What’s your lockdown challenge?
It takes a certain degree of energy and will—and a healthy sprinkling of providence—but some people are managing to use the lockdown to work on longpending personal projects and ambitions. This, despite the anxiety, the weight of housekeeping and child-rearing 24x7.
One way to do it and stay on track is of course to set daily challenges — a new dish a day, a page for your book or diary, a doodle, drawing or new exercise.
Daily practice of a new skill or ambition can leave you feeling confident too. “Setting a target to get something done or learn something can be good for mental health,” says psychiatrist Dr Sonal Anand.
“This is a time when you can look inwards and figure out your true strengths; what you really want to be good at. In a way, it is a chance to reinvent yourself.”
Dr Anand points out, however, that one ought to approach these targets with an open mind and be willing to accept failure, and learn from it.
That’s what research scholar Aritra Basu and lecturer Reeslearn wav Chatterjee are doing with their project Quarantine Stories. They pick one short story a week, and upload a dramatised reading of it on Facebook and YouTube.
“Initially, we put out two stories a week, then we realised that to do it well, we had to keep to one. We were also doing female voices but after feedback from listeners we involved Reeswav’s mother for the female voice,” Basu says.
Content creator Snehal Khandekar set a target of one poem a day, for a month, and was surprised when she actually did it.
“The National Poetry Writing Month or NaPoWriMo is something poets do every year. Quite a few of my friends try it. Since I had time on my hands this year, I decided to try,” she says.
Khandekar’s themes ranged from love and society to cats, and she says the exercise gave her both discipline and confidence.
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Businessman Samrat Basak decided to use the lockdown to
an entirely new skill, and picked cooking. He’s now cooking every alternate day, trying out a range of cuisines. “My family is both surprised and delighted,” he says.
He says he’ll continue to use it as a creative outlet and stressbuster even after the lockdown.
Difficult targets work better for some. Theoretical physicist Sonali Mohapatra decided to interact with 100 interesting people, via a podcast she launched in the lockdown. She’s interviewed 35 so far, including doctors, LGTBQ activists, actors and entrepreneurs on subjects such as internet security, the gendered effects of the pandemic and the language of government messaging.
Jadavpur University student Ananya Ray’s goal was simpler — to work out every day, and she’s learning more about her body. “I went too hard on day one and was in pain. I then slowly built up to a one-hour routine,” she says. Exercise has led to yoga, which has led to a slash in sugar and junk food intake. She says she feels more energetic and fit. Most importantly, it’s what she wanted for herself from the lockdown, and she’s got it.