I open John Ruskin’s “Work” which he delivered at the Working Men’s Institute at Campbell. I try to tempt myself with the deception that I would enjoy preparing for this class as the topic of class disparity is close to my heart. I start reading through it but after the first paragraph I feel that my heart is sinking down in a pool of mud water. The news of a friend’s father moving to the stage of being on ventilator clogs my view. I shut down the window with Ruskin’s “Work” on view. “I have to prepare for the class” is what I remind to myself half-heartedly while shutting down that window. I open my Facebook account from which I usually remain logged out these days. I see the status of a friend about his father passing away. I get scared and call him. He does not respond. I open another folder which contains reading material about Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. For a tiny fraction of an unknown moment I get excited about preparing for this class. This is a perfect contemplation about the contemporary times. I speak aloud with myself about the parallels which I will want to present in front of my students to show how relevant and universal literature is and how absurdity has seeped deep down in our structures. I am aware that I will do this while being conscious of my physical appearance on Zoom or Meet. The fraction of moment dies. The excitement diminishes. It is absurd. Preparing to teach the absurdity is absurd. I put my head down on the keyboard. QWERTY shivers. Perhaps. I need to prepare for this class as well. My mother calls me from the lounge and asks me to give my father his daily dose of afternoon medicine for Parkinson’s. I shudder on getting a reminder about the preconditions he has with almost non-existent immunity. I will give him medicine and come back to the dining table, my temporary office table, to prepare for the class. I force myself to remain honest with my profession. I don’t want to but I have to. There are many factors involved in this forceful fractured resolve including individuals, structure and money which I don’t know if I will get after the month or not. My mind reprimands me for being a coward. I fight within myself and with myself. The voices grow in my head. I want to cry. I can’t. There is not enough space available at ‘home’. I may use the toilet as my space later and I can cry to myself over there but, for the moment, I need to prepare for at least one of the four classes I will be teaching in the coming week. Also, I need to equip myself with Meet, Zoom, Jitsi, Microsoft excel and answer forty messages on the official group and ten official emails that I received in the last thirty minutes. Crying can wait. It should. I open my mailbox, read the first email and start writing a response to it but in the middle of it I begin to feel that my head will explode and the words start pollinating on the screen. I shut down the lid of my laptop. I send in a message to my partner asking him to speak with me as and when he can, he doesn’t answer. The evening passes, the night falls and the next day begins. I reopen the Waiting for Godot folder in my laptop again with a cup of self-made tea reminding myself that four days have passed and today I will have to prepare for at least one of the four classes.