ELSEWHERE. Waiting for Ebola

The other day I had a very pleasant lunch with someone I was meeting for the first time, in her home. I’ll call her Jan. She and her husband James live in a beautiful airy house by the sea, a few miles north of Elsewhere. The properties on either side belong to various millionaires, including one Indian royal family.

The reason we met is that Jan is a member of a book club in London, where she and her husband spend part of the year. At that book club she met a cousin of mine, a great book-lover, who lives in London too. When my cousin heard that Jan lives in Rhode Island, she put us in touch with one another. As the two of us chatted over the lunch she had made, I learnt that she and James had once lived in Delhi. We quickly established so many points of reference — Fabindia, the IIC, Lodhi Gardens — that it was like meeting an old friend. Except that we’d never even heard of one another until two months ago!

When she asked me for food preferences, I said soup and salad were what I liked best. So she made a delicious cream of asparagus soup with other veggies added in, followed by a plated salad. She placed a big scoop of crabmeat at the centre of a halo of crisp greens and deep crimson slices of tomato. Three golden-cherry tomatoes lit up each plate like tiny orange lights. For dessert there was ice cream and fresh peach halves.

In the course of our conversation, Jan mentioned that she was worried about her daughter. She was in Liberia, reporting on the outbreak of Ebola there. It was hard to believe, sitting in Jan’s sunlit living room, that on the other side of the planet, people were falling sick, dying and passing on a disease that may, very soon, reshape the future of humanity. Two weeks have passed since my lunch. On the radio, these days, the word “pandemic” keeps coming up. I wonder: how much longer is it going to be before we all know someone connected to Ebola?

It used to be, when we travelled, we left behind the country from which we came, to immerse ourselves in the country to which we went. But today, with transcontinental flights and electronic gadgets, we can live simultaneously in several worlds. My cousin in London connects me in Elsewhere to Jan in her seaside home, to Jan’s daughter in Liberia and to you, reading this column in India.

Six months from now, who knows? International travel might grind to a halt. Quarantines might be imposed. Whole countries might be isolated. The virus cannot travel electronically, but fear can. Which may be a good thing! Maybe the thread of fear that connects Jan’s daughter to me, to you and ultimately everyone everywhere will force us to work together to beat this common enemy. Maybe this time next year, I’ll still be writing about cherry tomatoes by the seaside. Maybe.

(MANJULA PADMANABHAN, author and artist, writes about her parallel life in Elsewhere, US, in this fortnightly column >marginalien.blogspot.in)

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