This goes without saying that the lockdown has done wonders for many of us as it pushed us (individuals and the institutions) to experiment and adopt some routes and things that we would have never tried otherwise. There are so many examples around us, and so many in our lives itself. Let me share my first hand experience around it.
I had stayed outside my home for about 15 years before the Covid pandemic hit the world. During the 15 years, I had barely stayed for more than 15 days in a contiguous stretch with my family. But during the lockdown, I did so for more than a year. Here, my family equals to my parents, sister and my brother’s family (wife and kids). If you ask me to describe the experience in a single word, I would say “Ican’t”. Jokes apart, it has been an extremely enriching experience. Let me try to split the experience in few distinct but related blocks.
Genuine: When I came home once in every 6 months for about 15 days, I used to be treated like a guest. My family never shared all the problems they faced. They were like “he is here for a week or 2, there is no point in involving him” or “he does not have enough context, so his inputs will not be needed” etc. I used to spend a week in the mountains, 2 days on a road trip and few days shopping or seeing friends and families. But during the lockdown, I was with them all days — I was with them through the winter, summer and rainy days or sunny days. I had not lost the touch of the fields or the household chores or the tinkering that I used to do to help my family. Everyone genuinely shared their thoughts with me and so did I. I feel much more connected with them now.
Patience: As I sit down in my room to write this blog, if you could hear, you would hear my dad talking to my mom while watching television, my niece raucously playing with my sister, my brother talking on his phone while his wife is making dinner. The space is quite filled with the aroma of food and I can hear neighbor’s dog barking and our cow mooing as if they are talking to each other and one of them has a hearing deficiency. This does not really change most of the time even when I am working during my office hours. This so different from what most of us are used to when we are in our personal apartments in the cities far away from our immediate families. Things used to be completely in our control, life seemed much more intentional than now. I am not sure that is good or this is good, but what I definitely know is that this has taught me to be more patient. I have learnt to focus when it is really difficult to do so. I have learnt to not smell things or not hear things even when they are shoving themselves to me sensory glands or the ear-drums. My family seem to like things loud and much more imperfect that I had turned out to. I have now learnt to ignore things because they made sense that way to 6 other family members while it did not, to me.
Worth: I learnt from my own experience that things are worth not the effort but how useful they can be to us. This may seem like an extremely easy concept for many of us, but for many — this is an utterly useless concept. Probably we too at times get biased by the effort that has gone behind something so much that even if we created a completely useless thing, we will tend to value it a lot. So, to add an example: we were reconstructing few things around our house last week. We constructed a cow-barn, then a patio and a walk-way that connects our closest neighbor and us. While doing so, I came across a lot of small pieces of stones that my dad had stored at one of the corners of the garden. They were the only leftover after were done with all constructions and decoration work. Since they were not in a good share (as the good ones were already used), and would consume space in the garden for nothing, I decided to throw them away. While I was about to stow them away, my dad got really pissed off. His rationale was that he had spent a lot of effort collecting them 40years back, so we should not throw them (even if they have no further use). I am sure, had he not seen me throwing them, he would not have even realised that they were gone.
