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The end date of the second set of three weeks of the lockdown across the country to flatten the Corona curve is almost upon us. The third of May is just a few days away, and with Labour Day a couple of days before that, we are getting plenty of opportunity to reflect upon work, the value of domestic work especially, and the value of supportive work such as domestic helpers, vendors, the people pressing your clothes and so many other jobs that we all tend to take for granted every other day, even more so when we are people living in some privilege of class, caste or community.
There is a whole lot of people recognizing that work is work and is not gendered in and of itself. For many of us, especially those locked down far from family, we are recognizing that we can and will do what it takes, never mind if those jobs were particularly reserved for one or the other person in the family or outside. There are others for whom the lack of that privilege or being trapped in oppressive spaces where their work is wholly determined by the stereotypes of what their gender is supposed to be good at, and who are fuming and fretting, or worse, in serious anxiety and distress, waiting for a time when they can be back at work. By this time, a whole lot of us are likely to be taking ourselves that we can't wait for the lockdown to go. One hears grumbles of how some people even think to themselves that they are ok with the chances - the mortality rate of this virus isn't so high, and as someone living on their own, they would very much want the option to go ahead and get themselves the disease, get it over with and move on as a recovered covid patient. Many just want to get back to work, bored stiff of all their well meaning efforts to stay positive and connected virtually through this extended crisis times. Some are already there, planning their return to work on this Third of May, including things like where they might go for dinner after that. Thing is, we all know in reality that we really should wait for the all clear signals, that we shouldn't really be our and that we should totally wait somewhere. Many of us will probably hold on to that space right through. Most might just go back to work and life mmediately as if nothing happened, even if they have to make do with many compromises. They tell themselves it is worth it, and that it is a better alternative for the current life It just is not. Like people who get into relationships just for the sake of company discover sooner or later, it just doesn't make sense to try and short circuit things. Loneliness or boredom aren't really great and lasting motives for relationships or work. We need to wait for better times and more suitable opportunities. As written for The New Indian Express. Have you noticed how the flood of jokes and memes at the beginning of the lockdown have now dwindled into a trickle? There isn't much that's coming around even in the innumerable family WhatsApp groups, college alumni groups, apartment society groups and all the other groups one is a part of and not even regurgitations of the old ones and that is saying a lot when most mornings are spent deleting or forwarding on countless memes and things. For retired people and others who may have had lots more time on their hands, the Whatsapp forwarding was a way of life and even for them, things have slowed down.
Humour as a way of coping with disasters seems to have a limited shelf life, especially the easy humour that is just based on laughing away nervousness. In time, as the crisis extends, the humour evolves into more sophisticated puns and displays of genuine wit and leaves the baser forms of mockery-based fun behind. For couples and people in relationships, this holds true even more as the early attempts to laugh things off and make it lighter are ways of reassuring each other that the discomfort and fear is short-lived. In many relationships, people find themselves in fairly clearly defined roles - there is the person who makes the jokes and the person laughing at them. You'll see it all around you, even in movies and books. The comic relief is a standard trope in many works of literature - even Shakespeare is full of them, and our own Indian classics have the close friend or the sibling who provides that little relief for the central character struggling in the throes of love, lust or other such feelings. Failure to make something light or the failure to laugh at something is a sign then of things getting in too deep and becoming really serious. With the CoVid-19 lockdown gettong extended, people everywhere are recognizing the realiity that perhaps there won't be much flying at all this year, no holidays out anywhere, no short weekend treks, no get-together or casual birthday parties or brunches for months, no escape from each other, no visiting parents or others in far away places - the reality of being where we are and learning to be ok with that much stops being funny at some time, and we are there now. Couples who are living together and actually liking each other are recognizing how deeply grateful they are to have that. People who like each other but aren't with each other and are locked out of each other's homes are recognizing how much they miss each other. People who don't like each other much or even hurting one or the other, and those who are truly vulnerable to violence are finding how desperate the situation is and the casual humour often just doesn't have it any more to lift us up. We need more. We need love to hold us, and hopefully we will find it, even when it is difficult. As written for The New Indian Express At the beginning of this Corona virus lockdown, when we were all supposed to be locked in at whatever place we happened to call home at the time and whoever we were with at the time and whatever resources we had at the time, for a lot of us who weren't with the people we really counted as our own, the first impulse was to get home, often by any means necessary. At the first rumble of the potential shutting down of flights,trains and buses, like so many birds flocking in the skies at the early rumble of an earthquake, people left in droves to be with their loved ones, even if they didn't particularly feel very loved or loving at all.
People flew thousands of miles to be with parents, buses are crowded with single people from the cities reaching back to their towns for the lockdown, and hundreds of thousands walked back in the searing sun with their families and children to their native villages, just so they could be with their own people, even if they had just left them behind a few months or years ago. There is something about these big experiences that make us want to reach out to our immediate people and close ranks as it were. There is a reduction in the immediate term to what and who are essential for us. The shopping we do has become closed down to the basics of food and supplies - people are thinking about staples, vegetables and fruits. Maybe the occasional Chikki or chocolate if we can, but we don't really go around looking for it. Same with the people in our lives. We tend to group into our immediate circles, close rank and stay in the huddle. The oeople we check on at these times from outside our immediate circles are quite limited. You might find the ocassional broadcast to all on whatsapp with a generic message that is carefully worded to sound personal as if it was typed for you specifically, something like, "Hey! I was thinking of you and how you are coping. Are you ok? You know you can call on me if you need anything, right?" and given that you yourself might have sent such out, even if you'd know that it is not really personal, you might still connect back for a moment. The really personal connections are much smaller. Even with all the technology at our disposal, we tend to connect with maybe five to ten people. Not more than that, notwithstanding the large workplace zoom calls or attempts by some enthusiastic apartment society social person to get everyone on whatsapp group video calls. Very, very few would have dinner the reverse migration at this time to some far off resort to be in their solitariness. Hardly any would have have checked into fancy hotels, unless of course you are a monarch with your retinue and an unlimited budget! For the rest of us, our world does become quite small. As written for The New Indian Express This period of lock down and social isolation would be something else altogether if it had happened even ten years ago when internet and smart phones were still items of luxury. Here and now, billions of us are connected on our phones and constantly checking on each other, loved ones who are far away and keeping an eye and a ear out on the world through our screens. Memes pop up minutes after a controversial speech, old movie songs and comedy routines are dressed up to give new meaning in the current context and circulated endlessly as they strike a chord with the people reading them.
One gif in particular has two corgi dogs yipping and growling at each other, presumably without any trigger as there are no toys or food or anything around that they might otherwise be fighting over, and there is a caption: "Me and my partner on Day 12 of the lockdown." There are a number of such memes going around, largely focusing on how we are likely to bicker and fight over nothing at all after so many days locked down together. Without any absence to make the heart grow fonder, this much proximity does take its toll and we would certainly start bickering and fighting - not necessarily because we are upset with each other, but because we are feeling our helplessness and powerlessness with the situation and that frustration needs to find an outlet. If we aren't consciously looking for an outlet, then we would end up fighting. Think of it as a long car trip. You are driving and your partner is in the front seat with you and you have three kids in the back. After about ten minutes of looking out the windows, another half an hour with a comic book or a game, they would inevitably start asking "Are we there yet?" and then start pushing and shoving each other, getting rowdier and calling out to you to mediate and since you are busy focusing on the road, you are likely to shout and yell, buy a few moments of sulky peace before the cycle repeats over and over. How do you stop the cycle? People who have done these car trips would tell you: Make up some games! It might be "Spot the cow," or a little bit of antakshari or more competitive things like, "Name, Place, Animal, Thing." Some kids would do challenges like naming things in any category starting with a letter and literally any category like names of gods or beverages. The games would go on for half an hour or much longer, till people fall asleep or there is a restroom break. The journey passes more peacefully. Being locked down is something like that, only we are the kids in the back and God knows who is up front in the drivers seat. We certainly might get shouted at or worse if we misbehave, and we have to make up the games ourselves for the most part, or bicker like those two dogs. As written for The New Indian Express For couples and people in relationships who are living together, this social isolation period means being locked in together a lot more than one might have bargained for, and for people who had in the time before got used to having cooks, maids and other kinds of domestic help, now having to do all the household work themselves, is changing the dynamics of the relationship.
Even where the work load was generally uniformly shared, there is bound to be a lot more of being noticed. We see each other a lot more of the time, and see a lot more of how we are with things. Small things get the attention that they never did before. One example could be in how things happen in the kitchen. Take cutting lemons. You might cut it length-wise and your partner might cut it breadth-wise. You might notice that one of you keeps the phone charger when not in use white the other waits for it to get completely empty. The way you dry clothes, the order in which you sweep or swab the house, the way you chop carrots and whether you peel the potatoes in a continuous spiral or in short sweeps. The differences we see can trigger conversations on how different you are from each other. How these conversations go and where they lead is the determining factor. For some of us, it can be a warm curiosity, a continuation of the discovery each other, where we can delight in the way we are, take pleasure in our differences the way we might have if we were just beginning to date and looking at each other with desire and hope. On the other hand, they could also be triggering and make the small things balloon up into big fights that bring up everything from the past and you start thinking if you are too different, too dissimilar to ever really appreciate each other. "If we can't even think alike whether to cut carrots into round segments and then dice them, or by length first, how can we decide on the big things!" You might tell yourself. These long periods of being isolated together have a way of making things clear one way or the other. Where earlier the times apart in each day created buffer zones that made it easier to ignore the differences, the forced togetherness reduces the buffer and makes things transparent. Some of us might try and recreate buffers to stay safe - we might be in different rooms for much of the time, or divide chores so we don't overlap too much. That works too a certain degree to keep the status quo, but for many of us, especially those who didn't care too much for the status quo in the first place, this period can be a trading period. You might go through this and come out very much the same as before, but chances are that you are likely to come out more in love or wanting to separate. As written for The New Indian Express Home is supposed to be a safe space. It is supposed to be a space where one feels supported, encouraged, free to be oneself, and most importantly, safe in all its sense - physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and every other way. Thing is, not everyone of us is lucky enough to have such a safe space at home, especially in intimate relationships.
Intimate partner violence is a reality. In India, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005 calls out a comprehensive list of domestic violence that includes all forms of physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, and economic violence, and covers both actual acts of such violence and threats of violence. It even recognizes marital sexual violence, and other abusive situations. While cases reported to the police are about 120 or so per 100,000 people across these categories, surveys show close to one third of women have experienced such violence with a majority not reporting them at all. For other people in intimate relationships that do not have legal protections like this law, the vulnerability to domestic violence is even higher. In ordinary circumstances, people vulnerable to such violence take measures to keep themselves safe when they cannot for whatever reason exit the relationship altogether. Much of these safety measures are about finding safe spaces outside the home such as work, shopping spaces or social spaces including neighbours. At home, these measures are about staying close to safer people such as children or elders in whose presence the violence may not happen or be muted. Escape, whether temporary or longer, is something one is always prepared for under these circumstances. In these CoVid-19 days of lock down and social isolation, for people experiencing intimate partner violence or domestic violence, the situation can be quite dire. This includes students who were in hostels and now forced to be back home, people who would get away to an office for respite and now cannot, people who would express their gender and sexuality more freely outside home and are now forced to live in a hostile home, people married into a loveless relationship without much choice - the list goes on. Even for others who don't routinely experience such violence, being locked-in can exacerbate existing cracks, rocking the little everyday truces and stormy, violent episodes might occur just because of the forced isolation and cohabiting. Tempers can fray easily. Imagine being locked in with your abuser for days or even weeks on end! It is scary. If you are experiencing such violence or run a risk of such violence, please try and prepare ahead. Keep friends informed so they can check in. Have escape plans if it gets too heated. Watch out for CoVid-19 being used to abuse such as being denied sanitizers, or being kept away from people. Keep phones fully charged and know that you can still get help. Forced social isolation doesn't mean compulsory or helpless. If you know someone at risk, lookout for them. Practice physical distance and social care. As written for The New Indian Express In these times of the Corona Virus, or Covid-19 as it has finally ben officially termed, the one single phrase that stands out in all the social media chatter is "Social distancing." It is the single most important thing to flatten the curve on the spread of the virus and curtail the impact of it on the stretched medical response infrastructure. In practical terms, what it means is more time at home, less time in public spaces, especially around possibly ill strangers.
It is an absolutely necessary step to flatten out the spread across the community, and yet, within the home, for people used to seeing each other for a few hours a day and perhaps the weekends and the occasional longer break, this stay at home period can be something else altogether. We tend to romanticise the idea of being together forever with movies and books playing up the image of the lovelorn person yearning to spend every moment clinging to the beloved, pained at the thought of being away even for a day, and calling out "I miss you already!" and "I miss you more!" at the door only to quickly start messaging each other on their smart phones. In reality though, most relationships have long periods of time away from each other each day, if not through the week. There is a lot more intimacy and connection to be shared when there is time spent away from each other. To be able to go away and come back allows us at the very least ask, "How was your day?" and have stories to share of the outside world, and seek support from each other in terms of how we each relate to the world outside. For people who live and work together constantly, not having those gaps and always knowing what's up with each other, often reduces opportunity for intimate connections. What do you talk about with a partner about them when you see them all day, every day? There is no "What's new?" conversations possible, and with the over-familiarity, contempt could set as the old adage promises - "Familiarity breeds contempt." So, how does one maintain the little bit of distance necessary for healthy relationships even if you are mandatorily stuck with each other 24*7 for weeks on end? The key is to recognize that we all have inner worlds that are distinct and unique. We need to give ourselves time and space to live in those worlds, even if we are within the same walls, be it by reading, journaling, the content we consume, the activities we do. For us then to actively be interested in each other's world with questions of, "What have you been up to?" can still bring up interesting aspects of this person we are trying to love. This period of Corona inflicted home alone time may just be the Universe trying to get us away from being in Doing mode to more time in the Being mode, and learn to love each other in the spaces between us. As written for The New Indian Express Have you been tracking the financial news? Yes Bank has been very much in the news for all the wrong reasons, giving ride to frustrated customers queuing up to withdraw their allowed fifty thousand rupees per day and waiting for the world to go right again when all is again Yes with the bank after the reserve bank rescues it with a new partner that really can take care of it. In the meantime, the bank is losing close to 90% of it's value.
Financial relationships are relationships too. We get quite invested in the institutions that we go through for our financial needs. It isn't just about the interest rate we get or the interest we get from the bankers, most of us don't change bankers even if we know there are better banks around that offer maybe a percentage or two better interest. Even now, there are banks that woo clients with great offers, asking why we are with a four percenter when we could have six percent. Then there are banks which actually offer a lot more than just a couple of percentages more, it can even be as high as four percentage points more. In reality, sometimes we actually take the lesser percentage because it seems like the higher percentages are a bit too suspicious. It is like in high school dramas on Amazon prime or Netflix where the hottest people in campus don't necessarily get the Star - often it is the stereotype that the best looking people are also the meanest or not the smartest or something else that is taking away from their attractiveness as a long term prospect. It is like really we are programmed to avoid the better looking of things because we expect they will be less than great when we get to know them. Perhaps it is from evolution and how as people living in caves centuries ago, we needed to run away from the colourful and the brilliant because they were usually quite literally poisonous or threatening. We learn to admire things from far but learn to stay far away from them. We might even copy them to look dangerous ourselves but we stay cautious of the attractive rosary pea and the brilliantly colored butterflies Here in the times of big banks teetering, there are likely hundreds of customers of the bank who have been sticking with the bank anyway. So many of us don't just up and leave for a better looking prospect. We hang around, quite sure that we aren't going to get dumped. We are loyal to our banks, even when things look really scary. We trust at some level that the big bosses in the government will not let it really break down. We persevere. Thing is, are we really as loyal to the people in our lives as we are to the banks? Or, do we need that big boss guarantee? Life and love are tough. When even banks need a bail out, is love any different? If our love suffers, can we look for someone who might help? As written for The New Indian Express Everyone is talking about Parasite, the first movie in a language other than English to win the Best Picture Oscar. The director Bong Joon-ho famously said that the Oscars weren't really an international film festival and so he didn't play much attention to it, though one imagines Bong Joon-ho did enjoy getting the Oscar. There is so much talk about it being a movie on class and the inherited inequities of wealth, the emphasis on the smell that class gets and how this smell is at once reviled and sexualized.
There are many ways to see this movie, and one of them is to see how romantic and familial love plays out at both ends of the economic spectrum. The climactic scene is especially brilliant in how the families are polarized in which child they take care of - one is fainted, and the other is bleeding to death. There is the expectation briefly that the bleeding child be left to die and everyone rally around the rich kid, but in the second that there is clarity among the confusion that this is a family, there is a surrender and the rich person just asks for the keys. Parallely, the romantic interest cutting across the sections is doing its own thing, with the rich kid carrying the poor kid on their back and running to get attention. That poor kid survives and there is a bit of a narration of that life, though we are left to assume that the romance is washed away, given the rich kid is so young. Looking at it, the movie seemed to ask: who would you save? Your familial love? Or, your romantic love? An older dilemma that was often asked: imagine you are three of you in the house - you, one parent and one partner. One night, you wake up quite suddenly, smelling something off and you discover that your house is on fire. The parent and the partner are both passed out. You are strong but you can carry only one of them. Which one would you choose? The dilemma posed usually leaves out a child because if it is parental love versus family or romantic, chances are there is totally no question - the young thing is what typically everyone would choose. We are just programmed to look to the future generations, to the potentiality of the young and would put their needs first. To suggest anything else would mark us out as some kind of a sociopath. But when we leave out kids and just keep the dillema to a parent versus a partner, it gets complicated, ethically confusing and puts the focus squarely on what matters to us most: family love, or romantic love? Maybe the next Oscar winner is there in answering that dilemma! As written for The New Indian Express Are there things that you love that your partner hates?
Chances are that unless you are in some perfect romantic dream in some Bollywood fantasy or an old fashioned Mills and Boons novel, you are likely to have a less than perfect overlap with the people you love. We are sold so much of perfection that we often do not see that our lives are not exact matches. Even the awe inducing full solar eclipse, complete with the diamond ring formation, isn't really a perfect overlap. The reality is that we would often have atleast a few things that we hate about our partner and know that something about us that our partner hates. I mean hate - not just mildly dislike, or kinda annoyed, but downright hate it. Things that make you want to gag in revulsion. One might have mild annoyance for things like wet towels left on the bed, active dislike for an irritating habit like biting off one's nails (hopefully not toe nails! That would be really something for an adult!) or leaving hair in the shower drain for someone else to clear. Active hate though is reserved for even more personal matters. There is no universal list of hateable aspects. You might hate the way they lick their plate, for instance, even though they are otherwise the epitome of etiquette. They might hate how every morning you call up your parents for a half-hour chat. Maybe it is how the family dog gets more hugs and kisses than the people. Or even how one haggles with the vegetable vendor while dishing out thousands without as much a blink of an eye for a meal at a fancy restaurant. We may not have these hates when we start a relationship, but sooner or later, we start developing serious reservations about some habit or the other, maybe even some connections one has, or work or interests, or even political leanings. Relationships can go to ways: the first where what we tolerate when starting a relationship can soon feel intolerable, or the second where we are able to make space away from the relationship for what we just can't take and the other just can't leave. Let's take a simple thing like going out for a few drinks with buddies from college, imagining that you just don't like drinking at all. At the start, you might accommodate it but later on you get absolutely mad about it, or you are able to carve out separate times where your partner goes out drinking and it doesn't bother you. The difference between which path a relationship takes is often not about what you hate, but about how much you are able to love the rest of what happens in the relationship. Few things just turn deal breakers over night. Most of the differences we have in a relationship have generally existed anyway, and whether they now cross the limit of tolerance is mostly about how large and deep your relationship is, not what you don't like. As written for The New Indian Express |
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