Note: This post has been written over a period of 3 weeks. The reason for this had been illustrated in the last post. I implore you to bear with me and read it till the end. If you are reading this post, you are anyways smart enough to understand what I am trying to say.

We live in a world where we are being looked at all the time. I say “looked at” because that kind of sounds less harsh compared to “tracked and surveilled”. The phones and smart devices that we ourselves make sure are with us all the time are always listening to us - even when we are no talking to them. Google and Apple, even Instagram and Tiktok, know where you are all the time even when you are not even using their apps. Google has access to all your emails and can shut you out of your life just because. You cannot escape the Facebook mafia. If you stop using Facebook, they catch you with Instagram. If you don’t use Instagram they will catch you with Whatsapp. If you somehow even escape that. Facebook now owns “Giphy” the gif search engine that is built in your phone keyboard. Hell, let’s say you don’t even use that they can track you with their integrations in every single website and app that you are using. They have a profile of you even if you never made it and it is more detailed than it would have been if you have provided that data yourself.

There is a very slim chance that you do not know what ‘Baby Shark’ is. I say slim because the numbers actually point in this direction. As of the writing of this piece, the top 3 versions of this “song” have a total of 9.6 Billion views on Youtube, with over 6.7B views to the top single video. Yes, billion with a B. If you consider that the population of the world is somewhere around 7.8 Billion, it becomes very likely that you have heard this song.

Your phone dings. Considering the time, you know who it is. It’s the first of many WhatsApp forwards that your dad will send you today. You pick the phone up and this is what it reads - ‘Take half a glass of warm water and add to it a pinch of cinnamon, some honey, and lemon. If you drink this elixir every day while facing east you will no longer have problems like constipation, chronic loneliness, EMI’s, and poor work-life balance.’ Well, something like this. Now you know that doing this won’t rid you of the EMI’s and the shitty boss. Constipation - maybe but none of the others for sure. BUT. What is the harm? Even if it does not do anything at all, drinking water with honey and lemon will, if nothing, hydrate you. There is ABSOLUTELY NO HARM in trying at least.

Meera loves books. Her bibliophile father, yours truly, had conspired early on to trick her into liking books and with a cunning scheme of always surrounding her with more books than toys and reading to her in hysterical voices - it seems to have worked. She is especially fond of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (recommended) so it was the logical thing to do to order another book by the same author. That’s how her father reads, that’s how she will too.

Allow me to gloat a little before I get into the meat of the matter. You know that feeling you get when a scientific study comes out that says that some activity, that you have been already been doing for some time, is proven to be good for you. That is exactly how I am feeling right now. Validated. About the choices that I have made. It is a pretty good feeling.

The lockdown seems to be coming to an end. There are still many restrictions for nothing that’s not manageable. Someday the markets will open for business and theoretically, we will be in a position to live our life “normally”. All of us, to some extent, know that the new normal will not be the same normal that existed before the pandemic. The uncertainty of how different it is going to be is immensely scary. But then this is not the first time humanity has seen such a calamity. We have braved many such severe times and have always come on the top. This has all been possible because of our ability to adapt and transform at a rapid pace. This is how we are beating COVID this time and this is how we will prepare for the future.

All of us are coping with the COVID related lockdowns in our own ways. While some are able to utilize this time for good and use it to improve themselves, some of us are just coping one day at a time. I have read so many accounts from people who feel that they are not able to use this downtime in the way they would have wanted to. Most people know that they should be using this time in improving themselves yet they find it hard to even start the process. I personally am going through a very mixed phase. On the one hand, my work efficiency has greatly improved ever since the work from home started, my reading habits have suffered greatly during the same period. I have read only 1 book during the entire lockdown. To put this in context, I average at approximately 1 book a week “normally”.

This is a comment I made on Reddit as a response to a post by someone who just got laid off amid the whole COVID-19 lockdown and accompanying recession. I think this can be helpful to a lot more people, unfortunately, so sharing it here as well.

I am sorry you were laid off. It sucks. No amount of encouraging words or reassurances can change that or how you are feeling. So just allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling so that you can get past this once and for all. Let your emotions run their path so that you can start the process to get back on track.

The coming times are going to be hard. Not just on the personal front for all of us with the spread of the disease and disruption of social life but also greatly on the professional front. The virus and following lockdowns across the world have brought the economies of all the countries of the world at the brink of collapse. A recession is imminent, as a matter of fact already here. People are losing jobs across industries. The unemployment rate has already crossed 23% in India and looking at the uncertainty of the coming times, it is expected to grow. Some people have been fortunate and they only had to go through pay cuts and furloughs which in such times is still a much better option compared to layoffs. But no one knows how long their employers will retain them even at reduced salaries. If the market and the demand for goods and services does not come back up in time, they will also be forced to cut jobs to reduce costs even further. All in all, we are not in a good place and the way ahead is also foggy at best if not dark.