Pan 4 - When every minute was felt......

This was the whole of 21st March '2020.

Or rather it started from the 20th night itself, as her reporting time was 3 am, and she lives an hour away from the airport.

I was like "how will you go at that time deech?" and she's like "chill ma, I'll get a cab, or someone will drop me, I'll figure, don't worry".

I was like "no diksha, please....get a two way cab if needed, but please get someone to come with you....it's 2 at night ".

Knowing diksha, I should have known better. She had a literal farewell scene....her entire group of friends came to the airport to see her off .......nine of them, in two cars !! I couldn't believe it..... I was telling her how in my whole life that hadn't happened to me :)

Then the scene shifts to the airport. 

She said it was like a zombie town. Hardly any people.... and after check-in they wouldn't let her even go through security until the very end. Spooky she said.

Then she sent me this picture, from within the plane.

Literally all seats empty, the plane had all of five passengers on it. Look at that guy in a full hazmat suit. She said even his dark glasses were a couple of inches away from his face.  In fact she said when she looked up and saw him walking towards her, for a moment she felt like she was in some kind of surreal sci-fi movie. 

Flight done, it was now an eight hour layover at Singapore.

And those were the most tense hours, atleast for me :). While I kept messaging her intermittently, and I told a friend it was to keep her morale up, I realized later it was likely me needing it more.  I couldn't completely get away from the thought of how narrow this was, and implications of something going wrong.

Plus I had the delicate job of letting her know that once she's here she would need to be in self isolation for 14 days.

She made that easier for me. Sitting in Singapore airport for eight hours likely gave her a real feel of the covid atmosphere, for somewhere in between I got a message saying "I'm beginning to feel I might get quarantined when I get back".

That was my cue...I was like "well, best be prepared for that possibility.  And if not that, it's definitely self isolation.....from the moment you land....it'll be five feet distance".

And she's like "you mean I can't hug you when I see you? I'm not following that rule ma"

And that broke me. I could feel the tears rolling down all of their own volition. I thought I had done a good job of keeping my stress at bay, but I guess there are moments it needs out, and this was one such.

I literally hadn't moved from my couch all of those eight hours. I was counting minutes to when her flight would take off. 

At 5 pm she messages saying she's boarded.....and I start to breath again.

I had decided to go to my parents place only after her flight had taken off. So much for that......I'm with them, chilling over chai... a whole two hours later, and imagine my utter shock when I get a  "hellloooo bro" from diksha.

My first thought was wondering if they had introduced wifi on aircrafts....my mind couldn't wrap itself around any other possibility ......and a couple of minutes later I get "lol, still here ma".

And the minutes started to tick again :)