Dipika Kohli
By Dipika Kohli
It was still early March 2020, before the news that we were going to enter a four-years-and-counting tailspin from ‘normal’ life. When the pandemic broke, I was in Da Lat. The good part of this was, I love this hill station of Central Viet Nam. The downside was, once news spread about the complexity of ‘Coronavirus’, I couldn’t leave.
Interestingly, work took me there. A weeklong workshop. I called my part of it ‘Expanding Windows,’ and, as this happened at a fancy resort with lots of people converging, it was a chance for me to try out something new. Opening the door to the garden at the end of my on-stage part, inviting people to walk through it, and join some of the things I set up in the garden was, for me, the highlight. Me, on stage, at the workshop gig: ‘Personal growth is so, so possible. Expanding windows can become… doors.’ Some took me up on the invite.
Getting out of the room, into the sun and light, was, I think, unusual for workshops in Southeast Asia. Two participants made it a point to tell me this, beaming, and I thought, Cool.
March turned into April, and I was still in Da Lat. There was a small hotel that gave me a break rate, and I had a balcony overlooking a small green clearing. I think there was one other person there, but he never left his room. When the lockdown restrictions were lifted, I walked into the city center, and I met more people like me, who were waiting to go to their countries. Russia and Thailand, I remember. We talked in those pockets of quiet. Summer came and with it, massive North Carolina-level storms. I got a cold, an older lady gave me a coat and sweater and made two sisters who spoke amazing English come and talk to me to ask if I was okay. I was okay. I also wasn’t. By the time the autumn came, I would shift to Ho Chi Minh City, ‘waiting the pandemic out’ at a hotel at first, then moving into a flat.
Tears and laughs, this chapter of my life. I came to understand what the philosophers and poets mean when they talk about solitude. Up until then, no solo tour I’ve done came even close to the depth of quiet space and sheer aloneness I would feel in my isolation in Viet Nam. But wow, there were some moments. War veterans, for example, in Ho Chi Minh City, telling me their side of the ‘American War’ story, at isolated moments when that kind of thing simply cascades out, naturally. What a gift to get to hear them.
Viet Nam was open for the first year of the pandemic, besides the time I mentioned above when things were very new with ‘coronavirus.’ When the border closed with Cambodia, I had fifty dollars’ worth of dong (local currency), an expired credit card, zero people in the country whom I knew, not a word of Vietnamese, extremely low levels of cultural awareness, and far too much optimism that things were going to be over ‘soon.’ But in the indefinite period of waiting that followed, small decisions—Should I do laundry today? —would give way to much bigger contemplations. What is it that matters to me? Who do I want to become, next?
At first, everyone and everything was new. But kind of like starting boarding school in high school or studying abroad in Japan for a year, I knew this game, of starting from scratch. At least, a little, anyway. In time, I got to be known. In the alley where I wound up living for a year, in District 3. I’d be waving ‘hi’ to different neighbors: the family opposite my house, the two Europeans, a printer I got to know very well who took care of me when I needed to print my weekly zines and, once, a US election ballot, the young woman at the bakery I could say ‘Have a nice day’ to, the jewelry shop couple who exchanged US dollars for me, the two hotel receptionists at the first place I stayed in HCMC who said it was OK to use their address to receive a package from Ha Noi, the kids at the cafe who co-worked beside me who asked me if I like pho.
There was my neighbor who taught me how to say ‘tomato’ so I could shop for one, the sixtysomething ladies who stopped talking to me loudly in very slow English over time, changing over to almost-medium paced Vietnamese and with whom I started to crack bad jokes, strung together from the few words I knew I could pronounce and be understood. I wish I could talk about it with you in real life. There were so many stories of just being, together, in the odd pandemic reality, them, me, us. Together. The many plus sides of a collectivist culture… more to say, some other day, about that.
Recalling it reminds me how it felt to slow down. How I spent my days like this. Extended waiting, flecked with tiny, unforgettable moments that showed me a slice of life unlike anything before or since. Maybe expanding windows really can become doors.
Dipika Kohli is an author who is based in Phnom Penh. Discover her books at kismuth.com and other projects at dipikakohli.com.
