Monday, April 13, 2020

HOPE- Hold on for Positive Energy

In the last 3 weeks, I have tried to keep my morale high. I have tried to be engaged with kids and house along with office work to keep myself calm. I have learnt a few new things in the last few days and have found peace in exercising, pranayam and doodling. But time and again, the mind tricks me and goes back to its pessimistic ways. The powerful mind wanders off to the land of negativity each moment that I free it.

But two things happened this morning that gave me rejuvenated energy to control the mind and my feelings so Lockdown 2.0 can be approached with positivity. Sharing it on my blog so that everyone who reads it can also find renewed energy and so I am also reminded daily to be positive. This morning my cleaner(part timer) came to ask for her March salary. While i gave her the money, we both sat down for a chit chat over chai. (with appropriate sanitisers, masks and social distancing). I wanted to understand how her family and those around her were faring in these times. It was surprising she hadn't asked for her salary all this while so I was curious on how they were managing.

She told me that where she and many daily workers like herself lived there was a lot of police doing the rounds. The police were not only stopping them from going out to work but also distributing food once daily. The police were even volunteering to get their rations on a weekly basis so they didn't have to step out. There was dry ration available to buy at very discounted prices, she said. Every 2-3 days, some government organisation or NGO was also coming to distribute cooked meals in their areas(house by house). She said they had enough of food and that's why she hadn't come to get her salary. She also told me that her son( in 9th class in a Kendriya Vidyala school) was having online classes. He, along with few more friends were sharing a device that someone owned and they studied during those classes together. When their classes were over, they were loaning that device to other set of students to study their online classes. She said, the only thing missing was that she was bored. She missed her daily activity of work. She in fact, requested me to allow her to resume work. I told her to hold on for two more weeks and then we shall decide. As she went back, my thoughts went out to those young slum kids who were sharing a laptop to study, to those organisations distributing food, to those policemen volunteering to get rations. This is HOPE.

As I was smiling at these thoughts, I sat back to listen to the PM's address. As he announced Lockdown 2.0 till May 3, my younger one (who is an ardent Modi fan) walked in. Oh, Modiji is talking, she screamed and started listening to his speech. As i grimaced on the fact that my work would suffer for another 3 weeks and whether we will survive this apocalypse or no, Myra jumped with joy. she had just read on the screen that the lockdown is extended till 3 May. Does that mean no lockdown on my birthday(8th may)? She asked. I think so, I replied. She started clapping and a small jig followed- Oh ye, Oh ye..she went..I had tears in my eyes. I realised how shortsighted i had been. It was just another reminder for me that Family and its happiness is everything. Money and other material things will come and go. My 7 year old had just given me HOPE in times when I was dreading another 3 weeks of being in quarantine. She had just showed me what a positive attitude can do to life. Her positivity rubbed out on all of us, we turned off the TV and high-fived her in a HOPE that we will be celebrating her birthday soon.

Hold On , Pain Ends Soon.
Lets choose HOPE!

R

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Cost of Living or Cost of a Lifestyle

We started our self isolation on 20th March which was the last time we had a real contact with the outside world. Post that we have fixed a routine of deliveries or grocery shopping which includes going out once every 3 days to get everything the family needs. On 20th March itself, I took out a small cross body bag which became my designated money carrier for these trips during the quarantine period. I armed it with a sanitizer, small pack of wipes and Rs 5000. Today, after a fortnight, I had to refill that money and added another Rs 2000 to it. In 14 days, my household of 5 family members and 2 domestic help had consumed things worth Rs 5000.

And we hadn't drastically cut down on anything. Yes, we were rationing and not over eating or splurging on all sorts of things but we weren't exactly deprived. We still ate 3 square meals a day, one snack of tea and biscuits and one snack of fruits. We still had salad with lunch. We still had yoghurt on our plates. We still had milk to start our day and alcohol(weekends) to end it. The meals we've had during this period have included home made pizza, chinese, pasta, burgers, grilled veggies, cake, bhel puri, papri chat, dahi bhalla, noodle soup apart from the regular Dal, Sabzi that Indian households make. All of the ingredients sourced within the starting capital of Rs 5K. And our meals couldn't be more balanced. One could almost make a science experiment of Balanced Diet based on what we are consuming daily now.

It led me to re-think on how did i manage to spend so much money in days when my life was normal. It led me to re-examine what exactly is the cost of living for my house. On last count, as per an exercise that Mohit and I do every 3 months, we needed around 50 times that amount to sustain our lifestyle. But our living apparently costed very less. Then why are we spending so much money on things that are gathering dust currently? After all, the small cross body bag is the only one getting air these days, what about the other expensive bags that I have accumulated over the years? The only shoes I am using are my sports shoes(for exercise) and a pair of slippers(during the day), what about the several pair of heels, floaters, loafers etc etc that are lying in the closet? The only clothing I am wearing are now color coded. I am wearing Blue on Monday and Friday, Red on Tuesday, Green on Wednesday, Yellow on Thursday and black on Sat and Sunday. The bottom remains a choice of 3 track bottoms or a single loose jeans that I have. What about the other clothes amongst the moths in the wardrobe? The cars haven't been used in 14 days or the Harley that i gifted to Mohit last year with my life's savings. The only wheels getting air these days is the cycles that we have.

Did we over spend making a lifestyle out of things that we've forgotten how simple living can be? Is the money that we-the bestowed class spending the cost of our lifestyle or the cost of our living. Have we inter mingled our lives with so much that we needed a catastrophe to tell us the cost of living.
We spent an entire lifetime making our current lives into a lifestyle and it took a single virus to send us back to our living. If we understated our living then thats what life would become. We don't need a lifestyle to survive, we only need to live to survive.

The cost of our lifestyles has isolated us inside our houses!
Lets go back to our living so we never have to start afresh again.