Life in the time of a pandemic
Michelle Obama, in her autobiography, refers to herself as a box checker, someone who thrived to do everything they are supposed to do in life, planning every detail. It would be scornful to compare myself to her, but I think I turned into one somewhere along the way too, diligently carrying out all that I think I need to do to have everything I wish for in life. Although my priorities seem quite different and are not centered around my career or building a family, the obsession to see things through is sometimes exhausting. This year was not going to be any different, or so I thought. Within the first month, I had traveled a little and hoped to continue last year’s streak, hopefully making it to another continent. I had dreamt of watching the king of clay, Rafa, at his best at Roland Garros along with my brother as a treat for his birthday. The French open dates have now been pushed out, but I am afraid the pandemic has taken away most of our enthusiasm too.
Everything we heard about the coronavirus was not enough to induce any kind of panic for a while. It was something distant, something we joked about. It was just China, we thought. And then I heard how there were multiple cases in Kerala thanks to students studying in China, specifically Wuhan. Slowly, we heard that there were cases in the Santa Clara county, where I live. My parents had started telling me that I should not travel for a while. I brushed them off, but cancelled some plans within a few days. One fine day, we were informed that someone at our workplace had come in contact with a person who had tested positive. That was it, we were all confused and fretting, wondering if we should go to office the next working day. We were soon asked to work from home for a couple of weeks and a few days later, the intimation said “until further notice”.
Regardless of how vulnerable I or anybody my age thought we were, we all had to stay home to control the spread of the virus. However, I hated that I did not know when this would end, when it would go back to being ‘normal’. I was sad that I would not be able to rush to my friends’ desks in the middle of a busy day at work, sometimes because I was having a bad day and to share my frustration, sometimes to gossip and sometimes because I had not seen them in a while. How would I work without all the help from my teammates? Sometimes, we huddled around one of our monitors, trying to do a post mortem of an issue someone found, all of us pitching in with “I think, what may have happened is…” How long will I have to wait to be back at my seat, participating in such discussions?
It took me only a few days to realize that maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Not the virus itself, but the part where I have to stay home. I could step back, take a deep breath and forget about being a box checker for a while. I could finally finish all the books I bought in the last three years and also borrowed from home every time I visited, now hidden away under the bed. And there were also the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles I had bought from two national parks I had been to in the last year. If I could not travel, I could reminisce about the places I had been to. Nearly two months into “shelter in place” as it is called here, I have made quite a bit of progress.
I had successfully managed to be at the gym every single day that I was here for a month before the lockdown, but all that effort was surely going down the drain now that a roommate and friend who, like me, seem to believe that we live to eat and not the other way around and were asking me every other day, what I would like to have. They were determined to satisfy all our cravings during this time. We were giving chef Ranveer Brar, our new muse, more power over our lives than we would like to. I will refrain from listing all that we (mostly the two of them) made and devoured, lest it induces such desires in others, but all the photos on this post are the results of their painstaking efforts.
Trying to shop for groceries online was our new hobby, since it always seemed to be a hit or a miss. We brainstormed and added an elaborate list of items to the cart on various portals, only to realize that they did not have any delivery windows available. I am used to working from home now, turning all those thoughts and comments I have about everything into messages that my colleagues may not appreciate at all times. How grateful I am for those who respond to me within no time, entertaining my chatter even when it is easier for them to ignore it and carry on with their work! As the number of cases in the USA rose, I had more messages from people checking on me. I put their mind at ease, confirming that I was, in fact, having a good time. No amount of worry in my mind would do anything to change the situation in the world. Once this realization came to me, I stopped checking the number of cases worldwide and am trying to stay away from news as such, being updated by my roommates and family if something extraordinary happens.
A month or so after we had been grounded, our stock of vegetables and some other essentials had depleted. All of us roommates decided to risk our lives together to replenish it, heading out to the store nearby, together. We were only equipped with face coverings. They checked our temperatures before we entered the store and made sure there wee only a certain number of people inside at any given time. It felt like a battleground, tense faces all around, long plastic sheets stuck to the ceiling separating us from the staff at the counters. We spent more time cleaning all the vegetables and putting them were they belonged than we did at the store. That was it, we would not be stepping outside for anything for a long time now.
We already celebrated two festivals in lockdown, Ugadi and Vishu. ‘Celebration’ only meaning good food in our case. Perhaps this is time for some introspection too, which I think I do too much of unnecessarily. I did get in touch with friends I had not heard from in a long time, but wonder if it is all right that I have not had any video calls with anybody except my parents and brother. Maybe I do not like people as much as I feign and that is why isolation is so easy. I am also assessing my cooking in comparison to that of my friends and strongly feel the need to sharpen my skills. Growing up, it was my mom who taught us to read and told us stories. An unexpected result of this lockdown was my father telling me a story he read, now having more time to spend talking to me on the phone. I am truly ‘privileged’ that the worries I have are only what I create in my mind and not about how I will feed myself or my family another day.