LIFE IN LOCKDOWN – Covid -19 Syndrome

Since March 25^th the whole country has been in lockdown due to Covid-19 Pandemic. Though necessary the lockdown to control corona has thrown normal life in disarray. Most of us have been feeling anxious and stressed due to frustration and depression. There has been no socialising and since the enforcement of the new norms of wearing mask and social distancing, normal life has gone out of gear. Buying essentials itself has been a herculean task and very painful.

Initially I tried to call up a few friends and relatives to relieve my stress but that only added to my depression and anxiety. In order to cope up with stress and anxiety I started thinking of activities that interest me and the first one I chose was to spend more time in our small garden. My wife was working from home, but she supported me whenever she could spare some time from office work and household chores. The result was amazing. Our lemon tree, Banana plant, Custard apple and passion fruit started blooming and have started yielding abundant number of fruits.

Since gardening does not take up all my time I looked into other activities and unsuccessfully tried reading books on Kindle which I could not focus on. So I turned to music. I started listening to old songs which kept me going for the day. My nephew who is in USA also chipped in by sending songs sung and recorded by him to bolster my spirits. In the evenings my wife would be free, so we started watching English serials which both of us enjoy. It has been a difficult time even with Unlock one and cases shooting up in my home state Karnataka.

It is not to say that this lockdown has been without some positives. Being from the generation where we did our banking transactions with passbook and cheque book and using cash for payments, since it became nearly impossible to go to banks or ATM’s we had to adapt to Digital payments. Thanks to the help from my friend we changed to make all payments in digital mode using apps. Today we buy everything including groceries, milk, vegetables & fruits, through digital payments. Our Utility bills such as electricity, water, DTH bills, and phone bills are also settled digitally. We also pay for our domestic help and daily newspaper digitally and hardly visit ATM’s for cash. Another benefit was that our fuel bills were almost zero since all movements were restricted.

All said and done the pandemic effect is still stressful and depressing as no one knows when this will end. I used to travel a lot earlier to various countries and places and being cooped up at home is truly frustrating. I hope that in the coming days the situation will improve when we can get back to our normal life. Till then it is mask, hand washing, sanitising social distancing and “stay home stay safe” for one and all.