LIVING THE i LIFE: ‘Fact that lockdown has a deadline is seeing me through’

I haven’t been at home during the quarantine. When the shutdown was announced, I had picked up a friend who had come down from Manipal. Then we decided to chill together for a day. But then the showdown was announced and I was stuck at his place. It would have been better if I stayed at home because my parents are old. They asked me to come back and I had to convince them that the virus doesn’t just pause for me to drive back home. They were telling me to come after a few weeks and I told them that it isn’t like summer vacation. But they’re only speaking out of concern. So, I call them often to make sure they are okay, and that they know that I’m okay, too. I joined an advertising company one week before the lockdown, so I was lucky, I guess. We began working from home, ut it’s pretty difficult. My sister is an overachiever, she does exercise in the morning, she has an app that monitors her breaks, and she also has her breaks planned. I am someone who used to step out for 16 hours a day even if I had work, so sitting at home has been a little difficult. Comedy is something I used to do in the past, at this point. My comedy is also based on life experiences, and there’s no life happening at this point. But I’m still writing jokes as and when the opportunity comes. The only thing getting me through this is the knowledge that this has a deadline, and it will end at some point. One good thing is that I’m taking up old pastimes of mine. Some of my friends and I have a Telegram group and there we put out writing prompts every day, and we write 1,000 words. This is a great time for people to lose themselves in such nostalgic pastimes they used to have.