By: Sheenam Dhingra Tagged Bored, Corona, Daringdadi, Familytime, Instagram, Isolation, Lockdown, Quarantine, Technology, Tik Tok
It’s been a while in lockdown, as you know. We are craving for normal while we are now gradually forgetting how normal felt like. My father tried to cook for some days and so did I but our obsession could not last long. My mother and I have tried every youtube ‘desi nuskha’ for glowing skin and healthy hair and nothing works. My father has washed his car four times and he pretends to fix something by opening the bonnet every morning. I don’t think there is anything left to repair.
A one-year-old baby resides in the house opposite ours and he cries, bawls, and wails every evening while his father stands with him on the balcony. He was very fond of taking walks and roaming around. On some days this baby seems to voice our agony in the best possible way while he lies on the floor crying his heart out and his parents try to calm him down. I have never liked him more.
Our habits are rubbing off each other. I now know the difference between ‘palak’ and ‘dhaniya’ and my mother knows that Joey doesn’t share food! No matter how bored we are, my brother and I are secretly wishing that exams get canceled due to this while my father announces every day with unshakable faith and uncertainty that somebody will find a vaccine soon and the lockdown will end overnight. We have had such elaborate conversations about ourselves and people in the past few days. We sometimes imagine what our neighbors would be doing and how much a particular cousin of mine earns and so many other random topics and everyone shares their detailed hypothesis. We have decoded films, advertisements, and songs. We have such valuable suggestions and analysis to share that I sometimes feel like calling Rajeev Masand. We have also composed three of our own songs the lyrics of which make more sense. One of them is about our neighbors’ baby.
Well, that ‘Daring Dadi’ is my Dadi and I had to add her since she saw my cover picture. We had run out of topics for the conversation to an extent that I ended up showing all my cousins’ girlfriends and boyfriends to her along with their exes. We even rated their profiles out of 10 which was fun but Dadi also wrote ‘Mera Laddoo’ under all my photos. She is now curious about Tik Tok and we don’t know what to do. I think giving exams would turn out just fine (so much better than Dadi lipsyncing with Anup Jalota’s bhajans on Tik Tok)