The Great wall of ‘Corona’ 

 

      Hello there, hope you all are doing well. I am writing something after so long. As confined between great walls of  ‘home’ did not let me experience travel or any thing new, but lately I realised that being in our comfortable abodes for so long we all have gone through various mental stages and behavioural patterns and have adapted well with the corona situation.  With the 5^th month of lock down going on , stepwise unlock process begun  , we also have drawn a  picture at  the backdrops of  our minds about ‘The Alternative way of being’ and many ‘What ifs’.

         Here is my tryst with  ‘Lockdown stages ‘ of almost 4 months of staying behind the walls.

       - The dilemma  – Is ‘Corona’ for real?

      It was an usual day, a bright  sunny morning , I dropped my daughter to her school and grabbed my cab for office at around 12:30 pm. The usual politics discussions among colleagues, classes and tea breaks in between, nothing special it was a routine day , but now when I look back it was a special day as it was the last day before the lockdown when our little worlds weren’t ‘CORONA’ driven.

      I was mentally preparing list of stuff I need to pack for upcoming trip to Udaipur. Two days before the scheduled trip the news about a couple in Rajasthan found to be corona positive started doing rounds, a little apprehensive , I decided to go on this trip. With all the news floating around about ‘corona’ everything appeared corona infected to me. On our way to Udaipur we had to take night halt in a beautiful hotel in Ajmer, lush green with well laid tents , all seems to be so good but  now jinxed with that little spine headed virus.   I asked receptionist several times ‘hope no Italians in your hotel’ ?As I entered  the tent, I heard  somebody humming an Arabic song from the adjacent tent , but  my corona smitten half started arguing with the carefree half-   ‘What if an Italian singing an Arabic song!!, or Arabic from Italy or Arab travelled alongside an Italian . I rushed to the receptionist who this time little annoyed answered sternly  that “Madam , the person staying nearby your tent is from Israel not Italy”.

      We decided to visit selected places in Udaipur preferably with less crowd.  Many of the Holi celebration programs were already cancelled.  We were left with morning walks along  Fateh  sagar lake. On the way back home I kept checking social media handles  or news update there was worldometer counting the corona infected people  or  recovering from it, locked down people singing songs on their balconies . Lost in this huge pile of information I did realised later that this was my last trip in ‘ corona free world’ .

 

Back Home -   Offices were on, people however shifted their discussions from politics to corona.  The fact that it will be a complete lockdown was quite unanticipated then.

 

 

Lockdown Stage 1-  ‘Slow down  and reflect phase’

The dilemma persists- 

22 March 2020 , we clapped at 5pm on our balconies to thank health workers, that was the first day of lockdown. Checking worldometer became daily routine .  You tube flooded with doctors talking about various aspects of Corona infection, people talking about home remedies and how Indians are less susceptible to disease due to inbuilt immunity and eating habits, Indian subcontinent inhospitable for corona virus survival.  Letters written by people from other countries describing the severity of the situation in their country doing rounds on social media handles.

     ‘ Stay home and stay safe’ became the new mantra along with ‘lets acquire sanitisers first’. Sanitisers became the luxurious necessity overnight. Nearby medical stores doubled tripled the price from mrp , I also ordered a bottle of sanitiser for 900 rupee  and masks for everyone. As the lockdown extended for 15 more days and then more and so the fact that ‘Corona is for real’.

      

            Self  reflection by human race  -  World went  in meditation mode .

The articles popping up now and then said – “Enough is enough” lets stop , give a thought ,   human race has done enough damage and so  deserves to be behind the bars or lets say concrete walls, and corona is the tool.

Rivers cleaning up, air pollution index gone down , frequent rainfalls, deers coming back to empty roads in Coimbatore, migratory birds coming back to their seasonal abodes, people getting time at home to be with their families , so do I after so many years , it was so good to be home.  This phase of lock down turned out to be rejuvenating , with reading books , painting ,  corners of house which I never realised exist and are to be cleaned.  After a long time I was free from morning hustle bustle,  clocks became mere tick tocks on the wall.

   

   Lock down phase 2 – ‘Enough self reflection , get back to work ‘.

Humans have an agile mind , they have this unique  ability to normalise the abnormal situations. This phase came with online flood.  Schools came online with their Microsoft Teams, Google meet meetings, Zoom. These became the household terms at once. Companies devicing new strategies for the new CORONA scenario , people doing more work as usual to sustain their jobs.

 

As the number of corona cases increased the lockdown as well , but fear has its own life span , it gets diffused with time however the grave the danger is, survival becomes the primary necessity. Eventually, the society as a whole reaches to a New Normalisation.

 

The new Normalisation –

The new normalisation can be mirrored by the market full of products  customised with Corona scenario. Some of the special ones I came across were – special see through masks for deaf and dumb people, bridal get ups with matching silk embroidered masks, and recent one where you can order a customised mask with graphics of your lower face ,  both product and service companies complied with new corona driven  psychology people.They display their sterilisations measures in their advertisement for instance people started to avoid buying bread. So Bread making companies came up with  several steps of sterilisations in their packaging process which can be seen in their advertisements. International universities opening up many online courses.  The demand and supply dynamics of the market changed its course with respect to number of corona cases .  Be it special packages and top ups in medical insurance policies or education or edibles or stocks or fashion.

 

      In this span of almost six months consciously or subconsciously we all have drawn a mental picture of  a ‘Post Corona World'. We can have varied opinions, some of us think that corona vaccine in market will rewind the world to pre-corona  while there are others who think post corona world cannot be free from a permanent  mental scar as a warning sign that must the human kind take care and can’t go on rambling nature whenever and wherever they want , otherwise calamaties effect all irrespective of status, just a human body is enough, which we all have in common.  So instead of Homo sapiens rather Humble homo sapiens who do not take nature for a free ride would make this world a better place to live for our generations ahead .