The previously-unstoppable kinetic momentum of the world has been forced to pause until this tiny speck of a virus is defeated, and surprisingly, we can do that by staying at home and washing our hands. This idea that the world could stop turning for a length of time has always fascinated me, and in a short story written a few years back, I had imagined a similar scenario, although in that story the threat was external (aliens!). In that story, we needed to stop the massive engine of economic activity so that aliens could not identify our planet through its significant heat-signature. But reality has proven to be stranger than fiction, and the world is being brought to its knees by something invisible to the human eye. These are unprecedented times, a time when the world collectively enabled the Out-of-Office feature on its email, and it calls for extraordinary but individual measures.
India has announced a 21 day lock-down period, a three week vacation from our normal, everyday existence. I am sure these days will come with their own set of challenges and heartburn, but instead of looking at the coming weeks as a punishment, let’s pause and try to look at them from another perspective. Let’s try to find the silver lining in these corona days. Here’s what we can do to make the most of this world-wide hiatus and turn it into a memorable event:
Spend Time With People Around You
This is a wonderful time to get to know the people you are distancing with – your family, your parents/kids/partner. Get to know them better, cook with them, laugh with them, dance with them. As everyone else in the country is distancing in parallel, they probably have some free time too, so give your relatives a call, get all your friends on a conference call, and live out the good ol’ days.
If you have them, spend time with your kids. Read them stories, or better yet, listen to all children stories on Audible for free (Amazon just announced that it’s free until Covid-19 is defeated).
Not only that, but remember Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle?! I grew up on these, as I am sure many of you did too. Read these to your children, (or take a break from them and read them yourselves) FREE of cost, as they’ve announced that their entire catalog is available for free until March 31st. Click here and here for Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle, respectively.
Another way to use this time is to dig up the old photos, not the digital ones, but the old film photographs and the hardbound albums. They carry an unmistakable nostalgia, rivaled only by the smell of old books and libraries. Show them to your kids, share them with your parents, ask them for stories behind those photos, and while they talk, use your phone to record their voices. You will cherish these recordings when they are long gone.
You could also use Google’s Photoscan app to convert those old vintage photographs into digital masterpieces.
And if none of these really stoke your fire, then you can always fall back on board games!
Go Within
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Blaise Pascal.
This is a great opportunity to explore the mind, and sharpen the greatest tool we possess. And the best way to explore and observe the mind is through meditation. These are the meditation apps I use:
- Headspace (usually a paid app, but to deal with the pressures of Covid-19, Headspace is offering most of its content for free.)
- Waking Up (again usually a paid app, you can send them an email for a free 1-year subscription)
- Meditation podcasts by Tara Brach (free).
- Guided/musical meditation on YouTube.
If meditation isn’t for you, there are lots of games that you can download on your phone, that help keep the old walnut sharp and young. For example, I love to play Symmetry, a great way to improve your spatial thinking, which is one of the strongest indicator of high IQ.
Learn
This is a great opportunity to learn something new! You know what they say – it only takes 21 days to turn it into a habit. Make a habit out of learning new things! Here are some awesome resources to get you started:
- https://www.guvi.in/# (use code Covid19 for a free full access to all their courses)
- https://www.udemy.com/
- https://www.coursera.org/
- https://khanacademy.org/
A lot of these content providers are opening up their courses in view of the pandemic. Such abundance of knowledge has rarely been seen in civilizations past, so seize the day!
Clean
You’re going to be locked up in that house anyway, so you might as well pick up the broom and do some dusting. It is a good time to take a good hard look at the objects you have surrounded yourself with, and lovingly discard the things you no longer need. If you need help with that, check out Marie Kondo’s amazing book ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’.
If you just groaned at the thought of reading a book, don’t worry I got you covered. Marie Kondo’s zen-like cleaning philosophy has been sumptuously packaged by Netflix in her hit series ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo’. It’s a great show to watch, especially with kids.
Her philosophy is simple. If an object doesn’t give you the same warm feeling it once gave you, or if it doesn’t have any practical purpose left, it is time to say goodbye.
Feed
This part involves taking care of our friends, birds and stray animals on these suddenly empty city streets. A few tips:
- Spread a handful of seeds/legumes/lentils on a terrace or balcony. The birds will know to find them.
- Keep small bowls of water in covered areas of the terrace, balcony or garden. Remember to refresh these every morning, or you will find that you’re breeding mosquitoes instead of helping squirrels get a sip of water on hot summer days.
- If you have the space, you could just tie a bucket of water outside the house, so that wandering cows can quench their thirst. (My mother goes one step more with this – she dices up a cabbage every day and mixes it with the water, along with the rice. The cows around her house in Mysore love this tasty meal apparently, because the bucket is empty by mid-day!)
If doing such things leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling, congratulations you have just fed your soul.
Be Grateful
Start a 21 day Gratitude List, and make note of all the big things and tiny things that fill you with joy in these trying times. I promise you this will be the icing on the cake. If you want to know how gratitude affects our mind and why it is important, you could read this note from a scientific study on gratitude. If you don’t want to read it, just take my word for it. 🙂
In an unexpected twist, we may even find that recognizing our luck increases our good fortune. Social scientists have been studying gratitude intensively for almost two decades, and have found that it produces a remarkable array of physical, psychological, and social changes. Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis and Michael McCullough of the University of Miami have been among the most prolific contributors to this effort. In one of their collaborations, they asked a first group of people to keep diaries in which they noted things that made them feel grateful, a second group to note things that had made them feel irritated, and a third group to simply record events. After 10 weeks, the researchers reported dramatic changes in those who had noted their feelings of gratitude. The newly grateful had less frequent and less severe aches and pains and improved sleep quality. They reported greater happiness and alertness. They described themselves as more outgoing and compassionate, and less likely to feel lonely and isolated. No similar changes were observed in the second or third groups. Other psychologists have documented additional benefits of gratitude, such as reduced anxiety and diminished aggressive impulses.
If you have any more ideas, or tips/tricks, please do share them down in the comments. If you think this post will help someone out there smile a little in these dark days, please share it with them.
And if, like me, you like to notice the small ironies of life, then the tiniest irony right now is in the word ‘corona’ itself. Corona means the ‘irregularly shaped pearly glow’, that part of the sun that can only be seen during the darkness of a full solar eclipse. I don’t know about you, but I think there’s a ray of hope in that.
If not, I have to leave you with this incredibly poignant poem doing the rounds now on Whatsapp statuses. I am incredibly jealous that it was Kitty O’Meara who thought of it and wrote it, and not me, but I love it, and I hope you find hope and joy in it too.
And the people stayed home.
And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.
Kitty O’Meara
Rohit Nalluri 
Leave a comment