The world is, without question, being tested and so are its residents. I am a Mom- Manager- Maker (Home) being challenged every single day and is juggling between the priorities and making the best use of this never dreamt situation, I am in. I often ask this question to myself ‘Do I have a choice’? Probably not

If I am not positive, If I am not happy , If I am not myself then my family won’t be happy, my team won’t be productive and energetic and my house will be on fire and this is the wrong time to be on the negative side of anything with limited choices around.

So yes, I am making the best use of this time to stay positive and keep myself happy and enjoy every ounce of this new NORMAL. In my 17 years of career, I never got the flavour of WFH and somewhere in my heart I yearned for it.  I always had this longing desire for WFH and then all of a sudden someone with a Magic (Curse) wand just granted me one, that too without an expiry date.

The first two weeks of the lockdown – Dreadful is a lesser word to describe it. Country, state, society, office, house all going haywire to cope with this new setting. We were logged in to our office network literally for 16 hours to ensure zero downtime to production & business, ensuring the entire team was well equipped with all setup to work remotely, juggling between tens of excels, hundreds of stats and thousands of numbers, sending back and forth the same data again and again…wondering what’s happening all around. That was the time I felt I don’t have control on anything.

The websites flashing the corona numbers and us checking it like a cricket score, the Whatsapp University flooding with advices and threats, pressure cooker whistling amidst conference calls, kids spilling juice right next to the work station, spouse entering into meeting in the same time in the same room, and you don’t know where to run and hide. Yes, we all went through this and can relate easily.

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 And when you are a mom at home, doesn’t matter how many people are there, you will be the one called first for any tiniest help required, how many time you might have asked your little one if she is hungry before your meeting starts, answer will always be “NO.” But the moment you enter into the call you will see the tiny soul coming with tears in the eyes out of hunger, and you don’t know where are you going wrong. You want to bang your laptop or phone, but patiently you go around with your laptop attending the call to search some munchies.

Now next nightmare these new online classes – Zoom, MS Team, hangout –teacher screaming, parents juggling between links, microphone turning on and off, video standing still – Super CRAZY morning for a Super MOM. Then comes your house, you cannot neglect either where you are arrested for 24×7, 30 days a month. Yes, it is equally demanding as your family and team, it needs washing, mopping, dusting.

But now after 4 months of working from home, happily I can say all these are HISTORY. Yes, we have won over our initial struggles to set our priorities correctly be it work, parenthood or housekeeping.  Slowly things settled down in course of time. We all started breathing in fresh air. Gurgaon surprised me with air quality of 40-50 AQI.  No travelling to office during rush hours, no traffic congestions, no unnecessary running to Shopping centers and movie halls during weekend. Someone far in the universe played the game of “STATUE’ with our planet earth….everything stopped with a jolt… and with this STOP, the earth started healing.

A paradise flycatcher – a rarely seen bird  visited my society one fine morning to say ‘hello’, dark nights gifted us with twinkling stars, I sit now hours with my daughter showing her the ‘milky way , the seven sisters, the Orion’ like my dad used to show during my childhood. I was able to see those tall buildings by the side of Dwarka expressway, Manesar and bit of Delhi from my 15^th floor terrace which were until 2 months back covered with dark clouds and smog. My garden started blooming with rainbow colors by the touch of nurturing hands twice a day which was next to impossible in my pre-lockdown days. I sit at ease and have morning tea and breakfast with my family on a weekday – did I ever think of this before?

It’s amazing to see my child learning in front of me. I used to return home at 9pm dead tired after work and hardly had any time other than weekend for my daughter. Now we spend hours together before and after work talking and reading books. I am teaching her to read and write Bengali, our mother tongue. Yes the universe has given time to mankind to slow down and heal …..And as we heal, we are letting nature heal too. Good quality time with Family is not locked down, Creativity is not locked down, Reading is not locked down, Sunshine and hope is not locked down.

I am hopeful this time good or bad will pass slowly like a mixture of nightmare and sweet dreams. One day we will join again, cry for our losses, laugh on the moments which we spend together with family which was a rarity otherwise, we will talk about the new ways of life which we created post pandemic, we will once again sing and dance together holding hands but never to forget what this PANDEMIC taught us…The biggest lesson of our lives till date- To take a Pause and count our blessings ….if we wake up to the dawn of 2021!!