One more night

Last night, we got our last box packed. We got almost all that we would want into the boxes. And we threw the rest. The kitchen is essentially left the same and anyone can cook a quick meal there for there are provisions and water and the refrigerator and the stove still connected.

The rooms look empty but not quite as the furniture still remains exactly as before, for we leave everything behind. In better times, we might have been able to find some young couple or some people from the furniture market take them but now, since the lockdown rules are stricter with the festival just round the corner, it is a no go. Having the furniture around is nice as the house doesn’t look or feel empty still and we can still use the bedrooms as everything is intact.

The cat is boarded at the veterinary until he can be shipped to our country and we cat-proof our house back home. It was sad taking him to the vets wrapped in a blanket so he wouldn’t get scared until we had to put him in his crate at the vets, where he is boarded. We don’t want to think of the cramped spaces he is in. It is a grim reminder of our life for the past two months after the lockdown has been declared and all travel restricted.

A cyclone rages back home and flooding occurs on the Eastern coast of India. We go down South, so perhaps it is not much more severe than the monsoons that thump our coasts of a mid summer. We hope the rain will bring the COVID numbers down, but who knows ?

It is 4 am now and the muezzin has given the morning call for prayer. The birds sing sweetly on my moringa tree- perhaps it is the last time I will hear them. I need to remember to feed them and put the water out for them. Of all the stray cats, only one remains- his timidity to venture out of the compound kept him safe from the man who catches cats. He will hopefully find someone else to feed him.

My plants have been donated to the Filipina families who live near mine as they are plant lovers. But the trees we planted over the 15 years we were here, will remain and will hopefully survive the very harsh summer that is yet to come just as we hope to survive the tough hours ahead.