A page from the Covid 19 days

 

It was a scary time. This is what I wrote in my diary in April 2020 when COVID-19 was on the rampage.

What does it mean to live through a pandemic, knowing that many will die and most will suffer? It’s a strange, almost surreal feeling—perhaps not unlike standing in the middle of a war.

You’re so overwhelmed by the present moment that the future becomes completely unknowable. You feel powerless, carried by forces beyond control. It’s like standing before the Himalayas and realising how small you truly are.

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, my mind feels still. I’m not thinking about what lies ahead, nor am I revisiting bad memories. Instead, I find myself reminiscing about good moments. I have no regrets, because I know life has no inherent meaning.

In times of crisis like these, I see it clearly—meaning is not fixed. It’s shaped by our vulnerable malleable minds. What feels important or insignificant is simply what our emotions choose to magnify or diminish. Even the future, should it come, may feel muted after so much loss all around. 

The virus has changed us. The future isn’t what it used to be. The past feels distant, altered. The sense of time itself has shifted. 

It is as if we have to recraft ourselves, reframe all our perspectives and look at a new life.

 

How badly we design life?

 

Life is all entropy—an unending stream of turbulence. You’re constantly battling time: sometimes rushing to grow up, sometimes trying to slow its relentless pace, and at other times just struggling against its overwhelming hold. Time can feel like an adversary. So can nature. It offers moments of breathtaking beauty, but also demands that you protect yourself from its harsher forces—rain, heat, storms, landslides, earthquakes.

In all this chaos, people could be—should be—the least hostile part of the equation. But modern society builds systems, services, and economies that push us to compete against one another. And that competition, more often than not, leads to our mutual unraveling.

Picture yourself on a fast-moving slide of time, slipping uphill or downhill, never truly in control. And while you’re trying to hold on, you're asked to make others lose.