The feeling of “Feeling Lost”…

2020 to now has changed perspectives and priorities for many of us. For me, from being someone always on the run pre 2020, to now feeling like I have reached an early retirement, I have started wondering how real retirement will look like!

No, I am not retired in the slightest sense of the term; I am logged in for work somewhere between 7:30 am -7:45 am and logged in till about 6 pm ish. I am either on Teams calls, or some calls on the mobile or writing an email or finishing a ppt. Between these I am juggling my time between whatsapp messages, twitter, watering plants or answering the door bell.

Weekends mean an odd video call with cousins or sometimes a chat with a group of friends. And my supporting a few other small causes means spending some more time on the whatsapp or attending a phone call or even running a day’s campaign on social media. In a way I am part-time working on weekends too!

But in the evenings, I look out of the balcony and float back to those times where an aunt would appear from nowhere, or a cousin pay an unexpectedly visit.

Pre 2020, life was more disciplined in the sense that you had to leave home at a certain time so as not to miss your cab or not to get caught in traffic. There were traffic blues to complain about, or a cab mate’s tantrum to deal with! There were books to read during travel, calls to make during work. Life was busy.

And now during the day, there is no craving for a samosa or tea, no scope to sit and gossip or complain about your boss or your team mate. There’s no running to grab a sandwich bite at the cafeteria, no excitement for that plate of maggi, no birthday cakes to cut, no group photographs. If you do need a cup of tea, you just walk two steps to the kitchen and make one for yourself but there are no stories over the sips, and no rush to get back to your desk.

Gone are those weekends of shopping, of shoe hunting, movie watching. When you stay home and work and not wear half of the dresses you have accumulated over the years, you don’t need to shop for anything except for pyjamas which anyways don’t need to be matched with your tops or your shoes!

My walks continue, after work but as I walk across the neighbourhood lanes, one, two, three rounds, my eyes hopelessly search for the familiar aunt’s face from my childhood neighbourhood querying about how things were, or just stopping by another’s gate and saying hello or being called inside for a cup of tea. In some ways, I wish I was back to where I was born and brought up, to meet, greet and be greeted by familiar faces who we knew as children.

Okay, I do call people when I walk because that makes me walk more. So between the talks, I end up taking a few extra rounds which doesn’t really make up for anything but nevertheless it gives some huge mental satisfaction of having walked 200 additional steps. Now people who seem to take your calls seem to have become scarce too, and the ones you end up dialling successfully are the ones who complain of this illness or that, either they or someone in their family seem to be always sick. So the friends who earlier spoke about trips, work place politics or simply planning about the next meet up end up speaking about immunity, of medicines, of tests, of dealing with sick members in the family or about their children being unwell.

It’s not their fault that they talk about illness, that’s what they have been facing and getting frustrated with. It’s not my fault that I miss colleagues and friends. I wonder if it is unusual for me to be wanting to do more. The two years of lock up have robbed most people of sunshine, literally and figuratively.

What’s the way out of this mess, this boredom, this stillness, this social isolation; I don’t know yet. Some say the way out is to ‘go within’!