To the face mask, with love

Dearest Mask, We humans are queer creatures of habit. You came into our lives when everything, everyone and all that we deemed normal were evading us. That qualifies you as our friend yet, it took us days of practice, reminders, fear and enforcing to let you embrace us.

Over the days, as our enemy got stronger, you strengthened your protective hold on our lives from being obscured between medical supplies to deserving a pride of place alongside the phone and wallet.

We were in this together, but it is you we clung to fight for us, to hold cover as we stood uncertainly facing the enemy.

When we had you in our confidence and were assured that only you can safely complete our outdoor attire, we let you wander into our world of Fashion. While your blue warrior stood tall, keeping up the fight, your variations in colour, pattern and design added comfort. For some, your mere presence, dangling about one ear or resting about their chin was reassuring enough.

We loved you, we hated you, but we could not ignore you.

Today, the enemy is losing ground after your power partner — vaccine — joined our fight. Having approached the springtime of the pandemic — a place far from the apprehensive darkness but yet inching into the freedom of light, a time when we are emerging into the sunlight, getting back into the classrooms, real meetings and restaurants — we continue to embrace you, even after the masking rules have been relaxed!

A friend who spent an evening at the beach, his mask and apprehensions down, was caught in a fix when he misplaced his mask. He wondered if he could go into a store without a mask to buy a mask. Without your reassuring presence, he cut his day short and returned home.

Face blind

We don’t mind the fact that your presence has got us face blind. My son’s dentist whom we were referred to

during the thick of the pandemic is a cheery gentleman behind his double protection of surgical blue and a contraption resembling a gas mask. During one of our recent visits, he showed me an article that appeared in this newspaper. I wondered who the gentleman featured beside the write-up was. “That’s me! Minus these masks,” he quipped.

Trying to get back to what we always deemed as normal, but with the mask still firmly in place is a challenge but a safe one indeed. Being at a networking seminar hiding most of the face behind a mask, is a difficult place to be, complained a friend. It was mostly trying to recognise, gauge emotions from the only exposed part of the face — the eyes. “Would we recognise them later or still worse, would they recognise us?” she worried. But with the dark times we have trod and the uncertainty of all that it held still fresh in our minds, the very gratitude of being out and about and the safe habit of masking up that these pandemic times have inculcated within us, it will be a long while before we bid you adieu.

Together we have been through days in the blues. We cannot mask how much we appreciate your presence in our lives, your protective support and the multilayered fight you put up for us.

Wishing you more power as we together tread up to the very end of the tunnel,

Thankfully Yours.