitude. But it did come, like a freight train jumping off the rails, ramming into concrete structures. The virus struck and struck, over and over, and nothing was the same again. Not for Rhea, nor for many other Rheas. And here was Rhea trapped in a fog of today she found so hard to name for the strangeness it offered of all her tomorrows. No one would ever get 2020 back. It was lost forever. Lost in an icloud of sorts into the ether. Not she, nor mother. That summer the direction she wanted to go was home. There would be no home-coming.

Meanwhile, as the world hovered, mother’s condition improved. Rhea did not believe in miracles, but here was one unfolding in their fast changing world. Many others were not so lucky. While her society aunties in Riverside bemoaned the closure of gyms, dining out, hair stylists, honey-gold for the tints, teal for the eyes, coral for the lips, that they could no more read Shobha De socialite romances while getting a manicure, Rhea found less time for trivialities—her Zoom encounters with mother usurping her life, her horror at the climbing death rate plunging her in misery. It was a tussle. Time and again whenever she told her American “aunties” what she wanted, really wanted from life, they chuckled, rolled their eyes in mock-despair, quoted Jackie Collins to her and said ‘Here have a Chobani!’ She disliked yoghurt with a vengeance. She disliked the place she was in behind the glass panel, no end in sight. Not further than six inches away from her nose if she leaned in closer to her computer. Yet on many levels oh so far away!

“Happy Sixth Month flattened the curve,” yelled Kala during one fine Zoom meeting. Mother was almost normal. Her appetite had returned. Her lungs were almost clear. She had bouts of prolonged cough, but it was improving. She was so much improving she was making herself a nuisance. The day nurse who had been hired was on the point of quitting, unable to bear up with mother’s tantrums. “January, February, March, Lockdown, Lockdown, Lockdown, Lockdown, . . . December,” Rhea intoned in return. Fourteen years she had lived in virtual exile. In the early years she had wanted to return. Only, she was out of budget. Then life got in the way and the years passed by degrees.

My feathered bulbul. Words scrawled on her slate when she was six years old. She let the chalk drop from her nerveless hand and remembered the exuberance of the moment, learning a new word, passerine, Mother so happy, that feeling building in her chest like a flutter of feathers from a flock of bulbuls, like a song waiting to burst. The mind was a strange place mused Rhea. A mix of semi-happy thoughts swirled upwards to the popcorn ceiling of her suburban house. A strange memory: Bombay, standing on the beach at Juhu, watching the waves crash to shore at three-minute intervals, the brisk winds heavy with sea gulls, the mouth-watering scent of bhel-puri in the air, her tiny hand in mother’s, tugging “I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home.” Rhyming in musical singsong with the sound of the crashing waves.

Rhea was between memories---neither in nor out of the waves—galvanized, but motionless, moving between memories like a small songbird, hopping on one foot from the sea water onto the wet sand.

Not unusual. The pandemic had seen to it, for people straddling continents and oceans, although the family were lands apart. ”We are all walking coffins,” Kala had acknowledged in one of her more enlightened moments, with a knowing wink, “every last one of us.”  Not a figment of her imagination either to think of the human toll, but for a long time now how worthless to Rhea had her Zoom looked, images from afar, all good intentions, none of them real. Kala had combined for her the whimsy of the pandemic season in that one statement.

“That’s it! I’m going home,” Rhea told her colleagues at work one Wednesday morning, keeping desperation to a minimum. About twenty people gave her incredulous stares. Some eyerolled her and mimed other theatrical performances going through great lengths to mask their faces to indicate the state of siege, although to all practical purposes the world was far past the point of imminent danger.

“She has a chip on her shoulder,” hooted James, the area manager, monkeying around with his mask. If they were trying to cheer Rhea, it was not working. His mask was more suited for a science fiction movie robot than to ward off an invisible virus.

“I have a bulbul on my shoulder,” soldiered on Rhea, to anyone who was listening. “It flies. I’m flying home, and that’s that.” The few co-workers who did not know her ‘bulbul’ story were intrigued.

“How do you plan on pulling it off, Rhea?” hooted James, setting his mask aside, while the others were filling in the clueless crowd. Bulbuls were pucca songbirds, and so on. Rhea flapped her arms like a bird, “I’m booked, a week today!” She left everyone in shock.

Brian, their boss was signaled through the new Team App on their iphones which worked as a locator and messenger.

With formalities out of the way, preparations for departure were begun in earnest. This time they were different. Rhea dispensed with the gifts. She would travel light, very light, carry just one backpack. Kala was put on alert. Just Kala. Not her folks in Bangalore, because not even Rhea could predict the outcome. Riverside was a long, long way from Bangalore. If she had breathed a word, mother would have been the first to resist, thrown a fit. “Arre but beta, it is just not safe!”

She would cross the border on foot. Travel from and into Mexico was impossible. As for America, there were no flights leaving major international US hubs, coast to coast. She would trek, bus, cab, thumb a ride the rest of the way into Cancun, thereafter Mexico City. This plan had come to fruition through the version she had heard from a friend of a friend who had relayed how a family of four, stranded in Singapore at the height of the pandemic had flown into Ecuador, then to Mexico City to enter California on foot. Her flight would reach her to Dubai, transfer to Mumbai, to Bangalore. It was a huge undertaking for a woman traveling alone. Safety concerns were uppermost in her mind, and, being stranded. She felt far from calm.

***

“But why we cannot do Zoom?” Mother asked Kala for the millionth time. Put in a tricky spot Kala hemmed and hawed as convincingly as she could, before embarking upon a convoluted tale about a Chinese multi-national takeover of the parent company, which had escalated the Zoom takedown. It was a global disaster. Father did not believe a word either. He broke into his usual garbled talk about the whole country being under attack.

“It’s the work of foreign agents. Mark my words, we cannot trust our neighbors, I’m telling you. They are launching germ warfare, see for yourself, the facts in the air, next round, more illness,” said Father, the statistician, the guardian of the world’s problematic diseases, roped into the argument, with a rare return to his old zest and authority, on days he would wax eloquent about the history of the sundial. “Time will tell, time will tell,” he mumbled, before dropping off to sleep in his rattan rocking chair.

“Something you’re not telling me. Secrets! Secrets! One full week no Zoom? You girls share everything. Where is bulbul?” Mother was like a dog with a bone, never giving up. Poor Kala! Rhea owed her one, bigtime, her inseparable bosom friend. Only in Mumbai would Rhea get all updates. Of Father and Mother, their unvarnished concern for Rhea, their fear for rising cases in America. Her heart beat faster. She was almost home. But what with a severe case of jet lag, her mind drifting, her head nodding, counting the moments, she barely heard Kala squealing with excitement at the other end.

***

The taxi came to a halt in front of a white-washed two-storied bungalow situated in a leafy lane. Rhea glanced at the house through heavy-lidded eyes, disgorging herself. She could barely hold herself up. Her heart beat so loud she was certain it filled the entire quiet neighborhood, like a beat of festive drums at a mela. Her enthusiasm was evident. She had made it after a harrowing journey, days morphing into nights, she had lost count of time. The decision for Rhea to return home had been hers alone. She had managed to fight the infamous chaos, walking endlessly, pockets of no traffic to epic traffic, snarling crowds, her lifeline – bags of chips, dried cranberries and nuts, leaving behind forever the mere slip of a birdlike girl who had flown to California from Bombay, fourteen years ago. She was a woman now.

The bulbul, no more a bulbul but a homing pigeon, was home.