Flash. Crackle. Cordite. Death.

The electric moment arced briefly across a humid Mumbai night. The mosquito flashed in an instant mortis. 
Resonating a sharp crackle before the cordite smell hit my nostril.
She won't incubate another generation with her belly distended with my blood. 

Covid 19. 
Fragile threads of RNA -- poised damocles like in an episode unfolding.
Like mosquitoes the contagion swarms and swills across the globe. Humanity is cowering in homes akin diaphanous mosquito nets, uncertain, temporary and thin in defense. Inevitability lies in the stepping out of our temporary and forced cocoons. Who will feel the bite? The russian roulette is what really bothers one. Who will survive? Inevitability? Maybe.

As I swung the bat to exterminate the mosquito, a portmanteau from two of the bard glimmered in my head

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

...As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,

They kill us for their sport.

A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
and 
Act III. Scene II.King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37

The Armchair Paradox

Heart-aches and realizations are wondrous murmurs. Unscheduled, variously encountered, and harbingers of change inevitable. 

Delicious and cloying is the inertia of rest. The warmth of the experience of a thousand languid mornings steeped like cats basking in the sun upon a tropical winter sunrise, seen from the cocoon of a sleep warmed duvet. 

Vicissitude by definition evokes those snooze button mashing reflexes. Memories ooze honey-esque to lull and dull every modicum, twinge, throb and instinct for inevitable, necessary transmutation.

The Bengali transcreation of আরামকেদারা (aaram kedara) for armchair and supine bliss is more apt than the English suggestion of mere support for the upper limbs in contrast. The trouble arises in getting off an aaram kedara. That it's wonderful? Undeniable!

So is slowly ripping a band-aid off, one hair pain twanging follicle at a time, from a progressing laceration.

Unarguably inevitable and essential. Maybe not so exhilarating. 

Just like shedding accumulated adipose, belongings, and task back-logs before a journey.

The first step that sparks of that journey of a million miles? Sweet chimera and delusion. It's rather unfashionable to dwell on the killing urge to sit right back. Straight after that step.

My landlord of the last eight years and I spoke of the chasm between the thought of change and the perspective of the hard deadline and it's sting of inevitability. In his acceptance into priesthood from laity he opined in wisdom, "...what if the armchair is just not there after I get off it?"