Pulling Weeds

The asphalt in my driveway needs re-paving but its a project I am not able to even contemplate these days. The times as they are don't promote such thoughts for me. I am occupied with the safety of my elderly parents in Kolkata, their mental health being home-bound for an indefinite period of time without the social contact they had enjoyed all these years. Closer home, when J wants to meet her friends from high school in a park - I am grateful she shares her plans with me and will even defer to my decision to go or not go. Saying no to such a simple request feels inhumane - so whatever my irrational fears for her safety I say yes ofcourse you should go see your friend and then worry privately. 

And at such times, I find myself pulling weeks from the cracks in the asphalt when nature's gushes patches of exuberant green in what would look like unyielding earth. So I tackle these weeds one area at a time until the sun gets too hot or my limbs feel sore. There is a parallel in my mind to the present times - there is this virus that does what it does and we try to defend the best we can, you control it one place and it blooms somewhere else. This country particularly seems unable to achieve much control anyway so it is like the weeds in the cracks of my asphalt growing with abandon where it can. My efforts to manage nature's entropy fail spectacularly but there is an illusion of things being more in control thanks to them.