The Next Big Revolution: Covid 19

“Don’t you worry, don’t you worry child. See Heaven’s got a plan for you” – the famous song of Swedish House Mafia is universally admired across the world. In normal times, this song gave hope which allowed us to amass every cell in the direction of that ‘so called’ plan. Be it a heart break in matters of love, exam marks or a simple headache: The heaven always had a plan for all of us. Though we agreed to most of the plans, we hardly ever walked that path. True to our DNA as humans- we found the path of least resistance and moved on. The heaven had a plan for Covid-19 too. Social distancing and Lockdown to avoid the contagion to spread among the general masses. Even the mortals like Ramdas Athawale sang ‘Go Corona Go’. Don’t know whether Covid 19 got the message but the song did tickle some of our funny bones.

Where do we go with this life changing event? How would normalcy look like? The value system of all of us has taken a beating. The most fundamental value of our belief system is relationships. There was a time when we ran from pillar to post to do anything for our families and friends including the distant ones. The Corona virus has instilled a caution button in our minds to even venture out to greet the neighbors. Festivities have taken a back seat. Imprisoned to the will of surviving this pandemic we put a complete full stop on the present continuous tense of reaching out to our loved ones. In normal times, we yearned to reach out to friends and family- today we avoid them. The thousands of human touch points we had every day in our mundane life nullified like it’s the doom’s day. This air of benign affability got polluted with the virus of Suspicion and we alienated our own near and dear ones

The lonely final journey of Loved ones

‘Till death do us apart’ is what we promised our loved ones- yet in Covid we managed to isolate our loved ones on their death bed and their final journey. Why?  Because the dead could kill us like in the zombie movies- only difference being the virus infected zombie would not eat us. That job was left to Covid-19.  Blood (family) is thicker than water (others) they said. Who knew that this blood became thinner as the moist air around us got infested with the living organism that altered our history of togetherness.

Clearer Air post Covid 19: View of Himalayas from Kathmandu

Yet all is not lost in paradise. Have we noticed nature around us? In our daily robotic lives we had forgotten what nature looked like around us. I am no less guilty to it. Yet this pandemic gave me the opportunity to go on the terrace. Hearing the chirp of the birds, watching the sun set and feeling the unpolluted wind graze through your skin gave a glimpse of what we concretized human bots missed out. May be not like the Shire from ‘Lord of the Rings’ fame, the surroundings became cleaner and greener. We had the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change) toiling for 25 years since 1995 to rejuvenate the nature around us by controlling the Greenhouse emissions. All of us swore by the Kyoto Protocol, without even knowing its true contents, to get us better air and healthy nature for our future generations. All in vain though!! It just took a micro-organism to drift from an innocent bat into human beings to set upon a paradigm shifting change in the nature around us. Factories shut, Automobiles locked in their garages, Oil consumption at an all-time low were some of the byproducts.  Mix in a bit of human panic of the virus spread into the crucible and we had the perfect recipe to renew nature and purify it. The extremely intelligent Human community with 25 years’ efforts was outwitted by a micro-organism(coronavirus) to restore nature back to its glorious past.

No revolution comes without a struggle. The revolution that I am referring to is the Virtual way of living. Over the years Man got away from the nomadic existence and perfected the art of living in one place with agriculture, tribes, cities and civilizations. It took many generations to start from one of the oldest civilizations (Harappa civilization) to the Flats/ Bunglows/ Shanties that we live in today. Yet we had to forage outside for work and re-creational activities like shopping, movies, visiting friends and family. This evolution has gone one degree further. The coronavirus revolution has made it possible to live our entire lives locked away in our homes. The last 6 months are a testimony for it. Our primary needs like food and clothing can be ordered home at the click of a button. The Swiggys and Amazons of the world have made sure we are well taken care of like a bird’s young one in the nest.

Home Entertainment- A big evolution in Covid 19

Our secondary needs of entertainment and connecting with people have undergone an evolution leap. There was a time when getting hold of movie tickets for the opening show of brand new movie used to be a talking thing. In fact, sometimes people even boasted having contacts to get those tickets. Now these are things of Nostalgia- stories to be narrated to our future generations. Today Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar fight among st themselves to get to premier a new film on their platform for the viewers. The encyclopedia of content on these platforms is humongous. It might take more than a lifetime to cover all the content available on each of these platforms. Yet the cardinal sin of Greed persists and we make sure we have all those platforms on our mobile phones.  

Nostalgic School Life in the old days- Pre-Covid Times

We associate Education with strict teachers, legendary institutions, hostel life, libraries, playgrounds and friendships to die for. It was an age of innocence and learning. The reach of education was limited to cities and towns. Today with the digital innovation we have the reach and potential to educate everyone. Yet it feels incomplete without all the things we associated education with. No fear of teachers to scold us, the playgrounds to run to in the recess and the pranks planned with friends to which we laugh even today. Countless memories of fun during schools and colleges lost in the optic fiber technology of today’s education media. I kid you not- there are online classes of computer coding for children in school. Great news for Infosys and TCS!! At the same age, I would return home with dirty clothes after playing for eternity with friends. However, some things never change- Great education leads to a great job and thus great life!!

Virtual Education: The next generation of Education

Our parent’s generation jobs were fixed timing jobs. Today the concept of 9-6 job is on the verge of extinction. Covid 19 pushed us to remain at homes and yet did not deter us from working. It urged in an era of Virtual working. I remember the elation when heavy rainfall gave us the opportunity to work from home. Every small opportunity of working from home got this unparalleled feeling of joy. Today that iota of happiness has transformed into a permanent way of living. Real estate is not real anymore! Gone are the days when we would boast our offices being in posh locations like Lower Parel and Nariman Point. It’s been a while saying ‘Pack up’ and leave from office for a sprint to the railway station. Building on my Marketeer mindset, the segmentation of the day was clear between work, travel and home. With the Lockdown in place, the boundaries blurred and there just remained ‘Work’. Travel dissolved in our spirit of ‘Work from Home’.

We got more time to waste on pondering what to do in this freed up time. The reason I say ‘waste’ is till today most of us have no clue what additionally we achieved in that extra time. More time with family, more time on hobbies or more time for a generation of health-conscious individuals attempting to exercise. The fantasy of ‘Work from Home’ is losing its sheen. People through ‘self-generated’ pressure work for longer hours. May be the quantum of work is the same, but we claim to be working for 12-14 hours a day. It is so easy for us to dissociate with a lifelong fantasy of working from home that we want offices to open because we just can’t take it anymore. Mental issues and physical issues (courtesy bad postures at home) have removed the zing out of this taxing staycation. There is absolutely nothing which makes us humans happy for a long time. We have the compulsive need to hop from places to avoid stagnancy.

The latest Love-Hate relationship in our lives-Work From Home

I realize we are at the pinnacle of our forefather’s dream to comfortably settle in one place. Coronavirus gave us that extra push to land here. And yet we despise it. We want to get over with it and return to our struggling lives. The noisy roads, crowded trains, the heat and the same mentality of ‘dissatisfaction’ and complaining.  It’s a fundamental defect in all of us- to never be satisfied. It’s true that change is necessary and adaption – the most important quality to possess. Like on the hugely popular show ‘Big Brother’, Corona virus played the role of the mysterious strong voice of what needs to be done in the world now. That’s temporary. Things will move on and yet we won’t ever be happy with anything.

In this situation, the song ‘Don’t you worry child. Heaven’s got a plan for you’ is replaced by the Pink Floyd number- ‘Comfortably numb!!’ We have become comfortably numb to the good and ugly things that are around us. What we want is an outlet to crib the things that are missing in our lives and be unhappier about it on achieving them. Because grass is always greener on the other side.

 “The human tragedy is that the more we consume the hungrier we get. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won’t be enough tomorrow.“ — Robert Sapolsky