Love in the time of Corona

When the schools and colleges in the state were closed to prevent the spread of the Covid virus and Corona disease, Abdullah’s question was: “Isn’t Kovind our President?”

“It’s Covid, not Kovind, Covid-19,” said Adil, Abdullah’s son.

Adil was an undergrad, the first in the family of butchers to cross the threshold of a college. For that reason alone, he was the hero of the family. Everyone from father Abdullah at home to the remotest aunt somewhere in a Malappuram wilderness believed that Adil was a genius because he was going to be a commerce graduate in another couple of years. Adil would be the first graduate in his family. He was going to be the progenitor of a new family history. It was important these days, a new history.

This creator of the new family history had suddenly turned melancholy. Mother Aisha noticed Adil’s face losing its colour the moment the announcement came about the holidays. Abdullah had not noticed that, however. When he did notice the melancholy eventually, he wondered with unbounded anxiety whether his prodigy of a son had walked in the shadow of the Kovind virus.

“Don’t utter such ominous words with your black tongue,” Aisha berated her husband as they lay in bed waiting for sleep to visit them. “I know it’s something else,” she said with a certainty that sounded mysterious to Abdullah. “I’ll find out tomorrow. You go to sleep now.”

Aisha spoke to her son the next morning as soon as Abdullah left home. Adil was evasive. But he was the sort of a son who wouldn’t evade his mother for too long. That too, a mother like Aisha.

“You’re in love with some girl in the college?” Aisha asked after Adil had exhausted all his skills at prevarication.

Adil’s eyes shone for a moment. And then they went dim again.

“I know,” said Aisha. “Mothers always know. Who’s that lucky girl anyway?”

Adil fidgeted with his fingers.

“Love is natural, my boy,” she prodded. “Only don’t tell me that it’s a kafir girl.”

Adil’s face clouded further. And Aisha knew instantly. “So it is a kafir girl! Allah!” Is this the new history that this prodigy is going to create for the family?

“Umma, mutton.” It was that boy who was helping Abdullah in his mutton shop. Aisha went outside and took the parcel from the boy. It was a small portion of the lamb that Abdullah killed that morning in the name of Allah, Bismillah. Nothing but halal meat would ever enter Abdullah’s kitchen.

“Who is the girl?” Aisha asked returning from the kitchen promptly.

“She’s my classmate,” Adil said. “You don’t know her.”

“Doesn’t she have a name?” What she wanted to know was the girl’s religion, her caste, her family.

“Ganga,” Adil said.

“A rather forbidding name these days, my son,” she sighed. “What’s she? A Namboothiri, a Nair, what?”

“Isn’t it enough that she’s a girl?” Adil became petulant.

“Not quite, my boy,” Aisha said instantly and decisively. “Allah must will it. And she must will it too. Let Allah wait for now. What about her?”

“I don’t know,” Adil said. “I haven’t asked her.”

“Does she know that you love her?”

“I don’t think so.”

Aisha sighed. “Is it a one-way traffic?”

“If I don’t see her every day, I feel empty in my heart,” Adil said. “Isn’t that love, Umma?”

“Not necessarily,” Umma was certain. “Your mate is Allah’s choice. And Allah can’t choose a Ganga for you, I think. Not these days, at least. Anyway, this Kovind or whatever it is, may it erase this girl from your heart.”

“If it doesn’t?”

“Inshallah!” She went away.

“Allah can’t wish this,” Abdullah said as soon as Aisha told him that evening about the new history that their son was apparently forging for the butcher’s family. They were waiting for sleep to descend. They were in their bed.

“How do you know?” Aisha asked. She wanted her son to be happy at any cost. Moreover, she often wondered how some people always knew what God wanted. Their God always wants just what they want. Too facile, she thought. She fell asleep facilely. And she dreamt. In her dream the River Ganga merged into the River Meghna in Bangladesh. Is the Ganga Hindu? And the Meghna Muslim? Somebody asked standing on the bank of a river which was nameless. “If a Muslim marries a Hindu, what will happen?” The man asked the sky. “They will copulate and populate like any other couple.” The man answered his own question and then laughed uproariously. Then he approached a woman who was wearing a burka. “Make love, not war,” he said to her and lifted the veil from her face. Alas, she had no face.

Aisha turned in her bed restlessly. She knew that Adil was turning in his bed restlessly. Mothers always knew when their sons’ sleep was disturbed.

The Ganga’s destiny was to flow indifferently, absorbing all loves and hates into her roiled waters.