Nishanth S Coontoor
Ever since the Corona virus situation escalated into a global pandemic, people have been encouraging one another to follow social distancing and stay at home. I am impressed that most understand the importance of “flattening the curve.” You may be one of them right now with a “Stay at Home. Stop the spread” frame on your Facebook profile picture. Good for you!
This rational act has also brought with it some cribbing. I know; I agree – if you follow social distancing, you’ve earned the right to look to your ceiling every hour and constantly ask the One above – whoever listens to you – either God or most likely, the neighbor aunty, “When will things get back to normal?” “I want to go out.” “I want to do stuff.”
But, take it from a learned man like me. You don’t have to go out or even interact with people to “do stuff.” I’ve mastered the art of isolationship and simply chilling over several weekends. I’ve been sent to share my experience and teach you during these challenging times, my child.
I used to not be like this you know. Sigh. Or at least, I did not know I was gifted with the power of isolationship.
I grew up in Bangalore, in an apartment with the sights and sounds it brings with it. I took 60A from Vijayanagar to Ramakrishna Ashram every day to go to college. And when I missed the bus, I took the 59B bus to hop off at Mysore circle. (I had a bus pass). So, I know crowds. They gave me energy. I had to be out, doing this and that, going here and there. KR Market to Gandhi Bazaar.
There were however occasions when I used to make a one-off comment like “Why are there so many people?” or “Can we all just be quite and sit in silence?”
Imagine walking into the living room from your room at 6 PM on a warm Friday evening where your mom is sitting with two of her friends and chatting about whatever mom’s chat over coffee and the dads rehearsing their dad jokes? “Ivattu tirga Uppitu namma maneli. Ha ha ha!”
“Ssshhhhh!!!?”
“Yen ayuthu? Bega oodu, swalpa cooker off madu.” (What happened? Quick, turn off the pressure cooker!)
“I want some quite.”
“Kaadige hogolai” (You need to stay in the wild)
“#$#$”
“Yen anthe?” (?)
Things took a turn when I visited a friend in Chicago while in the USA in 2014. On my first visit, we did the touristy stuff. But on my second visit, she suggested, “Let’s not do anything. Let’s just chill.”
Wait, what is “just chill?”
It meant do nothing. Eat. Watch TV. Assemble furniture. You know, “chill.”
I was lost.
Going by the logic of my Asian upbringing, if I went to a new place, it meant I needed to travel, go out, and “make the most out of it.” Even going to Mysore for the eight-time meant waking up at 8 am, getting ready to go see the palace and the animals in the zoo. It was a vacation but packed with activities.
So, this was hard. I assembled a chair that weekend in Chicago. And I did not even get to keep the chair.
I did not go back the next weekend for obvious reasons. But I called her from Indianapolis.
She was “chilling” at home – knitting a sweater. This 25-year-old was learning to knit. “I need to buy 5 cats and name each one with a Pancharatna kriti. I’ll turn into that cat lady on the 5th floor who knits bad,” she joked.
But slowly, I began catching the drift. No, not the drift to knit. That would be large project requiring several hundred meters of wool to make a sweater large enough to cover my tummy. And if it did, I haven’t worn a sweater since the P.E incident of 1995. I digress.
I began to catch the drift behind the “chill.”
Chill means doing nothing. But doing nothing is not really doing nothing. Hold on, let me explain.
Doing nothing at home meant spending time reading a book, writing, working (?), watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S or Amar, Akbar Anthony online. Or making podcasts on Spotify your bitch. With short naps thrown in between, of course.
Doing nothing meant picking up a new interest like knitting or Maggie or learning something new on Reddit. It meant not having to socialize. It meant spending time on yourself. It meant staying in.
Think about it. If you were doing nothing and watching Hum Saath Saath Hain on a Saturday afternoon and a friend calls you and asks what you are doing, you always say “Nothing.” Just to clarify, this isn’t me. I don’t watch Hum Saath Saath Hain on a Saturday afternoon. I still need to finish CID.
The first time will seem odd. It will not make sense. You won’t be convinced. But stick with it.
Even today, on my now hundredth trip to Mysore, my dad wants to go to the palace and the zoo. “Lets just chill in the hotel. I want to continue reading this book. We can go to the park in the evening,” I tell him. But he isn’t convinced. Yes, we did not have to travel from Bangalore to Mysore to sit inside the hotel room. But isolationship in Bangalore (before the Corona era) is not the same as isolationship here.
Now is the opportunity for isolationship without having to take a vacation. Now is the chance to do some chilling.
Anyway, I’ve got to go. See you in 21 days? Daya just broke another main door!
Glossary:
Ramakrishna Ashram, Vijayanagar, Mysore Circle, KR Market, Gandhi Bazaar: Locations in Bangalore, India
Mysore: a city in Karnataka, India
Pancharatna kriti: a set of five kritis (songs) in Carnatic classical music, composed by the 18th-century Indian composer Tyagaraja.
Amar, Akbar and Anthony, Hum Saath Saath Hain: Bollywood movies
CID: Hindi TV series