We all have been experiencing a lot of things which have changed around us owing to the difficult times that the entire humanity is going through. While we continue to fight this invisible enemy, I am writing this to share a couple of things that I have come to realise in last 4-5 months of this pandemic. Besides all the sad things we have been facing like financial difficulties, emotional imbalance, panic attacks, etc., there are indeed a lot of things that have happened which interestingly fall on the positive side. Since this is a disease, problems and difficulties are bound to come, however, as they say “every coin has two faces”, this one also has given lot of things to be grateful about. 

During this period, we celebrated our wedding anniversary, my wife’s birthday, my daughter’s birthday, Raksha-Bandhan (Indian festival about celebrating the bond between a brother and a sister). Though we missed being with our loved ones, shopping and dressing up for the occasion and all the other things of the likes that we correlate a celebration with; one new and a very interesting thing that I experienced is that we spent our resources like time and energy on purely the celebration and nothing else. Things like handmade cards, homemade dishes were in the forefront and the best part was that we spent and devoted the entire day completely to ourselves. “Did I say I missed the cake?”, No I didn’t miss it, as these are the perks of being married to an excellent baker. 

One interesting realisation is about the “choice of vegetables” for meals which I used to be quite vocal in complaining about. Now since I am the one who usually goes out for vegetables and interestingly, I also end up buying similar sort of veggies, I no more have the luxury to express my displeasure. I initially thought the idea of only me going out for these errands had a larger and noble objective to minimise number of people going out, however, after a while I realised the hidden agenda and now, I can very well relate with the analogy of teachers appointing the most disturbing student as the monitor. 

Given the kind of profile I am into, I was literally living out of my suitcase; in fact, there used to be times where I was travelling for about 20 days in a month. Although I love travelling, but eventually it becomes tiring when you come back only to change the packing. Although it’s been more than four years that I am staying in my current house, nonetheless, I hardly would have got a chance to socialise in the neighbourhood, leave alone making friends. And I am sure lot of people in my society also would not know me. One fateful day after being into the house arrest for almost 3 months, all thanks to COVID-19; I planned of stepping out for a small walk, “of-course with all the precautions” in the mind. While I was enjoying my evening stroll after ages, of course in my society compound itself, I noticed two gentlemen interacting with each other, maintaining the proximity, so as to ensure “social distancing”. I greeted them and tried to strike a conversation with them and to my delight they were pretty welcoming. Within next 2-3 minutes, I also found myself chit-chatting with them comfortably. We had a great time together discussing lot of things like current situation, our surroundings, movies and what not. What started for me as a random meet, became a weekly activity and now I wait for Sunday evenings to meet with my new friends. This encounter is very close to my heart as I got my inspiration to “write” from it. I love reading books and would sometimes write also, however never thought of expressing my thoughts with a larger group at a platform like this. Although my wife had been pushing me to write for a very long time, I don’t know what, but something was stopping me. But a book written by my “Sunday evening friend”, who’s now a very good friend, acted as a tipping point and here I am sharing my experiences and realisations with you all. 

If I put all those difficulties that we all are treading through because of the pandemic, there are lots of positives and learnings also. It has given me the time to rekindle my own relationship with myself. When I look back, I realise that it has given a chance to spend more quality time with my family, which I was missing even when I was not travelling. This scenario has given me an opportunity to interact with the people who were just “some familiar faces” until sometime back. It certainly is a difficult time for all of us, in terms of its emotional and financial impact, but that is something beyond our control, what is in our control is to look at the positive aspects it has given. 

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