Author Archives: Abhinav Bhatt

Productivity in Lockdown

All Hail Joan Corenella
https://joancornella.net/
  • Making of Dalgona Coffee
  • Relishing Home-Made Gol-Gappe, Samosas, Chhole-Bhatoore, etc
  • Learning new skills and mastering a zen-like personality
  • Creativity reaching great heights, higher than heaven
  • Daily Blogging of Lockdown Chronicles and becoming Seth Godin
  • Working from Home and being super relaxed and chilled
  • Productivity Gold Standard
  • Working Out and having a toned physique

Above are the things which are not working for me and I haven’t done any of them. Heh! I mean, oh no!

So by now, you might have already heard and seen people doing great things in these times of lockdown. They have not only gained mastery in all the culinary, but they have also lost weight. People have read 15 books in 1 month and become meditation experts. They have not only turned their lives upside down but then turned it up again, reached Nirvana, wrote the process of reaching Nirvana, and finally attained a perfectly balanced lifestyle that everyone craved for before some bat/pangolin/secret lab failed experiment/sheer luck ruined it for everyone.

You might have also come across rebels who say that all this is a sham and nobody is actually doing anything good. They have just got way too free time at their hands. People might be transforming but there also exist many who are not even getting time to get up from their desks because work has stopped being morning to evening thing. Rather, the start and end time have blurred and days are going in only 2 modes:

  • Work when your eyes are open and
  • Sleep while they cannot stay open.

I have unfortunately fallen on to the latter category. This lockdown is not going the way it should have been. 2 stars out of 5 in my humble opinion. I didn’t read more than 5 pages of 4 books I tried. I did a total of 10 minutes of workout and 10 minutes of meditation in the last 30 days. I have fallen prey to incessant sneezing due to allergy which made me think, “Oh I hope I didn’t touch anything which I wasn’t supposed to” or “I shouldn’t have gone to buy milk” but then sneezing stopped in an hour. The only thing I did which comes close to creativity is to hang my old Minimal movie posters and they too fell down the next day because I didn’t stick them properly. A bit of wall paint came out as well. Sorry landlord.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_IOJ0FBqAa/

Now they are finally up again but they need maintenance every 2 days apparently because my tape is made in China. And, there is nothing good on TV too. Money Heist is OKAAAAYYYY at best.

Now, to top all that morale boosting in an off direction, I took up a 2 year Masters course which would need a good 10 hours a week dedication.

This person rightly summed it up really well and anyone feeling like this should watch this I think:

Now, normal people will give up and do nothing about it. Not me, I am extra-normal. (10 years ago, I would have called myself ab-normal as in Hindi ‘ab’ but that joke is lame now.)

From what I have learned from everything in life is that when you are not feeling up, stop feeling down and start again. This blog is a “stop moping and get hands back on the steering and look straight and drive” types. Here are a few things I did and doing:

  • I cleaned up my room and made it completely showable-on-Zoom room now. (I didn’t do it alone. My better half helped.)
  • I shave almost daily. And people notice that.
  • I made a time table and I will be following it.

And that’s it. This is not a motivational blog, please. Maybe if I continue doing good things, I will write ways to be sane in these times. But for now, we shall strive and struggle and stay on the right track, no matter when lockdown gets over and virus gets disinfected.

  • May be I should stop eating sugar too?

Murphy’s Law

In 2004, the share markets went down all across the world. They were slightly more down than usual down. They said that it was sort of a minor-recession-cycle-low which happens every 4-8 years. I was just about to start college. I thought to myself: Thankfully it is happening now… What worse would happen at the time when I would graduate after 4 years! Then in 2008, Lehmann Brothers started the worldwide meltdown. To top that, the company in which I had got a job declared its own bankruptcy of sorts. What worse could happened, happened!

There have been several instances where I thought what if that happens and that actually happened! Not that I am Naustradamus’s new avatar, but there have been occasions where the tongue has done the trick. It has gone in both negative and positive directions.

Yada yada yada…

In 2019, I thought to myself: A decade is ending. The new decade would bring some major tech changes and cultural updates along with it. There might be a day in a few years in which we would all be able to Work From Home and there won’t be any need for offices. *gulp* And here we are!

I am not Nate Silver or that Moneyball guy either and maybe many others also spoke of something which wasn’t expected but that happened or happened untimely. I have been so wrong on many levels as well, no qualms in saying as well.

Many times, what we anticipate in our minds becomes our reality. Maybe it depends on our state of mind or general perception about life. Maybe it is inverse nihilism or it is your inherent desire to see it happen. Some say that is Kaali zubaan or Saraswati’s will. So, should one stop thinking or stop saying it out loud?

Background photo created by freepik – www.freepik.com

Murphy’s Law says that what could happen, would happen. So, nobody is there to be blamed for all of this. Except Murphy may be.

Notes from the Lockdown, Day 15

It might be day 10 or day 13, I am not sure. I haven’t gone out since March 5th or March 13th, save 2 days in between. So, it is all blurry. Kindly excuse.

Here are some notes/thoughts:

  1. It is tough when you have nothing to distract you. You need those honking sounds, the sounds of the ambiance, the gossips you don’t want to listen to, the unwanted noises of languages you don’t understand, and basically the things you don’t care about. You need them around to live.
  2. When a family calamity happens, and you have no elders around, life seems directionless, and nothing you can do which can make you think that you had it under control. No matter how old one becomes, there is always something to learn. Life will give you new experiences at each and every turn. This week, I had a big personally tragedy. Like the loss of a family member big. Bloody cancer. And everything we could do to mitigate it was constrained by covid-19 issues. Fortunately, we could do something which would have sufficed for time being and yet, a lot has to be done but we are in a lockdown. Unprecedented.
  3. When understanding others takes a back seat and ego becomes your top priority. Even if you try your best, when there is a danger hanging outside, practically just outside the safest place i.e. your home, you are bound to lose your mind in some time. Take care of your Mental health, they say, but how? You cannot meditate 24 hours a day. So the best is to keep quiet. But then go back to point 1.
  4. There are times when positive and practical advice sounds negative.
  5. Work is there. And everyone knows that it is tough to work like this. But your livelihood is at stake. But nobody has any clarity. That’s a challenging environment nobody mentions on their CVs.

Covidiot + Indiot = Covindiot

Many of you must have received this. A wordplay on Covid and Idiot.

Let me just add another word to your vocab:

Indiot noun

ind·i·ot

  1. A stupid person of Indian origin who does things only idiot Indians would do.
    ‘Don’t burst crackers in your hand, you indiot!‘
  2. A stupid Indian person who doesn’t follow rules, meant for their own safety.
    ‘Helmets are not meant for elbows! Don’t be an indiot you fool…’

Here’s one more word for you:

Covindiot noun

co·vind·i·ot

  1. A super idiotic Indian person who has no regard for his or her own safety in times of Covid-19
    ‘What kind of covindiot are you? Don’t you understand social distancing? What were you doing playing kabbaddi with strangers on the main road on the day of Janta Curfew?’

I am not going to share any scientific gyaan but just few tweets in order to make my point.

Mumbai actually

The full thread above basically.

While I was super pumped to stand in the balcony, clap for our doctors, health workers and essential services personnel. I felt a sense of togetherness genuinely after 2011 World Cup Victory. But all my sense of gratitude turned into anger against the Covindiots.

The problem with Indians is that only 1% of us are such fools. But 1% of 1.3 Billion is 13000000 or more.

We cannot even facepalm now because there’s a chance of infection.

Work From Home Guidelines from a Non-Expert

Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running and screaming.

Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park – The Lost World

Fiction has become a reality. Who would have thought that it would happen so suddenly? But it is not an alien attack, or Dinosaurs roaming around, or an asteroid coming (It is coming but it will pass from a safe distance, for now…). You just have to work from home and live with it. In the beginning, it looked like a welcome change. But I am not going to the office for more than 10 days now and real colors of Work From Home Life have started to show their ugly faces. I know it is more like Work From Bed, but here I am, as a Non-Expert, to help you rise up and beat your own expectations about yourself and do Work From Home, the right way.

Expectations and Reality

Here are some non-expert tips to deal with the grim situation:

Bed is Bad

Avoid sitting on the bed for 20 hours a day. Maybe sit on the floor and keep the laptop on the bed. Or lie on the bed and keep the laptop on the floor. Don’t ask me! I don’t know… I am not an expert. But stay away from the bed because the bed will stay, backbone won’t. If you already have a desk and chair set up, use that setup. And like I showed in the pictures above, keep changing the directions to have some variety.

Distractions

Everyone is working from home or at home not working. This means you will have to deal with an uncountable number of distractions. Your maid, your family, your pets, your kids, in whichever order you prefer, are going to pester you. The way to deal with this is to turn the tables and become a distraction for them. Disturb them so much that they maintain a big social distance from you and thereby, isolate you enough so that you can work peacefully. There might be debates and fights though. Again, I am not an expert but I can just suggest.

Schedule / Length of the workday

Very subjective. For those who really work will struggle with this as there might not be a start time and end time. For others, a cake walk. They will start late, take breaks in between, shut shop early and when you message them / call them / ping them, they will have the connection problem, electricity troubles, and fought with spouse problems. For single folks, they will have movies open in another tab which would hog the bandwidth. Basically, everything is blurry so who knows who is working and from when.

Working Out

Make plans about how to work out as now you’ve got slightly more time. You needn’t go out but you can see on Youtube: How to meditate, how to do Yoga and which is the right exercise to do after every 25 minutes. Make plans surely. Implementing them can wait. Optimistic folks say that this will get over soon so why change your usual habit of not exercising at all.

Stay Connected

You will soon forget the familiar faces whom you liked, had a crush on, you hated or you were indifferent to. So, it is a good time to stalk or block them on social media sites. It is the right time to know their political views or what their hobbies are. This might change some perceptions, who am I to tell, being a non-expert.

Food and Hydration

You are going to become fatter. There’s no denying that. But everyone is going to become fatter, that’s nice no! Except for those with daily wage jobs (black comedy joke). You are going to definitely sit for more than you did in the office. In-office, you could take long breaks for tea. You could have water cooler conversations about Big Boss. You could sync bathroom breaks with colleagues (it is a thing, really). But at home, you just eat, drink water, walk 5-10 feet and come back and then sit again. You can go to your balcony to track the time and the Sun’s position at least, right?

Rest you can take care of yourself and come up with your own tips. I am not used to working from home and I don’t think this was ought to happen to everyone in this decade. But this is the reality so make the best of it.

Here’s a list of things which you can use to really spend your time wisely, while not working from home. Check the full thread below.

https://twitter.com/nickdennis/status/1241259501510184961

Happy Working from home. Enjoy till it lasts.

Do’s and Dont’s for Jokes in these times

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

According to South Park, it is okay to joke about anything after 22.3 years. But this was said by Eric Theodore Cartman in 2005. That time we didn’t have Social Media’s power which we have now. So, as per me, adjusted to inflation, the rate of social media growth, the ease of mobile phones, the handiness of the free time due to WFH, and a random constant number 3.14, the world nowadays can make a joke about anything which is 22.3 minutes old.

So there we had it. As soon as the news of disease COVID-19 caused by Virus SARS-CoV-2 came into being, it didn’t take long for the jokes to come. The first one I remember is that Indians can’t get it as we are the immune-st bunch of people because we used to clean the cricket ball, freshly taken out from the dirtiest of drains, by just bouncing it thrice and moving on. Then you would have seen the memes about more babies getting born after the quarantine and they would be called the Coronials.

The funniest part of the jokes is that as long it doesn’t happen to you, they all sound really chuckle-worthy. But as soon as something is directed at you or happens to your near & dear ones, it becomes a no-go zone for you, no matter who you are.

Therefore, I took the liberty out of the thin air and wrote some Do’s and Don’t about joking about the Corona Virus.

The Do’s & the Don’ts

  • Pundemics are okay, the Pandemics aren’t.
  • Racist jokes should be avoided. The maximum you can say about China is this: Nowadays, everything is Made in China.
  • Jokes about Panic buying should be encouraged. People who are not panic buying are getting panicked by others panic buying because now non-panicky folks fear that if they don’t panic now, the already panicked fellows will buy everything and there will be nothing left apart from having a panic.
  • Following types of jokes should be totally disbarred:

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

It’s WHO.

Who WHO?

Roses are Red, Violets are blue… You travelled abroad? We need to Quarantine you.

Nobody
  • Jokes about Flattening the Curve are fine. But you need to flatten your belly curve too, Sir.
  • Social Distancing jokes are fine, as long as you don’t irk people permanently that they diss you and keep a distance of 10 feet from you forever. (This is the worst of them all, I Know)
  • Jokes about Work From Home are fine but I want to write another blog post so I cannot pour all my creativity here.

I hope you all are following the protocol shared above as well as staying safe, aloof and giving cold vibes to everyone like it’s a Monday morning.

Jokes are what make us human. Again, jokes dry up when someone we know gets affected. Not everyone is equipped to crack jokes and not everyone is sane enough to take them. Till then, ciao? No no… sayonara… no that is also not safe and also the wrong country.

Namaste. (Can be used as a greeting as well as a goodbye, right!)

Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash

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2020 will be full of fireworks

Back in 2002, when I was still in school, 2020 seemed like a far fetched affair. There was some discussion originating from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s mind about 2020 would be The Year. It felt like it would be a time when the World would have totally changed. Technology would have made leaps and bounds. India would have become a superpower (wink). Unfathomable, mostly!

And here we are. 2020 has already begun and within the powerplay, life has been nothing but a turmoil with a lot of work, sleepless nights, weekend events, (thoughts and personal plan about higher studies) and before we could take a sigh of relief, we have got the main event of the year (perhaps of this century), the Covid-19.

Continue reading “2020 will be full of fireworks”