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With a lot of trepidation and a smattering of hope, much of India is getting back to business as usual from June 1st. We have had seventy five days and more of being locked down.
This lockdown period and all the physical distancing has been reminiscent of time outs given to kids who are exhibiting really angry behaviour, to the point of kicking and screaming. Weary adults give Time Outs to kids at such times, getting each kid into a corner, facing the wall with little to no sensory cues. The Time Outs are supposed to be periods of self-reflection and quiet times, the kid is supposed to think about their own behaviour and hopefully feel some remorse at their bad actions, want to be more positive and try something new. The Time Out and the sensory deprivation during the time is expected to get the kid to feel grateful for what they have and understand how easily it can be taken away from them, and so to behave better. The adults can and will take away their privileges at short notice and the threat is often enough to get them in line. Once in a while though, the time outs do not have much of an effect, especially if the kids are all ganged up into their respective factions. That just makes them nurse their grievances, lick their wounds and they get even more unruly, fight even worse, sometimes disregarding the time outs altogether. It is hell then for the adults to get some control back, and often they need to resort to active detention and punishment. For adults in loving relationships.too, this idea of a Time Out during conflicts is an important de-escalation strategy. When a conflict is building up within a relationship, and it is coming to a boiling point, being able to take time off from each other and everything else, and giving oneself time to reflect quietly and take stock often helps the couple let go of their anger, connect to each other’s points of view and what each needs, and work through their problems more effectively. If during these time outs, instead of spending time in self-reflection and self-soothing, if we are in our own little camps, our anger gets coddled and addled into something even more monstrous, and we come out raging and baying for blood. It is then no-holds barred fighting and all bets are off. Currently, it seems like we were all sent out on Time Outs of sorts when the initial exhortations to wash our hands, self-report and self-quarantine did not work. With so many of us scrupulously following the guidelines, the Time Outs have helped but we have also been watching the curve rise inexorably, and now we have our hearts in our mouths as things get unlocked. Are we going to have massive outbreaks? Have we learned our lessons and will we voluntarily keep distances and spare ourselves the trouble? Or will we lose it? Will we need the authorities to come down on us harder than ever? As written for The New Indian Express After close to two months of lockdown, a recent study from the World Health Organization is saying that there is likely to be a surge of close to 90 million new births that might not have happened if life had been as normal as before. A big baby boom is predicted for 2021, a much bigger and powerful baby boom compared to the last global baby boom after the end of the World War. Maybe the new Gen Z lingo of, “OK, Boomer!” that is going around now will come around to mean something else altogether in a few years to talk about this big CoVid lockdown boom, and what pressures and pleasures that it might have for everyone.
There is a lot of humour and other news floating around on physical contact in covid lockdown times, including unverified news reports of segments of people across the globe pleading to their governments to relax the lockdown just so that people can go back to work and not be at home because they are tired of demands for sex, there are reports, again unverified, about some governments advocating for finding a suitable buddy to be intimate with while in the lockdown to give themselves greater intimacy. Some doctors and public health workers also used the coincidence of May 28th being the International Masturbation Day, with all of this month being dedicated to increasing awareness on this subject and the topic of self-reliance, to further bring attention to the subject and chisel away the taboo surrounding it. Jokes or otherwise, the reality is that we can easily become touch starved in these times. Just everyday casual contact itself is under scrutiny. No handshakes. Certainly no hugs or kissing. Even if you are with someone you are attracted to and has consented to sex with you, there is significant loss of the spontaneity now. No more jumping someone's bones immediately after entering home. You need to think of sanitizing yourself, your clothes and everything. A bath is recommended along with a quick round of laundry, especially if your everyday life gets you in proximity to the front line of covid defences. It is hard under such circumstances to get physical. Anxiety is a downer in any case, and after all the sanitation, it might feel enough to just lie down in bed and cuddle, or if you are living alone, just to watch some show on your favourite screen and hope to fall asleep. Tinder and other online dating sites have shown a huge increase in the active messaging on their platforms. Virtual contact increased by leaps and bounds, and they were great substitutes for the first few weeks, but now with India in lockdown 4.0 and no end in sight, and the threat of being completely isolated just one positive away, there is a tiredness. There is an ache to step back from the virtual substitutes and reach out for the real thing. We are recognizing how much touch really means for us and how hungry we can get for some affectionate physical contact. As written for the New Indian Express After months of the lockdown, many of us are quite likely exhausted from being within our spaces, and trying to get out here and there as safely as we can. Even as we empathize with the pain that countless others are going through, especially the thousands of migrant workers making their way back to their own homes in the heartland by whatever means they can find in these hot, arid days amidst the lockdown, not to mention those that are struggling with the virus itself either as victims themselves or as front-line workers, and we wish there could be a better deal for all of us, it is only natural that we still look at our own pain, and our own circumstances and try to see if we can be a bit better off.
The spaces we have with and between each other has been tested significantly in these few months. Those living in close proximity have found ways for themselves to hold some degree of privacy and some semblance of boundaries, but it has just not been easy at all for anyone. While we are all suffering, of course the degree of pain each of us in is different. Some years ago, when waiting in one of the then interminable and legendary traffic jams at Silk Board on the way back from a play in RangaShankara at J P Nagar, my friend and I were looking at all the traffic around us, watching two wheelers squeeze through trucks and cars to get ahead, and then even after they settled down, cyclists still managing to squeeze on ahead, and one remarked to the other with the deep insight of a Realized One, how so many people could cram into such a tiny space and how different it was compared to how traffic behaved in most other places, including parts of our own country. There was a little philosophical joke about how it didn’t matter whether you were in a Mercedes Benz or a beat up old KInetic Honda, that you were still in the same traffic jam and waiting like everyone else, but mostly we were talking about the spaces we allowed between us in public spaces and private spaces, and how here in Bangalore, space was quickly becoming a premium, especially the public spaces. Today, with CoVid, public spaces are vast and empty. One could zip across Silk Board in seconds, and yet, at home, our private spaces are so different. We can feel the space crowd around us, even if we are the only people in a large three bedroom apartment, and we can certainly feel the space as if it is a physical oppressor if we were sharing it with a bunch of others. Our relationship with our space is changing, just as much as it is with the people in it. We are looking at our public spaces with more longing, while holding on dearly to our private spaces. We know we need to love our spaces more. As written for The New Indian Express |
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