Lockdown: Giving insights into a major lifestyle shift
As our nation has decided to go for lockdown, everything has come to a standstill, as if everything happening around us have been forced to slow down.
This pandemic coronavirus has spread across the globe like a storm claiming thousands of lives, which begun in Wuhan in late 2019, has now emerged as a global threat.
To overcome this risk of Covid19, our country has declared a lockdown on 21st march to prevent its spread across the entire nation.
With this closing down of shopping malls, gyms, theatres, temples, clubs and other places of public associations creating panic and anxiety in everyone’s mind, that what’s going to happen next?
In the initial days of lockdown, for me it was getting very hard to accept the fact that for 21 days we will be confined in our own house, these walls of our house will be seen as the only safe space left.
Now, the window and the balcony of my house is the only place to feel the outside world and nature’s beauty like that of sunshine, breeze and rain.
As it is said time never waits, this shall too pass! getting used to this form of life, the window side of my house has become my favourite spot. The outside scenario is quite the same in the night as that in the morning. everything feels very calm and peaceful but at the same time, there is a kind of numbness all around.
The much-crowded streets are now vacant, no noise of traffic moving on from morning till late night. All laughs and giggles of children playing around are missing now. people clubbing together or any kind of associations are also not seen.
Complete deadlock is being felt from daily chaotic life, only the commanding voice of police patrolling on the road could be heard, urging people not to step out from their house.
As of now, for everyone’s safety, we need to follow self-isolation from our family members and friends and maintain social distancing norms.
The day lockdown was declared, people started stocking up the everyday essential things like milk, groceries, vegetables, fruits, medicines etc. with the fear and doubt that there might be lack of supply of these items during the complete lockdown.
The fear of virus getting on everyone’s mind people are looking towards building a strong immune system to fight Covid19 for that we are preferring home-cooked food and refraining from ordering outside delicacies.
Psychologically this has made every one of us a cleanliness freak, giving utmost importance to maintain hygiene, like doing all household chores by ourselves.
We can see the foremost thing which has changed is of greeting style, as earlier we used to greet in a more friendly gesture of hugging or shaking hands but now we prefer to do ‘Namaste’ as a preventive measure.
Like some of us, who are real-time foodies as earlier we used to binge eat at our favourite eating joints or liked to hang around cafes or having street foods. with the shut down of such eating hubs, restaurants and clubs have brought a drastic change in everyone’s lifestyle and if looked deep into the positive side of this people are now seen having nutritious and healthy food.
Is this quarantine a necessity to understand the true essence of life?
Before this self-isolation time, we couldn’t spend a day without talking or meeting our friends or loved ones, but now there is only a virtual connection left by talking over phone or video chat.
But by that, we are getting more time to spend with our family, especially with our parents, whom we were not able to devote quality time due to our social lifestyle. We are even bonding well with our pets too, whom we used to leave up to the caretakers, now they are also enjoying our company.
With this quarantined situation, we are missing out to enjoy the outside world and even if we step out of our house now, that too only to get the essential items, it is advised to wear mask and gloves as a precautionary measure, even our going out has become area-specific and time-bound.
This phase brings up a challenging situation for us but is also showing the beneficiary side as well. Now we have started finding happiness in small treasures of life, we are reliving every moment in this period of uncertainty.
While staying at home we are engaging ourselves in different sorts of recreational activities, like watching Netflix, painting, reading a book, doing a home workout.
The only question everyone is having in their mind is when everything is going to get normalise? well, that too is uncertain.
The only thing which is in our control is to have patience and to have trust in our government.
We as a responsible citizen need to cooperate with the government and abide by its decision, though this lockdown has disrupted our lives, the current situation demands this kind of greater preventive measures. with a positive outlook towards life, we can overcome this hurdle also.
