I hear the neighborhood children just past my tall, shards-of-glass covered mega cement wall playing cricket, with shouts and screams and wailings, occasionally punctuated by sharp, staccato reprimands of an adult. (When I hear the wailing, I say a little prayer just hoping that it’s not a broken arm or leg because that would almost be unbearably untenable now with the hospitals filled with dying old people on ratty respirators in squalid conditions – people have risked beatings and fines to escape the filth of government hospitals.)
The kids play rough, by themselves, unsupervised, bullied and picked on by older brothers and neighborhood kids, but they get over it. No snowflakes here. They are supposed to be in lockdown, but the tired parents with 4 -5 kids in a small 10×10 room are desperate for a little peace for their minds to quietly turn to fear.

The kids had been playing cricket, imaginary cricket, without a ball for two days. How do I know that? About two days ago, there came an uncharacteristically frantic banging on my locked gate. It stunned Devin and me into silence, just looking at each other, with that look, “What on earth could those kids want?” Before we came to our senses, the kids had left the gate as quickly as they had arrived. The next day, I saw a ball, the size of a baseball (e.g. cricket ball) in our backyard, and a few hours later, I was sitting at my desk when outside my window I heard children’s voices very close, they had climbed over my glass-shard cement wall, and were cautiously creeping around. Then, I put two and two together.
“Baccha!” (child) I call out the window to them.

They freaked!

The two little boys, maybe 9 or 10 years old, scrambled back up the seven foot massive wall (the drop on the other side is at least 9 feet! I don’t know how they did it!)
“Achha, accha, ye thik hai!” (Ok, ok, it’s good!) I’m trying to sound calm and reassuring but I feel like I sound more like my old matronly neighbor from childhood catching me picking flowers from her flower bed.
They were over the wall before I could even get outside.
Devin and I picked up the ball and followed the loud and raucous shouts to the cricket game where about 5 or 6 little boys milled around, swinging a plank of wood at an imaginary ball. We tossed the ball back to them, a 10ish-year-old ran to catch it like an outfielder catching a fly ball.

I don’t feel guilty; I feel blessed and with gratitude that I could see this coming, unlike so many day laborers in Delhi and other big cities who got completely blindsided by Modi and his understandably short-noticed edict. Like the demonetization of 2016, which I also lived through with India, when the hammer of Modi came down overnight and suddenly the next morning, India woke up to 85% of the money in their mattresses totally useless.

About a week before the lockdown I began to stock pile goods, I could feel something was brewing, and I wanted to be ready for whatever. I’d seen Modi during the demonetization; I remember my mother stock piling around the Bay of Pigs, in our cellar in New Hampshire, my father proudly showing me 5 pound bags rice. I’m sure I stock piled after 9/11 – probably that day…immediately. We all feared we were in for an invasion.

I began buying bags of 1 kg rice and dried beans, pasta, sugar, cans of coconut cream and dried fruits and nuts, long-life milk. From Amazon.in I ordered boxed Kraft macaroni and cheese for Devin as well as ready-meals that you just heat the pouch in hot water, and other canned fruits and vegetables. I bought toilet paper (stocking up on that very essential item like a good American) and paper towels. The day before the fateful morning of the lockdown, I bought an extra 5 gallon tank of propane; and I had 50 gallons of bottle RO drinking water. I bought fruits and vegetables at the veggie market that I could count on having a long shelf life i.e. potatoes, carrots, cabbage, apples, pomegranate. I would use produce that goes bad faster up first.

The next day when lockdown was announced, I was ready.

Today, I am just using up the last of my veggies. We are down to two pomegranates, and a head of cabbage. My last orders from Amazon.in were turned back at the border, so sadly we will be out of coffee soon.

I haven’t been out of the house yet, except to “sneak” under cover of dark to dump the garbage about 50 feet away in a back lot, the garbage dump of the neighborhood. (Oh, and to return the cricket ball to the kids.)

There are supposed to be essential stores open like veggie and fruit marts, but I don’t really need anything, and I don’t think they are open. We can stay in for the next 12 days or whatever and will be fine. Devin ran out of beedies and went to look for some. One day he found the corner shop open. A few days later, even that was closed, it was just the kids and cows playing on the empty Parikrama Marg – main road – all to themselves.

Every day for the last several weeks I wake up with insightful thoughts and pithy ideas running through my head that I must write down, but usually never do. Today was different. Lockdown – Day…..(just a minute, I have to check Twitter….) Day 8!