With the pandemic grinding on, our little family unit, I must confess come evenings, have become couch-potatoes. And me, in the early stages of the lockdown having rolled up my sleeves, tied a bandana over my hair, commenced cleaning out cupboards for creating space, by moving upstairs quite a few pieces of redundant furniture, accommodating miscellaneous, superfluous boxes and bric a brac. (The question of giving them away, not an option with all places shuttered down.) In the process, the room upstairs started resembling an attic but have the eyesore locked—the wobbly shelf, the table that never knew the existence of a coaster, unread books—their quarantining not coming with an expiry date. Lugging downstairs a couch, that by and large, never had anyone parking themselves on it—besides delighting everyone—turned us further into couch-potatoes. Not to mention, I now understand how the term was coined—me sinking deep into it for too many hours to do any good. Sometimes even with a bag of chips to complete the picture. By fashioning a family room—a writing table doubling-up to have tea and biscuits, a cushiony bed, a chair which does not look like a beach seat yet does wonders for the back and yes, with the sofa, the room had become the perfect setting for binge watching. By now my self-driven ‘overworked and unpaid scrub, mop and reorganize zeal’, induced by the outbreak of, what seems as an undying plague had blown over, petered out, setting in an out-of-hand, unmanageable inertia. Most of us, I believe with this unworkable work out of home mantra, are in this sluggish slack state. Thus, this passive way of working away the evenings. A short detour: the other day a cousin telephonically, rather by Google Duo, her face fresh from holidaying, tells me how lovely her vacation to Venice, and wherever else, had been. The wall behind her, a collage of high-definition pictures of all the destinations she had gone to. For a moment, thought my head had tailed off, possibly to a junkyard. Mercifully, I was informed ‘travel from home’, the new jingle. International travel rendered bygone courtesy Corona Virus. Armchair voyaging, the new way to take a trip. Travel programmes, galore on the telly. Pictures taken from the net, and for the real-feel photoshop is there to put you up at a beach resort, languorously taking in the sun, lullabying in a hammock. It all started with the `Mahabharata’, the new one, which we joined in, nearly three months after it was aired. And then, as they say, we were hooked. And yes, after a lifetime of trying to decode Lord Krishna, I finally believe could fathom him—his political side particularly endearing, with him readily breaking rules and with a resplendent sense of calm, eyes twinkling, justifying how the Olympian level of Adharma was thereby dealt with. While we were compulsively in the grip of the Mahabharata wave, the same channel (Tata Sky 115) started promoting, between commercial breaks, a new serial, soon to make its entry. ‘Anupama’, the name. God knows how, but we—my husband, my Mom and myself—got drawn into it as well. Every morning like an addict wanting to break
Time to let this sail, ferrying with it the unsettling thought of how Covid-19, is like termites let loose, chomping into our grey matter, and with jobs being slashed left, right and centre, the looming financial insolvency, plunging our heads further down the drain…
Dr Renée Ranchan writes on socio-psychological issues, quasi-political matters and concerns that touch us all.