Curse Of Corona – Part II

Those who have not read Part – I can read it here.

The worst hit was education. All schools and colleges were shut down indefinitely. I remember, one of the cabbies lamented the lack of discipline at home. “There is no control over my children. They play all day long. When schools were open they would attend classes regularly and had a routine. Now, you cannot tell them anything.” I was surprised how concerned he was, more so, because generally, the milieu he belonged, did not spare much time or resources on educating their offspring. It was, in a way, heartening to know that now they too understood and valued the necessity and goodness of education.

Subsequently, the concept of online classes evolved. Students of families having an atmosphere of learning at home managed. But those who were first generation students had problems in understanding and pick-up. One big issue was these classes could only be attended on smart phone and many could not afford one or more than one.

If the man of the house owned a smart phone, he could not spare it for his child as he had to take it with him to work . A tailor needed the phone to view samples and specifications shared on Whatsapp according to which he had to cut the cloth. The style of working was also changing with change in time and everyone had to adapt to it fast. However, if working hours coincided with class times then either the bread earner or the children had to forgo their medium of earning or learning. Tough choice!

Pre-COVID days I was an on-store purchaser because I thought I had more choice and would be able to take informed decision looking around the rows and rows of goods. Lockdown compelled people like me to shop online. Gradually, the idea stuck as I realized it was a great time saver. However, choices were few online and prices higher at times. “Kam mein zyada” implying “to be contented in less” became the dictum of the day. We per force simplified our lives which was much needed anyway. I still continue with that as it suits me and is part of the process of de-cluttering which was direly wanting in me-life.

There were other blessings in disguise too. The bees and the birds came back. The sky became a shade of detergent-washed blue. With nil vehicular traffic on road pollution decreased. Air became breathable which meant less of pulmonary issues except those induced by Corona. But these were shortlived. With the lifting of lockdown and restoration of ‘normalcy’, traffic has become worse taking a greater toll on the environment.

Pre-COVID, “Work From Home” or WFH was a concept familiar to the Private Sector only. For us, working in the arms of the Government, this was a totally new and challenging concept. With the sudden imposition of the lockdown, we, at first, sat home clueless. We were not in the habit of keeping back-ups of office work at home. Little that we could do was just through e-mails. Remote access to our office PCs was only available to a few because of technical constraints. Ours is a Fortune 500 Company dealing with essential commodities and services. Work could not stop. But unfortunately, the infrastructure required to work from home was not up-to-date and delivering the job became difficult. Many got used to it even later and would happily WFH while I still prefer to go to office and work as it reinforces my age-old routine and gives me certain regulated hours to singlemindedly focus on my work. During Corona times, the exigencies at home always took priority and was a deterrent to continuity in work.

During the first lockdown, our Organization very thoughtfully and creatively made it mandatory for all of us to self-study online. We have an e-portal for upgrading our knowledge set through various short courses. Spread far and wide with global footprints, a lot of developments, innovations, researches and experiments are always ongoing in our Company. Every Department is a Specialized Unit where one is not conversant with the functioning of the other. Learning about the workings of the various Departments and their specialized skillsets, when we did not have anything else to do but worry about the next day, was fun, educative and a positive distraction. At the end of each course, we would share our assessment results with our HOD (one of the participants) on WhatsApp and a friendly camaraderie pulled us along as we happily competed with each other within the Department on how many courses could one complete in a day. Gradually, our performance time stretched beyond the stipulated working hours and became flexible.

To be continued…/-