Isolation towers.

( A mind-blurb written during the covid lockdown )

Photograph by Mohini

It’s midnight. The lights are on. Is everyone’s life characterised by a fucked up sleep cycle or is that just mine ? 

On most nights midnights feel like my hour - of simple solace, of solitude. Yet, I also crave 5 am meditation mornings where the sunlight streaming in cradles a symbiosis between me and life. I need the nights, I need the mornings. Conundrum. Well, that’s me, trapped. 

Trapped in concrete jungles, what do others do? 

I imagine the energy of young children, bursting into hysterical laughter, spontaneous dance and terrible tantrums in living rooms. I picture young couples stepping on stones around each other, not wanting to let the lockdown upset the illusion of their honeymoon phase quite yet. Those is solitude, do they feel alone ? Or do they feel the most alive as they wander the expanse of their minds in a way time hasn’t offered them before ? 

Finally, I settle on an image of old love. Crumbly crinkly aged love. The kind of love that has withstood so much more than what we are all going through right now. The kind of love that knows this will pass. The kind of love that can hold its own hand, that can soothe itself, but that also knows how to soothe another.

mohini