Like many others, when I heard about the lockdown I was a little irresolute as to how things would be. For the first time, there was a complete breakdown of constitutional machinery. When April and May used to be the months of immoderate activity, with school, classes, and the heat, this time stepping out of the house was the biggest challenge. At the beginning of the lockdown, I had made many plans like others. I had chalked out a whole routine right from exercising in the morning to watching FRIENDS at night before bed. I had decided I would give more and more time to writing.
With this one article at the least that has come true. But even after a lot of struggle, I couldn’t do justice. Everything I wrote seemed to be lacking what I wanted to say. So before the submission of my final draft, I tore up the article and began writing again. Though it was a very tough time and there were difficulties all around us with all the bad news of people dying, or people starving, absolutely no routine, uncontrolled weight gain, somewhere I had begun to feel a strange love for this time when we are all locked down in our homes. It had been a month a half and I had never enjoyed myself so much. I failed to understand for all this time what lay at the core of this love and confinement. Was it the fact that I could wake up any time I wanted to without having to go to school? Or was it that I had 24 hours just for myself without having to worry about deadlines or assignment completion?
The answer had been in front of me all along. I just did not see it. The night when the lockdown was announced, someone had come home. A friend, brother, companion. I did not realise what living with him for so many days would be like because he had always stayed away for work purposes. But now when I look back, I wonder if the joy of eating a badly cooked Rajma would have been the same had he not fed me with his own hands. I look back upon the lonely nights made less lonely with a shared bowl of Maggi and watching a favorite sitcom for the tenth time. When the lockdown had begun, I had my routine set and goals of losing weight, writing more straight. But now I know that the joy of doing something or achieving something is consequential only when it is shared with someone. It is only now I realise that the strange love I had for this lockdown was actually for this person, the person who taught me the essence of love among umpteen other things.
It is then I realised that we keep running after things all our lives. While running after our goals we lose sight of the things that matter. So every once in a while, we should close our eyes for a second and look for our special person and see the things we achieve, the challenges we face, and the daily haste with which we live our lives from their eyes. We will realise that our time is more beautiful and meaningful than we could have ever imagined.
-by Abhika
