Lockdown diaries

For posterity. Today is May 2, 2020

 

Six weeks of lockdown over. The government just announced a 2-week extension.

 

Last restaurant visit: March 16^th. Healthy breakfast of mihidana, mishit doi, filter coffee, and aloo’r porota at Cal 27.

 

Last flight: March 18, from Kolkata.

 

Last biryani (homemade): March 18.

 

Haven’t stepped out of home since: March 19.

 

1 USD = 75.84 INR.

 

Daily activities: Cooking, doing BJP (bashon, jhaadu, pocha).

 

Newly gained knowledge: What plants grow in my garden. Also, it takes approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes for a thorough jhaadu pocha of the house.

 

New daily addiction: Shingara and cha.

 

Current weather: 43C/27C.

 

Biggest challenge: Surviving at home without air conditioning.

 

Thankful to: 1) My sister for helping me figure out Bigbasket slots. 2) Friend for telling me to sleep putting on a well-wrung, wet towel. This has cut down time to fall asleep from 4 hours to roughly 1 hour.

 

Look forward to: Kakima’s collated corona memes (try saying that fast).

 

Mental health measures: Asking people politely not to send me Whatsapp forwards. Blocking those who cannot follow instruction.

 

Not missing: Waking up to an alarm clock every day. Knowing what day of the week it is.

 

Something I look forward to: Cooking every day. 

 

New companion: YouTube.

 

Highlight of the day: My plant is sprouting jasmine flowers and I have the time to notice it.

 

Bad joke of the day:

Colleague: “Do you know about IS-LM model?”

Me: “No, I only know about SL-IM models.”

 

In-house murder of the day: Usually I see lizards feasting on tiny insects. Or I unapologetically kill ucchingdes with my slippers. Early this morning, I saw a mid-size cat in-hiding, hunting down a large pigeon. Think about it. A land animal so agile that it could hunt down a flying animal much larger than the size of its mouth. Well, I am no saint to be preaching cats about eating vegetarian, but this national-geographic-moment in my garden made me dizzy and sick.

 

Biggest realization: I love this social distancing and slower life. No unnecessary meetings where nothing useful gets done, clingy students asking for my time, pressure to socialize or comb my hair daily, reading restaurant reviews and planning Friday nights, look nice, book a cab, take a flight, go through security checks, be somewhere, say something, look nice.    

 

sunshine