Life in the New Normal: A Quarantine Story by Lavanyaa Lodha

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The blog post is a part of ‘Prologue’ — a special edition of Creative Writing Workshop by The Open Space Society. All About Jaipur is the digital publishing partner for the workshop.

As I look outside , down towards the road, from my terrace , I think about the scenario we had just two months ago. People were busy leading their normal , almost repetitive lives , unsuspecting of the change that was about to happen to them in a few days. Let’s dive deeper into this sea of changes that we are yet to accustom.

Before this state of being in our houses or farms or wherever you are currently residing took over our lives completely, we had such vast priorities to take care of. For parents it ranged from to see if the children went to school properly to if they are doing their homework or studies properly to managing their own busy work schedules , the list will go on. For students it was to study, be it for exams or normal school teaching. For me it’s the same I guess if you exclude the competition I have with my brother on who can complete more series than the other.

In my opinion, prior to this quarantine we prioritized socialising, going out to eat and/or being so immersed in our work or studies , we had no time to take care of ourselves let alone others.

Now due to the ample amount of time we are provided , we are reconnecting with and prioritizing a lot of our passions and well a lot of our relatives as well(especially the ones who say that the last time they saw you you were this small or look how have you grown and other unnecessary things). We are learning new hobbies, cooking as well as baking scrumptious delicacies and binge watching our favourite shows on OTT platforms like Netflix and prime among many other past times. I mean Ramayana became the most watched show worldwide with 7.7 crore viewers.

We are taking care of our health , both physically and mentally.. For a person who overthinks a lot and gets stressed and thinks the bad of everything initially this was very difficult for me but I finally started to work on it. I started listening to music , reading more books as well as listening to various teenage podcasts like teenage therapy and study break , I started having hope and I started to become more social than I had been, at least with my family. I also realised that you have to live every moment in the present and stress about the future later.

Anyways moving on , I was to travel this year due to the fact that I successfully steered past all those sayings of boards are coming, study. But we didn’t travel, if that wasn’t obvious and I guess that I was sad at first but then I got over it. While this has provided me with a lot of change of mind and how I view things, it has badly messed up my schedules to say the least.Now the main problem is the fact that I get more sleep during online classes than at night. And also the fact that I have urges to eat every hour. Now that’s a real concern.

But I guess that while these maybe bleak and depressing times I wish to look towards those things that are optimistic , those which are a ray of sunshine in a sky full of dark clouds and for me that is my family. Because of this we are now incredibly close and the fact that something so bad brought us together is completely ironic and very cliched but it is what is.

Now I just hope that this gets over soon so I can finally get the trip that I wanted which is probably going to be next year or 3 years later. I wish I knew.

– Lavanyaa Lodha