COVID ROUTINES

moomal shekhawat

We at SEA believe that the pandemic has a granularity of meta, non-linear narratives that become useful in making sense of the relational complexities of the pandemic and society. Thus, we set out to collect stories of fears, joys, agilities, fragilities, friendships, networks, collectives, home, work, infrastructures, entrepreneurship, privileges, marginalizations, migrations, desperation, gender, equity, etc. The glossary as a method became useful to reflect on this granularity of experiences and account for slippages during these times. These spatio-temporal stories, when read together or as individual instances produce a new sense of the emergent contemporary. This framework also allows us to speculate on the kind of world we will inhabit once the storm has passed. We draw on multiple readings to bring out the nuances and patterns of social life produced in a pandemic. This we hope would allow us to collectively reflect on the restructured ideas of the self, the collective, society, space, and time. Individual micro-curated expositions are linked together for www.covidglossary.net in order to generate non-linear readings of the pandemic.

A house was never really equipped as a working space, especially in terms of supporting it digitally. Not every member of the family has a device which can facilitate their work from home. Be it work or school curriculum or any other activity, for the time being all are being carried out online via digital platforms. Having provision for a computer/tablet/laptop for every member of the house was neither considered nor was it anticipated that a school going kid or a school teacher who usually conducts classes in person would require or need one at all. Similarly various other professionals (where individual devices were provided at the place of their work), would require a personal device of their own. These devices (computer/laptop/tablet) were usually thought of as a common resource which can be used in turns and was usually regulated as per everyone's daily routines (work/school timings and schedules) also the dependencies wasn't so much and it's requirements was highly limited in many cases. So a family working with these constraints have started to generate new routines which are solely based on the availability of these devices and a whole new range of schedules have emerged, working part-time the whole day.

Use my laptop while I'm resting or sleeping, whenever.

I will take my bath before dinner so that the break is long enough for someone to do some of their work in the meantime. You can offset these meal times and other such activities in order to carve out some time for yourself to be able to do your work without affecting mine.

Once a day I will wash utensils and clean the house, just so that I can keep myself occupied in some other work while the other person can do their respective tasks on my laptop. Likewise many such household chores and other activities (dinner, bathing, naps, food preparations,etc.) were altered, offsetted between various members only to be able to use one device between multiple people who needed it.

The most significant change that Covid lead was that before it struck, there was no discrete way of doing something or any specific routine

that was supposed to be followed every time you step out of the house or return.

A PERTURBATION OF A ROUTINE

Everyone has stopped moving, commuting, travelling of their daily tracks. A small halt of this lockdown has brought many changes in our daily practices, which was once a social life for me has become an anti-social one. It’s common to look at social media as a medium for communication and comfort for many in this pandemic, but not for me. I stopped the use of social media since a long time, and I believe it helped me in this pandemic. It allowed me to think and not consume. For once I realized how much work my mother did in our house, and some kind of effort and engagement was practice from my side to help her after a few years. It becomes difficult to cope with family when you stay far; and this pandemic gave me this opportunity. For my dad, this pandemic became a vacation, and my mother was glad with it, as he spent few hours of the day at home, even though his office is at the ground floor. He is currently learning to play flute, which he wanted to since he was young, but never really got a chance to do that. My sister, who is a dentist was planning to go abroad for her further studies, is still in a strong dilemma regarding the same. She has been wanted to go since a long time, but the pandemic for her postponed her plans. As far as me, this pandemic helped me stabilize myself mentally. Being at home I found myself to be away from chaos, until the new academic year started.

For example: after returning home I remember my mother say “ Do not sit anywhere or touch anything and wash your hands thoroughly".

It wasn’t regular before to pick up slippers from the door and directly proceed towards the bathroom for a shower and soak clothes in warm water with disinfectant.

Many more such instances that were not a part of daily lifestyle earlier have now got infused into the standard way of living which has become a guideline to be followed due to Covid.

Sitting at home was just a boring task for my dad. But mom was very happy as she got six more hands to help her right from cleaning house to cooking food- me,my sister and dad helped her. Now we understood how its difficult to manage everything. We tried different recipes. So now we don't need to go out to eat any street food as we can make it at our own homes. Many of my friends started their online business, some started to sell paintings while some were reselling mask,sanitizers,etc. Schedules had completely changed, me and my sister never slept before 12midnight and never woke up before 9am. But my dad and mom used to wake up at 7am and start to wake me up. Mobiles phones and social media were the only partners. Everyday was like sunday until online lectures started. We got lot of time to spend with family(which we will not get again). Watching mahabharat and ramayana with mom and dad was everyday schedule. But yes I really enjoyed my lockdown with my family.

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