This and that
This and that A Garuda Indonesia plane wears a protective mask to convey the importance of wearing masks, at the Soekarno-Hatta airport in Tangerang, Indonesia. This week was the time for travelling. Forced out of my bubble of security, I mingled with crowds, peered through plastic shields, touched thousands of oft-touched surfaces, fed the skin of hands copious amounts of alcohol bottled as sanitiser, filled my lungs with disinfectant vapours. Still, looking at the world outside, it felt as if Covid had gone. Seeing people merrily lugging and hauling giant bags around, playing loud videos on their mobile phones, eating out, friends slapping one another’s back, mask-less faces breathing carbon dioxide on the others’ faces, men stringing belts back in the loops of the trousers after security checks or women emptying the countless contents of their handbags for the CISF men to find the objectionable material marked in the X-ray, hundreds of questions shot up like s...