This Monday, I will get back to office after two weeks of quarantine and working from home. I couldn't help but reflect how much of the last fourteen days I would like to be different and what parts I would like to be same.

Share Market Live

NSE

Much of the quarantine period reminded me of the days of living with housemates in London during post-graduation. Only this time, I was with my husband instead of with people going about their own lives. Like roomies, my husband and I divided our tasks, without actually discussing who did what. Since I was working the second half of the day from home, I took charge of lunch, and he managed dinner.

Readying meals takes up a good part of my time. That was the case during my PG days and it served as a reminder through this experience as well. At least back then I had the option of eating out. This time it’s a different case because of the risk of contracting the virus through the food delivery person or the food box itself. I’ve also become a more conscious eater and over the last 3-4 years, managed to figure out ways to whip up a healthy meal.

I gave myself no more than 45 minutes in the kitchen. And that meant I had to go about things with surgical precision. So out came all the appliances my cook had relegated to the far corners of the kitchen cabinets. The electric rice cooker, sandwich toaster, fondue-maker now rub shoulders with the electric kettle and air-fryer I was anyway using.

One day I made paneer tikka with just regular Indian spices and yogurt. On another, I prepared the good old chutney sandwich with cheese, butter, cucumbers and tomatoes--quick, hassle-free and filling.

Like most people, I store coriander and mint chutney in the freezer. I have some more left and I plan to marinate paneer with it for a different flavour of paneer starter. Our non-wheat flours come in handy too - ragi, besan, suji can be mixed up or used individually to rustle up quick pancakes or uttapams.

For all the effort, cooking is any day better than the cleaning up later on. Like responsible roomies, my husband and I divided the task of doing dishes between us.

This was about the brass tacks. The best part about working from home was saving on travel time. Commuting in a metropolitan city is not just time consuming, but tends to leave you frustrated. I now realised it was not a coincidence that I was grumpy very often when I reached my work place.

Go back to your Whatsapp messages and see how you've communicated with your not-so-favourite people during quarantine. Feel the love?

I've always dreamt of living the country life, in terms of sleep. This was a golden opportunity to give it a shot. I slept at 10.30 pm after my working hours and woke up at 4 am.

What I learnt about myself is that I need 50 minutes from the time I am out of bed, before starting any activity. Some might feel it is a waste of time, but that’s how it works for me, so I am going to ignore all advice against it. Since I read that adequate sleep is crucial to boosting immunity, considering the current times I went back to sleep around 8 am for two hours. When I woke up after the nap, it felt like a second morning of the same day. This is a habit I'd like to retain when things go back to normal. It seems difficult because our help, the cook and the e-commerce deliveries start coming in after 9 in the morning every day. And in normal circumstances it would be possible to go to bed only around midnight. But with a few tweaks, experiencing two mornings in a day does seem realistic.

No man is an island, goes the saying. But the lockdown has reduced many housing complexes and colonies islands unto themselves. And within those, homes have become islands, given the restrictions on movement till April 15.

The last fourteen days were a reminder that self-reliance is a quality we need to cultivate in a world that may retain some of the scars of this epidemic.

First Published:Mar 28, 2020 11:04 PM IST