It’s been close to a month now since we were unceremoniously hurtled into this lockdown mode. Unprepared, uncertain, the nation reeled under the imminent threat of all that it would entail. While we gripe and complain – safe within our homes which are stockpiled to the ceiling, guaranteed to pull us through a flood or famine – we get into the mode of binge-eating on chips while binge-watching on Netflix, all with enough reason to validate being a couch potato without any of the guilt! Life, clearly, could have been a lot worse! As three billion people across the world stay in-house, our planet is experiencing a phenomenon never experienced before. Modern life, as we know it, has largely been put on hold with millions indoors, while the outside natural world continues to rumble on, showing signs of having benefitted from our absence. While we all agree that it was not something any of us was expecting or equipped for, the lockdown has perhaps served us in some ways… 

Family Time: Cursed or blessed, sans recourse, we are spending more time with family than ever before. While wives are adding to the already long list of irritants and ways in which her husband can actually press her buttons – all of them evidently, the poor male species is learning that her sharp tongue, sarcasm and rapier wit, are all honed to a polished scale of debilitation! Though all this family time seems revitalizing and refreshing, there are many who may disagree and simply call it excessive and exhausting. For years, we’ve sought elaborate travel plans and vacations to far out exotic and exclusive places, to spend, what we called ‘quality time’ with family… well, now, we have been given the same, for a prolonged period and to boot, without the expense or the travails of travel. If time with family was the end goal of that vacation, you have it now, my dear! While matrimony could take a hit, divorce lawyers may live it up post the lockdown!  

Home-Schooling: Though home-schooling and online studying may be working out brilliantly for the kids – with enough breaks in between treats, threats and the coaxing – it seems parents were hardly ready for this. In the words of a young boy, schooled in-house by his mom, “It’s not going well! My mom is getting stressed out; she’s also getting confused. We took a break so my poor mom can figure out this stuff we are doing in school, but I’m telling you, it is not going good at all! Well, I certainly cannot let on what happened when Dad tried helping out – save to say that after this Coronavirus scare, teachers are definitely going to be valued a lot more than ever before!” Gone will be the days of simple apple polishing, you will have parents lining up with chocolates and wine, vying to be the teacher’s pet instead! Inundated with more school-work, deadlines, courses and assignments, parents are desperately praying for the end of school year as the discovery and trial of the vaccine seems far away. They fear they can survive the virus a lot easier than another academic year! Home schooling is like having your kid grounded but for no damn reason in the world, and all the while feeling, it’s you who’s being punished! There seems to be no way out for these stressed parents, at least not till the command, “Alexa, home-school the children” becomes operative!

Fitness-Mania: Now, more than ever, we have fitness addiction like we’ve never seen before. With time on their hands, and gyms, studios and the outdoors out of bounds, we have more people working-out from within the confines of tiny apartments. There’s women stretching, to elaborate yoga poses vaguely resembling those Indie figurines and idols we are all familiar with. Nuances of their ‘Cat Pose’ and the ‘Downward Dog’, are viewed with cocked ears and bewildered faces of pets wandering around aimlessly, wondering, “What’s up with her, this morning!?” Walk 20 minutes on-the-spot training – another unique but incredibly dizzying spectacle for members of the family not part of that fitness bandwagon. Then you have men with their push-ups and planks, abdominal crunches and side-kicks that barely miss the artefacts in and around the house by a hair’s breadth – all done sporadically, randomly, without warning, at odd hours and minutes! But the worst, is by far, at night, when you are the victim to a sudden, rude and unwelcome awakening, just because the sets and repetitions were left incomplete for that day!

The In-house Master Chef Classes: Well, with the lock-down in place and with the restriction on movement, we’ve all gone a little overboard on stocking the fridge and over-filling our pantries. With time on our hands and that sense of ennui prevailing all around – and to be really honest, in a nation as ours, where house-help and cooks are as much or even more part of your household than any permanent fixture – the rare task of whisking up meals and those in-between snacks rests unfairly but squarely on your shoulders! Trapped at home with hubby, pets and kids banging on the walls, it’s time to bring out that long forgotten rolling-pin and doff the baker’s cap! 

With out-of-home activities and social interactions on pause, it’s time to wield those knives and stoke those fires. A dual-purpose intent – keeping those highly charged little brats out of mischief while working those creative juices, baking does seem like a relatively harmless occupation to ward off those blues and dispel those woes. Online platforms are rustling out posts and messages, that pertain to recipes and dishes being prepared by nutritionists, celebrities, influencers, cooks and chefs, all conjuring up platefuls of delicious preparations with ingredients and condiments that they could rustle up from their larders’ requiring no special purchase or frills! Seems like the whole world is vying for that participant spot on Master Chef next year! While the urban housewife seems to have donned a more traditional and conservative version of herself cooking, cleaning and basically looking after her house and home, our maids and house-help are spending leisurely hours transformed into hip, urbanised versions of the ladies they pandered to – spending their time  entertained with their TV soaps and mobile chats!

While a lot has and will change, post the Coronavirus pandemic – and admittedly not all for the better – there are still those who endorse the bromide that laughter is the best medicine. And there is no denying that some good cheer and comic relief can enliven even the worst situations, providing us with diversions from the seriousness of this situation! So, go on, and smile even if it’s for a minute or a moment in a very long day.