Day 10.
Most blog’s start on day one — not mine though, mine starts from when my brain shuts down and I no longer know what to do except to just write down my thoughts.
In a first world country, self isolation may often mean people are home alone — completely alone…maybe with a pet, or a partner. But it’s usually one person, or people in pairs — when we come a little closer to home, in our own country, the concept of nuclear families is extremely new and raw and uncommon. Lock down, is not you and me and our dog, self isolation is not you work from home in your room while I watch tv in the hall, and we kiss every few hours. No, nuclear families in India, are far from the reality.
Lock down’s in indian families consists of husband, wife, their two kids, the husband’s parents, his single sister, or his brother and his wife — all stuck under the same roof of a 3 bedroom hall kitchen.
And this is the privilaed lot. A lot of you might even be in a 1 bhk with your parents and your sibling. Some have it better, others worse, and some… you don’t even want to think about.
But this concept of “nana nani are in the old age home, and parents are living in their own house an hour away, and you and your partner are under lock down in your own house”… is not a reality. Netflix and chill, is not every average person’s life in India.
You are probably under lock down with the same 70 year old grandparent that’s at the highest risk, and oh the irony.
Similarly, so am I. Even though I am usually part of the nuclear family lifestyle because people in my family are scattered all over the world. Mum lives in Australia, brother in Spain, i’m in India…
All of that changed last month when my family (mum and nani) decided to come visit us from Australia… for a few weeks. I was really exicted about seeing them, about them seeing my new house — Rahul and I moved in last year and this home is our first place together, i’d decorated the entire house myself and coudn’t wait to show it off to my ladies… the next few weeks were going to be so much fun, I thought to myself.
Then the virus started to spread over China, Iran, Europe, US… Making the news every few hours, and the more we found out about it, the scarier it became. India was still taking it slow, being really chilled out about it. I remember all my friends celebrating Holi, my producers ready to start our new project in north india for a month — people in the country thought this wouldnt affect them. People thought a few forward messages about haldi and tulsi, and us Indian’s would dodge Covid-19.
While the rest of you were chilling and thinking that the virus was just a great lunch time conversation at the office — we decided to self isolate ourselves from the rest of the world — because my grandmother is 84, and has a pace maker, so going on about our day just because the government hadn’t asked us to lock down just wasnt good enough — we couldnt possibly risk her life, not when we knew exactly what was happening in other parts of the world. So we started working from home, and told everybody we knew that they weren’t allowed to come over anymore — we had locked our own selves down.
When we started, back on the 13th, I don’t think we knew really well what we were doing, or what we were getting ourselves into — If i’m going to be honest, I don’t think I still entirely know what’s going on… I love my family to bits and pieces, but never in my wildest dreams did I think i’d be stuck under lockdown in a two bedroom apartment with my boyfriend, my mother, and my grandmother. I bet neither did they.
We haven’t seen another face, or even the inside of our lift, in 9 days. I don’t know if you know yet what that can do to you… to the people around you, regardless of the love you hold for each other, it changes something — I don’t know if you know yet, but we will talk in a week’s time.
As I type this, the news channel on the TV shows that section 144 just turned into a curfew — obviously makes very little difference in my life given that I no longer know what day of the week it is… but hey, good luck to you lol, wecome aboard? :)
PS: I was very confused about the difference between Section 144 and Curfew, so i’m attaching a link that I just read, it helped me understand what sort of restrictions we are under and might help you too.
https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2020/02/section-144-and-curfew-explained/
Welcome to lock down, all I can say is stay safe, wash your hands, don’t forward fake whats app forwards (verify first) and make the most of your days at home…
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