Prisoners of Our Own Device
“These are dark and unprecedented times,” read all of my emails over the past 3 weeks. And I now sign off my phone calls and meetings with a “stay home, stay safe”, though I know that there’s no way anyone can NOT stay home; after all the police are making sure of that! I for one have been tracking the spread of the virus since it was merely a curiosity in China. That was 7 weeks ago, though it feels like donkeys years. In a sense, I saw this lockdown coming, and so also the ensuing chaos. I made a choice to stay put, fighting the instinctive urge to run home where my parents were. In that sense, I don’t deserve to feel surprised by the turn of events. Nothing changed for me - except for some minor inconveniences in the form of increased chores of cooking and cleaning, and perhaps none of that weekend loitering around town. But I must admit that I have felt overwhelmed more than once in these 6 weeks of isolation. The closest a friend could put in words is to call it “a situa