Observations From Lockdown in India
Am I trapped or am I free?
The first day that I heard the term social distancing, I walked barefoot for five hours around a sacred mountain with tens of thousands of Indian pilgrims, packed densely enough to warrant consistent bump-ins throughout the entirety of the route’s 14 kilometers.
Together, we traveled across the tree-lined pavement, avoiding traffic, sharp bits of litter, and cow dung. We chanted Om Namah Shivaya to Arunachala, the geographic center of our circumambulation, stoked fires with camphor, and ate rice offerings from large pots off the streets with our hands.
At that point, foreigners and Indians alike had known about the virus for a long time. In fact, for a while, we bonded over it. A local man would cough, another would yell “Coronavirus!” and everyone would laugh, or someone on the street would ask me (because I’m a foreigner), “Why don’t you wear a mask?” (His punch line was that the stores didn’t sell them.)
As confirmed cases started to surface throughout the country, authorities hung up signs about hand-washing at one of the town’s main hubs, Sri Ramana Maharshi’s ashram. The diagrams seemed familiar from the Western world, but instead of recommending that we sing the alphabet or “Happy Birthday” along with the scrub, they advised chanting the Maha Mrityunjaya…
