Covid 2020 — lighten up!
During the pandemic there is one great realization that has dawned upon me — silence is any day better than discussing Covid 2020. One more discussion on this and I am not responsible for my actions. I really will rudely disconnect since I cannot harm you physically — social isolation and all.
Another big realization is that I am really my best company at this time or as good as my shifting emotions allow me to be. To keep things on an even keel, humor really is not only the best but the only medicine. This has made me come to the following list of things that I will not do once this blasted dictatorship is over….
1. I will not read the newspaper — currently I read the front page (and the cartoons) just to keep up the semblance of being informed
2. I will travel — really would like those beautiful discounts, packages, offers etc. to continue. Currently these lip-smacking offers seem cruel, like trapping a child and then luring him/her out with delicious candy
3. I will ban Zoom — I so look forward to that. I know how we all are becoming so efficient, carbon footprints and all but if I need to see that insipid screen with people reduced to pictorial boxes or at the best jumping diffused faces anymore, I will scream. Saturation has been reached and then some…
4. I will not discuss ill health in all its gory details and messes — really marvel at how this Covid has brought closet hypochondriacs into the open and the declared ones should really put a lid on it lest they lose all control over their brain and relationships
5. I will not use any dialogues, references to 2020 as the doom year, unusual year, the year of reckoning or any such high handed, all knowing descriptions. I honestly have no fricking clue why the hell this happened and what are the lessons. All I know is that one day I was traveling or dreaming of holidays and malls and enjoying the rewards of my steady job and the next day it was all over in one lockdown second.
6. I will try not to complain about the traffic jams, human noise, crowd and over population — the day traffic started crawling back on roads and a few brave people precariously stepped out, I did heave a sigh of huge relief. One of those lockdown evenings when I had ventured out for a walk, I know I know it was against the rules but it was either that or jumping out of my skin, I swear I thought an apocalypse had hit the town and I was the only human alive
7. I will invite friends over, no let me rephrase, I will force friends to come home or call me over. It is my firm conviction that humans are not meant to be isolated, it feels as comfortable as self-immolation. Starved of human interaction outside families, I think we are now remarkably familiar with every expression, body language cue and sound emitted by our loved ones, whatever the mask on our faces will allow. Actually, the word ‘mask’ has been removed from my personal dictionary as I shudder at its relentless hold on my mouth and nose
8. WFH — WTF — the two seem interchangeable — pardon my French! For a person who deliberately chose to be a work-from-home employee, this now has the appeal of an imprisonment at Alcatraz. I need to choose it, not be forced into it — it was an act of rebellion and now is the new normal
9. That brings me to this phrase — ‘new normal’ — Oh My God, what in heaven’s name does it even mean?
10. And then another of the oft-repeated phrase — digitization — I doubt if the great learning from Covid was that we all need to become robotic imprisoners of more machinery, artificial intelligence and that impersonal, void called ‘online’ will ever replace the sheer pleasure of human interaction and feel of terra firma
This list and rant as you will notice can become endless…. another consequence of the Covid — we have been reduced to so many limitations that any expression of any emotion has become unrestrained. So, let me end this now with a passing afterthought and a genuine one — I have never ever in my waking moments welcomed an injection more than the Covid vaccine!
