Summer Trip 2020: At Home
I honestly don’t think the title of this article would surprise anyone. With chaos and uncertainty dominating the globe, namely the Coronavirus, the resurfacing of racism, police brutality, suicides due to depression and whatnot, the only good place to be at in 2020 is home. I faced a few difficulties myself such as my plans to visit my home city Chennai, India during the summer which got cancelled thanks to the Coronavirus, forcing me to get to lockdown mode in our apartment in Tempe.
The great Coronavirus and its aftereffects couldn’t find a better time to happen than the summer, the time when one wishes to chill out, visit places and enjoy. Almost everyone on the globe who is under lockdown right now has got nothing much to do other than household activities and work from home if they have a job. In my opinion, that’s not fair. In order to give justice to what should usually be done in summer, and to also look at the bright side of things as much as possible during these difficult days, I am going to attempt to describe regular day to day household activities that I have carried out this summer as visiting spots in a travel venture. There are four locations in this trip: The living room, the kitchen, the bedroom and the balcony.
I shall begin with my favorite, the bedroom. During these tough times, with all the negativity going on outside, nothing’s more blissful than just forgetting about everything and getting some nice sleep. The feeling of diving into your dreams pioneered by the limitless imagination of your mind is forever priceless. As for me, the bedroom has been more than just a sleeping place. As soon as I wake up in the morning and brush my teeth, the first activity that I do is Yoga followed by meditation, which is in the bedroom. Stretching your body early in the morning makes you feel energetic and alive. Apart from Yoga, I also use the bedroom to play my Guitar. I’ve recently got an interest to play it, and since the acoustics in the room are amazing, I feel motivated to keep learning and practicing chords, covers of famous songs, etc.
The next stop is the living room. This is where I am most of the day. We’ve got no TV or couch here as we had decided it wouldn’t be a necessity for survival, so the only stuff there are our study tables with laptops and other accessories, and our bicycles parked at a corner. Despite the limits, I’ve found out there are a lot of things to do than you think. For example, I’ve recently started improving my coding skills in the C++ and Python language, and have been working on a few projects related to autonomous vehicles, the codes of which I upload on GitHub from time to time. Apart from this, I also like to read. I’ve recently started developing interest in this book titled “Man’s search for meaning” by Victor E Frankl, which a real page turner in my opinion. Other activities that I spend time on are improving my French language skills on Duolingo, watching TV series on Amazon Prime and Hulu, listen to some good music, watching the news as told by my favorite talk show host Trevor Noah, writing articles like this, etc. I’m sure there are more great activities I am yet to discover while being in the house.
Moving on, we arrive at the Kitchen, home to what everybody loves most, food. Being away from home for almost a year now, I’ve got used to cooking food myself. One interesting thing I’ve learned about cooking is that it helps you improve patience. I usually have cereal in the morning, but making lunch or dinner is when the real fun for me is. I put my headphones on for some rock music, mostly by AC/DC, gather all the vegetables and condiments with the energetic mood provided by the music, and knock myself out. With this energetic mood, I’ve managed to make myself many cool dishes such as lemon rice, rasam rice, potato and carrot curry, mixed vegetable curry, and my favorite of all, the dal khichdi.
Last but not least is the balcony. This is the place where I sit on a small chair, sip a hot cup of coffee and enjoy the light eastward breeze, watch aircrafts land and takeoff, watch vehicles and pedestrians pass by on the road, and view the beautiful sunrise and sunset. The balcony is the one place where I don’t do much. Sometimes during the day, it’s okay to just sit at a place and do nothing. It’s okay to ponder about life, think philosophical thoughts and just breathe some fresh air. This recharges your mind and helps you relax.
The point that I’m trying to make with this article is that you can think of anything in life as a trip. There are a lot of things we can do than we think, right at home. There is no rule that you must go someplace for that. Freedom is a state of mind, and as long as it is free to wander, it always keeps enjoying even in the most adverse situations. When will the craziness outside end? We never know. All I know is that as long as the mind is free, we are not actually trapped.
