Lockdown Diaries

On completion of 2 whole months of lockdown and WFH in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought of penning my thoughts.

Social media has been rife with latest updates on the pandemic, the political situation, the categorization of various zones and what it entails, how certain sects are violating the norms of social distancing more than others, patriotism in the form of completing tasks given by our PM, nature mending itself due to this unexpected respite, cooking, cleaning, self-grooming, fitness, learning, spiritualism, psychoanalysis are the new hot skills etc.

Initially, there was a lot of struggle to manage so many tasks on our own. We have been so used to domestic help in India that those who have never undertaken any household duties were caught napping. As people gradually settled into their new normal, there was more focus on where the next meal on the table would come from. Some lucky households had the inhabitants doing the chores in a round robin fashion or distributed them. Whereas other households still struggled with traditional “roles” for each member. The person who was working from home was always “working” whereas the others picked up the backlog at home. If only the working person had focused more on helping the other members, there would have been much more balance all around.

Managing children at home was another herculean task. Most parents felt that the kids needed to be engaged all the time with meaningful activities and enrolled them in various online activities. Personally, I felt they should be involved in the domestic activities and taught life skills which some of us adults had never picked up. This is a disrupting phase in all our lives, and the children need to learn to cope with it in their own way – not in the way we want them to. Schools struggled to get their systems ready for online classes, at least in India. But soon many gaps came to the fore as they found that the children were distracted by the new-found access to digital collaboration tools.

Zoom & other video conferencing tools, FB watch parties, WhatsApp video calls, all became a rage with even the non-IT folks. However, all soon realized that there is not much to share in these meetings – after all how long can one talk about what they cooked today, what kind of family drama unfolded and which workout they followed. Each day is merging into another with such monotony that there is not much to share with others anymore. After having exhausted all means of such distraction in absence of pubs, malls, travel, or eating out, hopefully people will finally turn within themselves to find solace. The only place that is agog with activity is one’s inner world. There is so much introspection, observation, epiphany happening there – if only people will take the time to do it. It has the power to not only build our immunity but make us stronger to face the obvious repercussions of this extended lockdown and history-changing events. All this thinking is also very disturbing and one should step past the inevitable regrets, guilt, depression, or suicidal thoughts. The real metamorphosis is not of the nature, or the economy, or human relations – the real evolution happening is that of the Human Being. This evolution will definitely entail writing new rules for civilization, relationships, work, economy, etc.

Trying to apply all that worked before COVID-19 (e.g. taxes) is a fruitless move – need to anticipate the changing dynamics in every aspect. Maybe family members are colleagues now and colleagues are family? Time to rethink all that we have accepted as the immutable facts till now.