Lockdown memoirs

I belong neither to the category of the very poor who are having to cope with extreme privations, nor to that small fortunate section of well-heeled businessmen, politicians and assorted types who have found in the lockdown an unexpected opportunity to further their careers vigorously, so I happen to be one of those whose biggest problem is to cope day in day and day out with boredom, frustration and incipient depression. This is what has been happening to me and immediately around me.

Of the few people who come out on the streets, the vast majority are males again. Without comment.

Beggars are knocking daily at my door after a gap of more than two decades.

Some people – old boys, as well as parents of current pupils, are beginning to say that the lockdown is slowly driving them mad. On the other hand, a lot of people are so scared of being infected and killed that they have virtually stopped even coming out on their balconies. Mostly retired people on pensions and those with assured salaries being deposited in their bank accounts, I am sure. They remind me of Dwijendralal Ray’s poem Nandalal: amazing indeed to think it was written more than a century ago! Who says the world has changed?

This has been a very wet and mild summer: it has rained heavily again and again ever since the middle of April. There are sudden chills; this evening itself there was a thundershower, and I had to wrap myself briefly in a shawl. So my surroundings are lush green, ablaze with flowers of many hues, and actually rather too noisy with bird calls at all hours of the day. I have seen snakes slithering on the roads and large scorpions – not very common sights at all.

The dogs prowling around in packs for scarce food are becoming feral, and a menace to pedestrians after evenfall: I am usually fond of them and they respond with wagging tails, but lately I have taken to carrying a big stick.

‘Learning online’, from my experience, is rather like what we Bengalis call kanthaaler aaamshottwo, or, as one dad put it, learning how to drive by reading a book. But a lot of us are having to make do, pupils and teachers alike. I have not gone for video conferencing, because they are not worth the bother: besides the networks being weak and people’s equipment often not up to the mark, there is more noise, distraction, idle chatter and pointless repetition than real learning of any sort whenever large numbers of youngsters get together. I have restricted myself to posting written lessons and exercises as well as audio lectures in class-wise Whatsapp groups, with an occasional pre-recorded video thrown in (which, to my surprise, have been much appreciated), answering questions via Whatsapp and phone, and correcting homework via email. That is a lot, actually.

And while this is deeply unsatisfactory as a solution over any significant length of time, one very heartening spin-off is that I know now that I don’t have to stay put in my house here for months at a time in future (as I have had to do for more than thirty years) to keep my career going any more. Given that logistics will keep improving – better phones and connections for most people, more robust apps, large screen TV and high quality webcam for me when I feel the investment to be justified, most of my study material stored in the Cloud and accessible from anywhere, I can buzz off for short, suddenly-planned holidays far more frequently, telling my pupils (maybe notifying them minutes before catching a flight!) ‘The next week’s classes will be held over the Net!’ That’s a happy thought.

On the flip side, I have sadly gotten very used to long post-lunch siestas. While I can cheerfully forgive myself given my age and the very long years of toil behind me, it will be quite a wrench – at least for the first few weeks – when daily afternoon and evening classes begin again, as they will sooner or later. Also, I have not been able to get a haircut in more than two months, and it's getting to be a nuisance.

The local markets are quite adequately stocked with essentials like rice, dal, salt, sugar, cooking oil, meat, fish and vegetables (especially vegetables: a great many people, from rickshawpullers to autodrivers, have been forced to turn into roadside vegetable vendors), but there are incipient shortages of processed foods, like Maggi and coffee and Nutella.

It puzzles me why only one hospital in the town has been designated as a CoViD diagnostic cum treatment centre, and that too a private hospital many miles away from the town proper.

A lot of people have told me stories about crowds being beaten up here and there by the police. Yet I have gone around the town several times in the last six weeks, and though I have seen crowds in some places, not once have I seen a police posse roughing them up. I have never been personally accosted either, though the local police patrol sees me taking a walk along deserted streets every evening.

Some people who think they are very wise and prescient are saying that this pandemic scare will change the world forever; others that, given how soon the whole world forgot the Great Pandemic of 1918-1919, everything will be business as usual by this time in 2021. Which side would you lay bets on?

The Decameron was written during the Black Death in Europe. I wonder who is working on some such epoch-making art or science right now, and where, if at all?

So much for now. I’ll be glad to hear from readers who are stuck at home like me.

P.S., May 17: For the record, this was one of the serious irritants I anticipated as reasons for not going in for live classes online by video. I can smirk and tell all those miffed teachers 'I told you so!'