Lockdown Screen Time

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…