Beyond the trillion Zoom conferences that dot my
COVID-19 lockdown, I have another lot of activities that keep me so busy that I
have fallen ill twice in the past sixty days!
The first week without the maid was fun. (I love
cleaning) With ample help from a house-bound husband and daughter who took care
of the heavy duty cleaning, I scrubbed corners, cleaned cupboard tops and used
all the ‘You tube’ cleaning hacks possible.
The next week made me traverse the insides of each cupboard,
the bookshelves (with lots of nostalgic swamping when I looked at my twenty
year old self’s notations on the margins) and bathroom cleaning.
The third week
of course laid me low for three days (Every bone and sinew aching). I was
warned by the whole family (specially the doctor via video chat) that I cannot
and should not overexert myself. I nodded with pitiful affirmatives and resumed
my duties slowly.
The week that followed the lockdown under the lockdown
made me sit on my comfortable chair watching Netflix and Prime Video. All the
games that I had downloaded on the I-Pad were begging me to indulge them, so my
screen time increased from four hours to six hours (lots of admonishment from
the lord and master!) then I had to indulge in my voyeurism- all the social
media scrolling!
Facebook was of course filled with birthdays and
anniversaries and the many stories which can be understood only by the one who
posts them! It also had the occasional Instagram posts.
I prefer looking at the Instagram posts on its own app,
so off I go, clicking on the link and moving to another world. Here I am
offered a number of culinary delights. The world and his wife have taken to
cooking the most delicious dishes on the face of the earth and posting them on
Instagram. Even the videos posted are no longer dominated by Nature’s beauty,
we see the most delicious samosas, casserole, cakes, puddings, rasgollas…. I
really cannot tabulate all of them here! New channels have come up from
wanna-be cooks and all the housewives who have husbands wielding the video
camera! Sadly, the cooking channels that I follow have been relegated to the
backseat. It is so much better to see the normal kitchen in the background
rather than the uber-efficient ones of the celebrities.
Though not a great cook, I have been feeding my family
for over thirty years, so I jumped onto the bandwagon and made my share of
rasmalais, jelabis and even pedas. The usual panipuris, rava dosas, idlis and
poha were put in attractive dishes, photos were taken with the right amount of lighting
but after the deluge of foodography I decided wisely against putting up my
pretty pictures.
But the cutest deluge has come from new mommies! I
noticed a certain age group of my erstwhile students were turning into new
mothers. Lots of cutie quotes (specially as Mother’s Day has just gone by),
cuddly babies and adorable new grannies fought for space on my app. The ones
without babies put up their doggie instas and successfully captured my
attention.
Next of course is Twitter. What then are the birds
doing these days? Well, we have the usual political bashers, the fight between
the pros and antis. Then of course the statistics of Coronavirus- how many
infected, how many dead, which countries and in India which states. Possibility
of economic suicide versus own suicide! “My country is worse than yours”, “My
leader is worse than yours” and the best
are the NRIs who live in their comfortable lives saying how wonderful India is
notwithstanding the miserable level to which the poor have gone to! Here too, I
do not dare to offer my own views in the fear of being arrested (One young man
was thrown into jail for daring to criticize the All Mighty one (and I do not
mean God))
I am not a member of TikTok so I cannot post my
dancing videos (I can hear all of you sighing with relief). The news channels
say the same thing and I was getting tired of being in front of a screen for
almost all my waking hours. So what do I do next?
Feeling as strong as Hercules, I tossed caution to the
winds and was back to all my naughty and secretive escapades, namely ‘cleaning
spree’. The family members were busy doing their own things, so I got away
unnoticed! My stove started sparkling, the kitchen counters were spick and
span, all the stuff from the supermarket were put in their rightful places
rather than lying about like abandoned puppies and the washer and drier
sparkled with happiness with all the love and care I lavished on them.
It was not surprising that on a day when I chose to
cook three whole meals, clean four bathrooms, and do the laundry, that my more
than half a century old body collapsed, and I was back in bed!
Older and wiser, now I have decided not to trust my adrenalin
spiked brain and do my work in moderation.
So two months of lockdown, two collapses, a million
food videos, and a trying-to-be-sensible, old but young at heart person is
looking forward to a COVID less world where she can do what she loves the most –
Travel!
Que sera sera what will be will be…
