India Lock Down May 3 or May be 3

India Lock Down May 3 or May be 3 – the 2^nd Online , Varanasi

Coronavirus lockdown in India: To-do lists, schedules, forecasts, deadlines. Human beings are perpetual planners. Before the Corona virus upended our world, we rushed and ranted daily, so as not to fall behind our interminable schedules. To meet the dreaded deadlines. To stay ahead of the curve. To ensure we moved forward in the rat race. And, then as various governments imposed lockdowns across the globe, life, as we know it, came to a halt.

Most of us are locked in our homes, holed up with family members for durations longer than we are used to. Even as we transit to working or studying from home, the humdrum busy-ness that envelopes our lives has abruptly ceased. No Monday morning scrambles, no traffic snarls, no have-to-go-here, have-to-buy-that. Life suddenly is stripped to its essentials. We need to cook, clean, eat and sleep. Those who are fortunate to have the luxury of working online, continue to plod away at screens. We try to keep kids engaged with online and offline activities. The new-normal that we are trying to maintain is unsettling, in troublingand cathartic ways.

Unnerving because we really don’t know what tomorrow will be like. Despite models and predictions by epidemiologists, global health experts and policy wonks, nobody is certain what tidings we might wake up to or when. Though most of us are at home, the very familiarity of our environment increases our disquiet. Our new routines are unfamiliar to us. Apparently, for humans, living with uncertainty is harder than living with pain.  

Ramesh Verma  CMD , the 2^nd Online Varanasi