By Ramneek Kaur Malhotra
(This creative writing piece emerged from ‘Sampark- Emotional well-being for covid warriors’ session)
Breathing is different from respiration. It’s a physical process that merely involves taking in and giving out of air. The actual life process is respiration – which takes place in each living cell – whereby oxygen is used to break down food and release energy for the body. Breathing is a small part of respiration.
As you can guess, I am a biology teacher and have been teaching this to several students year after year. But that minute, these words seemed right, and yet so wrong and I realised how foolish I was! Can we respire without breathing? All that knowledge and gyaan seemed useless tonight, and all I wanted was – for us to be able to breathe through the night – breathe enough to respire!
I had been locked in my room, self-isolated, for some days now, and was desperately wanting to step out into the fresh air to breathe. My claustrophobia was at its peak, but I was cautious to prevent the disease from spreading to my family. I was waiting for the door to be knocked for with my dinner plate. I had started feeling hungry, a sign of feeling well, when suddenly I heard voices – voices of people that concerned me. I peeped out of the door, making sure that the door was just opened a wee bit, merely enough for me to see my husband and daughter with a thermometer and an oximeter in their hands. My husband had called before from the office saying that he felt a tingling in his throat, and that he would give his test on the way back. But he was feeling alright with no fever, and good oxygen level meaning that the checkboxes were all ticked. But when I looked at their faces, the readings could clearly be read there – obviously not a good omen. I sensed the tension creeping up.
To be continued…..
