Santhy Balachandran gets poignant on a world gripped by Corona

The words that are trending are self-isolation, quarantine and social distancing, apart from wash your hands, and celebs are at the forefront of spreading the message of taking necessary precautions against the coronavirus.

Paapam Cheyyathavar Kalleriyatte

actor Santhy Balachandran shared a poignant, angsty note about when she got a new passport a decade back at the Indian Embassy in

London

. “I looked at the expiration date in 2020 and wondered about the places life would take me in the intervening decade,” she wrote.

“Today, I received my new passport while self-isolating at home in Cochin. And it feels strange to receive a document that opens the door to the world at a time when strict travel restrictions are in place and life has almost come to a standstill globally. I flip through the visa stamps in my old passport, and what should have been a sweet exercise in nostalgia is replaced by the unnerving realisation that practically all of the countries I have loved living in and exploring in the past decade are united in a war that most of us did not anticipate. With not much else to do at the moment, I (optimistically) fast forward a decade to when I will have to renew my passport again, and return to musing: where we will be as a collective... Hopefully, living in a world that has learned its lessons from the Corona pandemic: a more compassionate world that honours how fragile life is, and recognises how connected we all are despite the walls — physical and metaphorical — we try to build,” she says.