Short Story: Wake Up! And Smell the Coffee! By Vidya Gunavanthe

This short story by Vidya Gunavanthe is set during the COVID era and is an interesting take on the paranoia among common people owing to the information overload on television and radio.

Deepa Burde sat sipping her morning coffee, drinking in its fragrance. She looked up at her mother who entered the kitchen.

“Deepa, please get rid of this bag as soon as you’ve had your coffee,” her mother said in a panic note. Deepa finished her coffee quickly and stood up, puzzled at the alarm in her mother’s voice.

“What’s wrong with the bag Ma?” she asked, wondering what had got into her mother. Her usually calm and composed mother Shaanth appeared most distraught. Shaanth meant calm but her mother was anything but that, at this moment. Being bang in the middle of a scary pandemic was certainly telling on most normal folks.