The Panoor House – as we call it is my father’s sister’s house. She is a very active and energetic lady for a women of her age. I call her Muthamma (fathers sister) and her husband Muthappan. They got married when she was 15 and slowly through their journey, came up the Panoor House. With her 5 kids, their spouses and their kids, this house is always filled with happiness and laughter.
I come here time to time. My grandmother (Muthamma’s and my dads mother) stays here. Before I come here, I used to always call up my Muthamma and ask her one question: Who all are there in Panoor? I would anyways come but still it was a mandatory question.
March 2nd week. First week of COVID-19 in India. This time my brother and I came here to visit our grandmother. But, the morning we reached here, she passed away. Panoor House was fully in tears of my near and dear ones. I had never before seen my people without smiles. That morning my father and mother flew from Dubai to Calicut. Then, another two hours of waiting in queue and getting their temperatures checked from airport. Apparently my mother got interviewed by a prominent Malayalam news channel about the situation inside the airport. They hired an airport taxi all the way to Kasargod. When my parents came to Panoor House, they were in masks. They did the rituals in masks.
The rituals consisted of family in wet clothes (soon after bath), cooking raw but sieved rice and keeping it for the crows. Belief is that the spirit would come in the form of crows and eat the food on banana leaf. So you need to clap to attract the attention of the crows. This ritual is called bali idal. This has to be done for 12 days and the entire family eats vegetarian food. Rice should be eaten only once a day. So other two times would be wheat/broken wheat/rice flakes.
By this time, corona virus started to impact India. My parents hadn’t stepped out of the house since the time they entered this house. This is new because my father is a socially involved person and he is always visiting or meeting people. But this time was different. I started working from home. My brother’s classes got cancelled. Hardly anyone came to meet us – mostly because of the fear of the pandemic. So, 15 of us (just the family, kids and grandkids) in the house got self-isolated.
Favourite pastimes during the isolation period:
A different way of living from everything I have experienced before. Starting to enjoy time away from phones and closer to people. In contrast, right now social distancing is actually bringing you closer to the people close to you.
Into the World of Happiness 
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