I have made so many records during this lockdown and I’m breaking them as I write this post. For example, I haven’t stepped out of my house from the 21st of March, 2020. It is the 65th day of the record today and tomorrow, I will break it by making it 66. Even after a C-sec delivery, I tried breaking down the hold of orthodox thoughts (prevalent in my families) and went out to watch a movie before Sakura had turned a month old. Sometimes all this staying indoors for so long seems like one long dream and no one seems capable of waking me up. I have broken records of sleeping only for 5 hours, and sleeping for 5 hours on consecutive days, and so on. I have more respect for people who permanently work from home and manage kids and home all too well. Have realized that’s not my cup of tea and it definitely inhibits my thinking, productivity, creativity, etc.
People seem to have had a big realization during this lockdown: they have figured out the right/perfect/new ways to live. I did try to introspect many a times but didn’t reach anywhere. Just like my swimming classes which went too poorly, the only thing that I have been able to do is to kick and float through this lockdown. Some people have worked enormously during these times – the delivery people, the medical/paramedical staff, all the support departments operating on the ground and also those that have supported us online.
On the 9th of April, we had placed an order on Swiggy and on the 10th of April, we were surprised to read the following snippet of an article about “lockdown heroes” in ‘The Telegraph’:
It brought smiles to our faces because (as you may have guessed) he was the one who had delivered those sweets to us the previous day and was featured in a newspaper but we were also saddened by the fact that we were his only customers that day. This reminded me of my Mother’s words who used to say (to impart some financial understanding to us) – “Most of the people work too hard for too little in this country”.
Here’s a fun little video and as Sandi Toksvig says ‘Be Kind’.
