Lockdown

Huge shifts took place in the lives of people after lockdown. I have never experienced something like this. All of it started in a small metropolitan called Wuhan in China. The rest is history. The virus Sars-CoV2 causing Covid-19 is one of the greatest pandemic the world has ever seen. It has brought the world to its knees. A lockdown is imposed to stop this virus is now global.  The whole world has come to a standstill.  All we had to do was to stay at home and refrain ourselves from the outside world. At least that  was the case in India for the first month of lockdown. After that tensions have been eased . Roadside shops have opened. But airports (which are the prime contagious zones) malls, public parks, bus stops and all those places where there is an accumulation  of great no. of people , are closed. Thus indoor activities became the only part of our daily curriculum. I have been in my house for almost three months and my activities include washing clothes ,cooking food , cleaning playing board games ,reading story books magazines and newspapers.   Actually , I never willingly did any of these things. My parents ordered me to give them a helping hand. So, I really had no other choice. 

May sound monotonous but I have been having some absurd experiences these days. While I was cleaning rooms I came across some peculiar things:
i) the ball which I thought I had lost when I was in class 2. I found it neatly kept behind a row of books in our bookshelf.
ii) my old diary lying under the bed of my parents' room.
iii)the long-forgotten eraser which was inside one the innumerable pencil boxes I have (when I was in class 3 still remember that day my mother scolded me  as she thought I had left the eraser in my school.  For all these years it has been here right under my nose).

So these are some of the things which may have been kept very neatly hidden for such a long time that I with the passage of time have completely forgotten about them. 

Other than this I have wonderfully unraveled the art of making chapatis (which adds on to my responsibility make it every evening for dinner) I had some hiccups at first, but now I can proudly say that I am slightly better than an amateur.

A large part of my daily life is occupied with online classes. I have no special feelings about them. I try my best to get adapted to these classes. Frankly speaking, the physical interactive classes are far better than these virtual ones. Zoom and Google Meet are the most frequently used social platforms nowadays. Zoom for my tuitions and Meet for my school. 
All of my concentration and focus in the class depends on the net speed. YES, it is indeed a descisive factor because while doing the class if it goes down from 200KB/s to 20KB/s then listening to the teacher is same as listening to E.T.  Video gets blurred. Audio and video don't work in sync. Everything is a total disaster so its a complete mess. BUT, there are times when the speed is absolutely superb. 580KB/s is the highest I have ever reached. Thanks to Jio! My attention and concentration were at the top notch. That day no technical glitches occurred anywhere. 

Rest of my day goes by playing board games with myself or, if I am lucky, with my parents. I don't have any siblings . 

Speaking of my parents , they say they are having an early glimpse of what their retirement lives would be . Both of them are doctors. To me they are two warriors who are are risking their lives each and every day to fight this horrendous war. Only difference is that they have to minimise the casualties.
When I asked them about the vaccine for COVID-19 they gave me an unpleasant answer. It takes 16 months for a vaccine to get transferred from the lab to the market. I between it has to go through three phases. In these three phases the vaccine is tested to groups of people to check its efficacy and efficiency. If the results are positive and the vaccine has no side effects then its launched in the market  or else its not. So we have to wait for the next year. Therefore social distancing and  washing hands are the two most important weapons we have at 'hand' right now.
Well, its 21st June today. India has been in lockdown since three months. Cases have risen upto 3,81,000. No. of deaths at present is 12,573. Now we are going through a phase called. Unlock-1. We are going to have two more phases like these. Through these phases we are going to ease the lockdown till we lift it up completely. Although some basic precautionary measures must be taken if we get out of our houses for work. 
Anyways. That doesn't make any difference for me because our schools are not opening before 15th of August nor are my tuitions. That too is an uncertainty. All of it depends on the number of cases this year. I hope for the best.  

The year 2020 has had a chain of unexpected events which have been ever-tumultuous. Since the first outbreak of Coronavirus till famous Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput's suicide. 
Even in these  menacing situations I have learnt three things:

i) True friends can only be recognised in dangerous situations like this.
ii) Never fall into depression. We have so much to do in life and keep ourselves engaged , even when we are staying home.
iii) Always have hope .

The Alienist,

22.06.2020

Image courtesy: Google Images