Monotony sets in
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| Favorite Section of the Newspaper |
Day 1: Glad to be home. Parents relieved.
Day 2: I take the car out again. Had started learning
driving from Dad last week. From training ground to actual roads, 2nd gear to
3rd. I return and mom lays out the Yoga mat. Post breakfast, I sit with
newspaper cartoons and crosswords.
Day 3: Driving Practice continues. Back home, time for
Yoga with mom. A quick Sudoku session. Garfield, funny as always. Calvin &
Hobbes, not so much today. Work from Home begins. In the evening, I check my
Spanish course's exam date-sheet. Serious Spanish studying begins.
Day 4: Same as day 3. I see a new Akshay Kumar- Fortune foods advertisement.
Love it! Watching on loop now.
Day 5: Much the same. 3rd to 4th gear. Braking.
Turning. Yoga. Work from Home. Aprendo español.
Day 6: Same. A pattern emerges for coming days.
Day 7: All the same. Work meetings all week have been on
impact and mitigation and readiness in tough times of COVID-19 era. Stay up all
night to finish Spanish assignment. All done, ready to post tomorrow.
A Week of Firsts
Day 8: First weekend arrives. No driving today. Missed
Yoga too. Parents blame me, I blame assignment deadline.
Day 9: First ever nation-wide curfew day. Cleaned my dressing
table today- arranged all my cosmetics and jewels in neat lines and cute
stacks. Evening session of community clapping is like a never before
feeling.
Day 10: First day without newspaper. Mom tries to
cheer me up by deciding to cook different dishes every day. Her first
dish- Bisi Bille Huli Anna.
Day 11: How adorable are Jimmy Fallon's daughters!!
Mom's special today- sun dried microwave baked potato
chips. 8 p.m.- 21 days' national lockdown announced, starting midnight.
Day 12: First day of lockdown
- Video chat with baby niece and yoga are now morning constants.
- A colleague skypes to remind me that I shouldn't be working today on account of Gudi Padwa holiday for Mumbai folks. Since the word 'holiday' has lost its meaning, I continue working.
- Have a good lunch, my favorite vegetable Tori is in the menu today.
- Dinner video chat with uncle & aunt who are cooking something exotic- Beetroot Tikki & some firangi salad!
- Fizzy Goblet- a pretty shoes company- suggests on Instagram to use this time to do some coloring.
Day 13: Watching movie Super 30. It is raining tonight.
Smell of geeli mitti 💚
Day 14: Vegetable Dalia's Cutlet in
breakfast. Pav Bhaji in Dinner.
[Feel the need to really say this- I'm extremely thankful to God and trying so hard from
writing anything on the real sadness that the world is in].
Day 15: First episode of Mahabharat on Doordarshan
[Also, cannot stop thinking of millions across the globe who are affected.
Never lived in a constant fear. Please God, help].
Losing my nerves
Day 16: I text 15 of my friends and colleagues: 'hi' and 'hope you are safe'. All of them are. They ask me the same. My
reply, same. Sudden bouts of "how-are-you",
check.
Day 17: I see a "to-be-bride"
wish-list/meme and send it to 3 friends captioning "This is so me".
Turns out I texted to 2 of my friends and to my mom. #textfail, check.
My mom is happy that my mind is on "the right
track". Oops🙈
Day 18: Have no memory of the day...
Day 19: Navratri's Ashtami a.k.a. Kanjak, a.k.a. Poori-Chole-Halwa day. Had multiple halwa servings throughout the
day!! Binge eating, check.
Day 20:
- Morning- I am upset at my mom for not waking me
up on time (although I never wake up on time and mock her for treating me
like a school kid who needs to be woken up on time)
- In between- Work From Home
- Night- Mom catches a tear in my eye as
I see Bharat (in a scene where Bharat doesn't know that Ram has been ordered
exile) #RamayanOnDD
- Later that night- I am completely mad that Nattu Kaka and Bagha are protesting against poor
Jethalal and now stupid reporter Anarkali is running a smear campaign
against Jetha (completely forgetting that Jethalal's
problematic life is the very premise of Tarak Mehta ka Oolta
Chasma)
- Late late night- I find out that my
flatmates back in Mumbai are in even tougher situation, now that the
building has reported a patient and entire society there is under
quarantine.
This I guess was my body reacting to the mental
toll of global tragedies, confinement and uncertainty that I had been suppressing for
many weeks now.
This is not only about the last 20 days. For me, it
all started in January, when my office canceled a work trip because our China
colleagues couldn't travel due to a "flu" and we were advised to
"rethink our travel plans", and when in February our European bosses
started talking of business contingency plans; also when towards the start of
March my parents said if I could stay back after the Holi long weekend to
ultimately when I boarded that train back home, praying all through the 6 hours
of that journey that I don't get infected.
My many years of wish 'to be with my parents and
work from home' had come true, and that was what gave me a sense of happiness; masking the sadness- precisely the reason for this
mental descent.
