I know, I know, little point for me to be reminded! I promise more to myself than to anyone else, that for almost, four years now the Covid takeover shan’t pop up at every little turn even when one is talking about some other matter far removed from this “C” word. However, even if we are speaking about our long weekend monthly getaways, we are back to square one—Covid fuelled travel. After being boxed in the house, hammered to the walls during the pandemic (where the most of us, would gingerly draw open the drapes of the drawing room, fearing the virus may not stampede through some crevice or worse, even have bionic powers to make the tuffen glass of the windows porous) a rebellion against staying indoors “took us by storm’’ (to use a dull, time-worn expression!) and yes sir, did we make it outdoors! It goes by the name, Revenge Tourism.
Since we were couped indoors for over two years, now at every pretext we, in India, have gone on hip-hop holiday mode. Making up for lost time, lost fresh air. Here, would need the services of a psychoanalyst so shan’t venture into pop-psychologizing! On the other hand, as mentioned in my final column of last year, WfH (Work from Home) is the “new normal’’. This, an over-indulged usage ever since Covid cast an indented shadow. So, on one hand, one weekend we are in Jaipur, the next in Rishikesh, and before the month closes in, we think the “swift and sweet’’ holiday package on our phone’s “Take a Trip’’ App breathlessly spouts to snap up a brisk swing-by to Odisha, then on the other hand, the Work from Home culture has taken root, chained us to laptops, shackled us in our bedrooms now having morphed into office cubicles. Schizophrenia?! Yes, the services of way watered-down Jung’s or Freud’s not needed. (By the way, with this new normal, counsellors are available a dime a dozen; and cross my heart, that’s a conservative estimate and this tribe is minting money with multitudes requiring “Life Coaches’’ to shepherd them in the right direction. What happened to getting lost, navigating the terrain, mapping out the road to motor on, or simply, occasionally take the foot-loose and fancy-free path?!) Now, hopefully without swerving in many other directions, as I have the proclivity of doing, to talk about this WfH culture. It is well documented that it all started with Covid, where stepping out of the house was pure suicidal. But then how is it, that now this has become a way of life, where going to a real work-place as opposed to a virtual one, would leave, even professionals, well in their middle-age, two aghast steps back.
Why go through the trouble of getting dressed, packing a tiffin, carrying a work bag, going through a long or short commute, when one can readily, seamlessly sit in front of one’s laptop in the comfort of sweatpants and socks, simply donning a crisp shirt and blazer to be “office ready’’ for Zoom or Video meetings, with an out of sight pack of biscuits and munchies?! Some snapshots: this WfH world means many of those—engineers, graphic designers, entrepreneurs (Call Centre employees have been doing so for decades now!) to work all night, calling it a day at the break of dawn, around 5 in the morning. When the rest of the family (parents get up to greet the new day) and that is when the household airwaves are thick with crackling tension. The slumping shouldered young man hollers at his mother to keep it down! Does she really have to rustle up breakfast at this hour, in the morning, and why should the maid have to beat the dirt out of the clothes at this God-forsaken moment, and does Dad have to slurp his chai so noisily?! Parents tip-toeing around the house, communicating in whispering sign language so as to let their computer-induced crouch postured boy to get some much-needed sleep. Now since they, the parents, were the few remaining species that didn’t work from home, unless one is a homemaker, leaving the house without breakfast or a lunch box a safer option. And another Polaroid Shot: not for a second, think this smudgy-eyed laptop user is a control-freak. In actuality s/he is no Oppressor; on the contrary is overwhelmed, incredibly fretty and panicy. Has become emotionally distant with receding grey cells, since the computer does all the thinking, reducing the operator to just that. A Machine Operator. To top it, the thickening waist line, pouting belly and face-fat put in motion by prolonged sitting stints on a chair showcasing the sagging hang-dog bottom and a varicosed lumpy backrest triggers off high-voltage irritability. So, time to, with defeated steps, hit the gym. (As we all know, going for a simple morning walk was a passé long before Covid took the reins!)
This new order has rung in an army of socially inept soldiers, knowing little of camaraderie. Hold this frame: A social event where everyone seems to come out of a fashion magazine, dressed to the nine pins, yet chatting into the phone is plain sailing while talking to a human, in full gear, in flesh and blood, is where one goes into freeze mode. Heard of brain demise?! Have we cared to halt in our tracks—or rather treadmill—to think why, way past Covid, multinationals continue with military adherence to the WfH schedule?! Doesn’t require one to restart the brain. Or go in for resuscitation of the mind to connect the staring-in-your-face dots. WfH (or be in the office 3 days a week) means that the company is raking in more moolah than ever. No officegoers, means no electricity bills, no wear and tear of furniture, no toilets to be maintained, no cafeteria and a 100 other upkeep issues! And the profit accrued according to simple arithmetic is enough to buy out the stock exchange.
With these measureless screenshots the head feels like a bagful of rabbits. A haversack of questions with no clue of a key. The supreme irony lies in our self-congratulatory smugness: we en masse magically conjured combative vaccinations, of hyper-insulating ourselves, of overnight constructing a quarantining wall-stone, believed we had brought Covid-19 to its knees. And yet, the pandemic, with its multifaceted face lives on, continuing to retain us on a tight leash…