A New Normal Aria

Photo of Renu Arora by Andy Martinez

On Finding Freedom

Renu Arora

Scrolling back in time

Soap
Nurses
Toilet roll

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Frontline workers
Clapping
Covid curve

Words on the tip of our sanitised tongues as we spun through the whirr of
kaleidoscopic times
yearning for friends, meals out, theatre trips.

How quickly familiar turned to frightening.

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A doctor returns home from a twelve-hour shift.
Drained. Tearful.

A waiter, who worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant in the bustle of the West
End,
now makes home on the capital’s empty tarmac.

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On March 29th, 2017, the curtain came down on my old life.
Hit by a bus and dragged under its wheel
my foot was crushed.

On March 16th, 2020, theatre curtains across the globe fell.
Hit by a virus, held in its vice,
stages went quiet.

We sheltered, in unison, for fear of being overrun.
Kidnapped by a particle for which there was no ransom.

Living on the edges of the pandemic, we entered into a lottery-tango with the
outside world
plastic covering our bread
paper housing our letters
cardboard encasing our cereal
protecting our food from decay
or were they a meal wrapped in malady?
But I had already inhabited that box surrounding 1.8 million histories whose
candles could have burned out
in a heartbeat,
so
many
did.

I knew the dislocation of navigating a racing world from a snail’s pace.

I knew the chasm of a life once lived, and a life not yet imagined.

As we all held our breath whilst each country closed its doors and dominoed
down, I was overcome with an almost immediate sense of reprise. I knew these
waters.

Well aware in a moment, everything could change.
And well aware that, in a moment, it did.

At 6.15pm on the day of the accident my lockdown began.

And I know the footprint of grieving for an old life, whilst opening the stage door
to the new.

2020 restored my vision and brought everything into focus.

Lockdown had unlocked my world.
The world’s silence opened my voice.
The world’s stillness opened my strength.
And the world’s sorrow opened my wings.

The hunger for the human story is highest during times of crisis.
And my lockdown would become a hammock for a stillness that the world had
never known.

After my dark
and the world’s dark
when the theatre went dark
and I thought I would never perform again…

Scrolling

I’m Principal Artist at the RSC!

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I’m composing The Burgundy Book…

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There’s a Rumi quote: ‘Being a candle is not easy: in order to give light, one must
first burn.’

I had burned. From the inside out.

In my near-death experience

I touched light.

New-normal is my aria.

Listen also to Renu on BBC Radio 4’s Sidweways

Renu Arora

An actor, singer, writer and composer