A lot has been written about the pandemic, and I mean it literally. Everyday my newspaper is filled with articles on deaths, hospitals overflowing, patients dying due to mismanagement and lack of resources, people unable to get slots for vaccination and blah blah blah… Then there are the other indirect social and economic costs of the pandemic – migrant workers returning to their hometowns without a job, depleting savings of many households, children of such classes being left out from education because of lack of smartphones and internet, the trauma that family members had to go through when their dear ones passed away. In fact, it has overshadowed everything – now nobody is bothered about the farmers protesting, if NRC is to be implemented or not, etc. Yet there are some issues on which very few have spoken or written, and although they may sound like first-world problems, they are real. When I write about them, you may have the urge to comment me to ignore these issues and focus on the ‘real’ ones. Well, a lot has been talked about the ‘real’ issues that may matter to you, so just let me talk about something else.
A human being is a social animal, and it has always been so. We always went hunting in groups, but the group always had a significant number of men from different families. Since more than a year now, white-collar workers like us are working under the same shelter, seeing the same people every day, be it our family or our flat-mates. If you are happy with work-from-home so that you get time to spend with your family, it’s good for you; but for many, being disconnected with co-workers or other students has had many negative effects.
At a workplace, a personal bonding makes our co-workers our friends. This happened almost instantaneously for me in 2018 when I joined my current company – five of us from different colleges were put into one team, and we quickly bonded together. Our relation evolved quickly from just being together at chai-breaks to going on a full-scale trip a few months later. The same was not the case when I joined my new team, though – which was one of my most terrible mistakes, only if I could have anticipated that a pandemic would hit India a month earlier. I have been in office with everyone for only one day, and immediately from the next day we were asked to work from home. I have been to office a few times later, at the start of this year, for instance, but the pre-March 2020 experience was altogether different.
I would like to ask the same question to those who are studying online since the past year. When I ask this question to my brother, he doesn’t seem to have any problem, but I doubt if the same would be the answer from those preparing for serious exams like the UPSC Civil Services. Quoting a discussion that I had with my friend last year, students do not go to Rajinder Nagar because there are better teachers there. They go there because they get the company of aspiring individuals working towards a common goal. If you have watched TVF’s Aspirants, recall Sandeep Bhaiyya who used to stay in Rajinder Nagar but did not join any coaching. Otherwise, you can study sitting at home with Unacademy, who have spent a fortune advertising themselves in the IPL and attracting students during the pandemic. If you are a student who has experienced both the scenarios, which one was more suited for you? If you are reading this article after many years (remember that it was written in 2021), you may find this ridiculous because study patterns could have changed by then, but I believe that online classrooms do not give you the complete experience.
The greatest disadvantage for me has been meeting new people and making new friends. I have made zero real friends in the past year. When I say real friends, I mean someone whom I consider in my inner circle. As mentioned earlier, I do not share any personal bonding with any of my new team members, because it was not possible to do so virtually. I’ve met two of my most important friends in 2019, and I would have been happy if that trend had continued, but I would have to probably wait for another year to make this happen. Knowing almost no new people in turn leads to an impossibility in getting a life partner organically, which we then try to achieve through artificial means – and before you suggest me to use any dating apps, let me tell you that with my personal experience, they do not work. Good luck in finding serious relationships on these apps!
Recently, a startup called Lunchclub came up with an initiative to connect random people for a 30-minute meeting. I haven’t tried it yet, but anyone who has found it useful can share his/her experience. Then we also have ‘chhapri’ apps to make video calls with strangers – if you want to get a feel of them, you can watch the numerous YouTube videos roasting them. We do try to keep in touch with our friends with frequent video calls, but nothing beats physical company.
If you empathise with me, you would have also had the same question – how long will this go on? There is only one answer to this – vaccination, whose keys lie with people theoretically meant to represent us. Although outside of the scope of this article, I am extremely concerned about the pace at which this is happening. Last week, Mumbai’s municipal body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation floated a tender for 1 crore vaccine doses from the international market for which there were no bidders. The production capacity of Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech is also limited, though the government hopes to vaccinate everyone by December, it remains to be seen if this target is realistic.
What I wrote here was more like a personal experience, to put simply, just typing down thoughts that came to my mind. Again, you may think that I’m trying to make a mountain out of a mole-hill, for a problem which is faced by an elite section of the society. You may be true, but as I said earlier, I am not ashamed of writing about something that affects me and people like me; yet, constructive criticism is always welcome.
vishalkhopkar 