Lockdown Diaries: Facing Lockdown Doesn’t Mean Being Locked Down - Smita Sahu
It was a warm Sunday and I was oozing my day off out after a heavy reading of The God of Small Things, one of my favourite books when I came across someone’s privileged Instagram story that said, “If you don’t come out of this quarantine with a new skill or a new side hustle or some form of new knowledge, you never lacked time, you lacked discipline”.
Somehow I couldn’t help feeling sad for this lady who chooses to be ignorant and is no way different than the victims of the conventions set by social media whom these poor lads feel compelled to conform to. This pretty much sums up my work from home experience. I, like so many others, am perfectly comfortable with the fact that I don’t partake in the ‘saree challenge’ or am not dolling out posts on new-fangled creative projects or how I’m unable to pose myself as the yoga expert or the ghar-ka-khana chef. And thank God for that!
On the contrary, to be bare honest, I feel thankful that the agency I work for, gives me the creative liberty to go all out on recording my experiences in the form of this write-up which gave me a chance to deliberate upon what all I need to appreciate in life. I felt thankful for a decent roof over my head and for the privilege of working from home, while the guards downstairs, away from their homes toast themselves in the scorching heat just so they can keep an account of people exiting and entering the building. What’s worse? It’s been more than 5 days that many of them haven’t visited their homes.
But that being said, like any other actively working professional, this isn’t an easy time for me. The stress of keeping up with my deadlines at the same time as maintaining impeccable quality is something that my mind is always wired with. The day starts on a really anxious note. And mind you, the change of location of working has not changed the levels of exhaustion that takes over me. And so while my body takes turns in carrying itself from the washroom to my home workstation, the experience has been quite overwhelming. The travel time has now transitioned into helping my mother make breakfast, taking a shower, offering my prayers to the Lord and so on. Then the time spent in exchanging banters with colleagues has changed into caressing my pet a couple of times since funnily enough, her attention span is the same as what my work demands. Tea time is invested in working on what’s left to be done and deliberating on what I might have missed. And by the time I finish my work and switch from my chair to my couch, the time that was supposed to be spent in getting jolted and pushed and trying to stand in one place instead of falling down in those packed buses that have a mixed odour of sweat, iron rust, and what not, is now spent in wondering what to watch on Netflix.
So yes, while this lockdown situation has been hard, it has taught me some real meaning in life. That while it may seem hard right now but all this anxiety, these inhibitions and this fear will add up to something good. This lockdown hasn’t locked me from being hopeful. And it hasn’t caused me to live in a La La Land where I tend to my insecurities by gaining that validation social media and stand on the top of a dais just to feel like a winner with a prize of discipline. Hence, for you all out there also.It’s okay if you are still pathetic at cooking and still do not ace at making round rotis.
Let’s do a Roti making tutorial today. A roti 101 kinds since I know a lot of us struggle with it.
— Monika Manchanda 👩🏼🍳🍽 (@monikamanchanda) April 7, 2020
RT/Bookmark for later. #recipesInThreads pic.twitter.com/6IDTJa6Dkw
It is perfectly alright if your tummy is bulging like an inflated balloon, only that you can’t fly like those helium ones. And it’s okay if you trip or slip every time to try to pull off an aasana on that yoga mat. It is also okay if you are not as much in love with Money Heist and didn’t wait for the 4th season of it with bated breath, because you don’t have to be slotted as cool just because you follow or don’t follow a particular series. These times are about yourself and where you seek your happiness from and not validation from. For that you don’t have to be productive based on the terms set by social media. You have to be productive based on your inclinations and the results that you derive out of them. Till such time, you are kind, not pouncing on every opportunity that comes as a part of the pattern set by some form of technology and are sensible enough to assess every situation before jumping the guns, it is perfectly okay to feel excluded.