The New Normal
A greener clime, clearer skies, time with your near and dear ones, less commute, that hobby that you wanted to pursue. All that doesn’t sound so bad does it? But with that also comes social distancing, sanitization, a life within a silo that we have had to create, and constant fear, a constant looking back over your shoulders as to whether you have maintained standards of health hygiene to keep abeyance to a disease that has racked the world. That is the new normal in our lives. That’s how 2020 is playing around with our lives.
Hand sanitizers and masks have become the best friends that we have now in our lives. A life which is punctuated by the word distance. Just as we have grown used to a life where our mobile phones are indispensable to us, we have added the bottle of hand sanitizer into our lives now. Just as a chic scarf or that favorite piece of jewelry was a compulsory accessory for us earlier, that mask has become a compulsory accessory for us now. For the fashionable and notable a wardrobe now is incomplete without a range of masks to complement and augment the various dresses.
DIY sanitizers to organic ones. Various scents to the addition of aloe vera and other enhancers to make the use of sanitizers fashionable have come up. Entrepreneurs are coming up with various ideas to titillate the fashionables and lighten their wallets in this anyways cash strapped world.
DIY is the name of the game today along with online. From online classes for children to a plethora of upskilling activities online is the way forward for people. Senior teachers who never had a clue about online classes are upskilling about zoom calls and google meet sessions. Even senior doctors are having to learn how to give consultations over the video calls. Imagine an ENT doc looking down your throat to determine what’s wrong with you through the phone. Imagine the same if you have a gynecological problem. Life is moving online. Definitely and not at a very slow pace. Skills and tools to take things from offline to online are what are most in-demand today. Whether they be yoga classes or your Zumba class, your singing class, or a French class everything is now available online. Moments of epiphany like realizing you move forward while sweeping and backward while mopping has hit so many of us maid dependent individuals thanks to the new normal. Dalgona coffee and saree challenges have come circulated and gone leaving behind a realization that we can cook a plethora of things a whole lot of them learned from YouTube.
Keeping the young ones of the house has been the toughest challenge properly. when we adults have wanted to scream out and break the shackles of confinement that have been foisted on us through lockdowns and social distancing. As social beings we are used to social interactions, meet up conversations, coffee dates, gossips. Bereft of these we have got a sense of how caged animals feel in the zoos. The children more accustomed to freedoms have found it harder and the net has been the savior. And DIY activities. Thanks to activities based on crafts children are not only staying preoccupied but also learning various life skills.
But the new normal is not based on just this. On mask designs and hand sanitizer fragrances, on upskilling DIY and online classes. A very real part of this new normal is based on hunger, penury, and unemployment. On reverse migration, on disease claiming near and dear ones through neglect. With the economy nose-diving, it has led to lowering if employment opportunities for the daily wage earners. Job loss and pay cuts have become part of this new normal. Today’s employees are in a state of fear, whether they be in white-collar jobs or daily bread earners. They are at the mercy of their employers not daring to oppose any terms that they enforce upon them for fear of retribution and job loss. The government instructed organizations not to deduct salaries, but the same was still enforced, and when these were foisted on the employees by seeking their agreement, the employees dared not oppose in fear of losing their jobs, accepting reduced salaries often working longer hours while working from home. Leaves like Saturdays and Sundays often being encroached on by organizations as WFH meant access to the employee in a way that would not be possible if they were coming to work in their workplaces. Older employees who were not being able to get the requisite skills were laid off without mercy through some excuse or another. News reports of software coders turning to become vegetable vendors while a matter of amusement to some, shows the stark reality of the grim situation that the work force faced.
If you were a self-employed person the challenges were of a different plane. The small employer tried to give salary to employees while facing no business income in the periods of lockdown. While the industry cried itself hoarse for packages to stimulate business including reliefs like delay in payment of GST dues, none were forthcoming from the government beyond loans. With purses shrinking of consumers the demand in the market also started shrinking. Even as businesses tried to shift to an e-marketplace from their traditional markets they still faced a severe demand crunch. Various businesses like eateries have been forced to shut shop, some moving to become take away businesses just to survive. This also led to them coming under the mercy of the aggregators who have become the license holders of business in this new normal India. The small retailer who hasn’t been able to join these platforms have perished, unable to sell even with ready stock in the various seasons since the pandemic.
This is the new normal for India, a bittersweet pill that we are trying to swallow, forced to adapt to thanks to Corona. While for some of its new skill learnings, new normal of fashion and food habits. New habits of distancing and sanitation, learning to live without maids, and the use of robot sweeping machines. To many, it has been setting up home offices, higher and better network connectivity. However to a whole part of India, the new normal is tightening of purse strings belts to combat hunger and starvation. It is braving of a disease that’s a silent killer and trying to earn your bread despite the sword hanging over you. To a whole part of India, it is adjusting maybe even fighting for your share of dole of pulse and grain that the government is promising to give out to fight this pandemic. It is community kitchens and government hospitals ill-equipped to handle a pandemic of this magnitude.
But amidst all this new normal there are a few unchanged fundamentals. A lot of false promises. Opportunistic entrepreneurs and cronies making use of this calamity to make money. Rich people continue to become richer, and poor people poorer to the extent of becoming dependent on doles. But India has always been resilient and despite this new normal of the face covered by masks, the faces behind the masks will endure and survive to this new normal.
