There are still some more hours since 2020 will be officially be over, but what an year it has been! Obviously it has been a very unprecedented year with completely unexpected turn of events. For many across the globe it was a sad and very hard year and let us acknowledge that. For those of us who mananged to survive this year let us take some moment to appreciate this and be thankful. There are a lot of things which I want to write but there are too many that I don't think I will be able to write all of them. So I will write how I personally feel about this year and what this year taught me.
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An year ago, I was in Chennai trying to wind up my 2nd PDF preparing to travel to Europe for my 3rd. I had 15 days in Chennai before I went home for a 9 day break before travelling - a break which involved a lot of packing and literally no time to enjoy a much needed vacation at home. Who knew that I would be at home away from home for most part of this year!! Who knew when I was in the airports what I wouldn't be seeing an airport after January! I rememeber coming across a news about covid in Wuhan before my journey and some passenger probably comforting a tense family member on the phone saying something about droplet infection, during the jouorney. Now that I think about it January 2020 seems to be from some other time and not a part of 2020.
After moving into the new apartment in early February I remember watching the news on youtube about how Wuhan was under lockdown. Still covid-19 was something which was happening far far away (well as humans we tend to conveniently forget that modern world is (or should I write "was") a well connected place). It was when cases went up in Daegu that I was startled a bit since I had just attended a conference there in 2019. Probably humans become alert to things or tend to follow things which happen in places which we know or have been to. Then I was watching all the WHO press meets every evening and became a Mike Ryan fan in the process. Then one day came when covid-19 was declared as a pandemic and I remember watching the WHO briefing from my office. No there was no lockdown here till then.
(Now that I think about those short time period when I used to go to office everyday, I remember how we used to go for lunch everyday (i.e, days when I didn't have to cook - who ever thought that I would become a make-my-own-take-a-tiffin-box kind of person ever) and the one day there was snow and I felt like a small child - well it was my first and probably only snow till now. Snow I miss you.)
Then there was this dilemma of whether to wear a mask or not. Although mmy first impresions when WHO said not to wear a mask my gut feeling was "why are they saying it so", I thought they knew better than me. And there was this cultural dilemma in the beginning of the pandemic - "Would people think that you are infected if you wear a mask? Would people think that you are a rude person who detest other humans if you wear a mask?" Thankfully later on officially it was declared that everyone should wear a mask and that did away with the cultural awkwardness of wearing a mask in public.
The week before the first lockdown happened I went shopping and couldn't find anything. Funnily I bought a dust bin! And bought egg pasta - nobody seems to buy it - but it is tasty actually! Then came lockdown. And the craving for color pencils. For a not so artistic person, how I missed my color pencils is amazing. So much to the point that I started having dreams in which Faber Castell sketch pens and colour pencils where I could never reach them. The craving aggrevated when I during one of my video calls to home saw the sketch pens I had left there. Obviously in the end I googled and found out an art supply store and went as early as 9 am to the store to find it closed then went back another time to get sketch pens and colour penicils and a drawing book! That made me realise how the "not so necessary" stuff are actually and inevitable for us. In fact 2020 is the year which reminded us that there are things which we need beyond survival - something which we always used to take for granted in a "normal world" before covid-19.
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2020 in every way is the year which made us (atleast me) revisit and appreciate a lot of things which we in our busy lives were taking for granted. This will sound cliche, still:
i) Travel: I was literally city hopping almost every month in 2019, wishing that I didn't have to travel so much. But 2020 reminded me that I like travelling though I have complained about having to travel too often in 2019. This also made me realise something - in 2019 I had attended a conference which was not exactly an academic conference. In that conference I met a girl for whom coming to that conference was a big deal even though it was not exactly an academic one. In 2020 I appreciate why it was a great thing for her - it is not just about attending a conference - it is also about being able to get out of your home, travelling, meeting new people and experiencing things. Someething which I had also done in my life earlier but had forgotten. 2020 reminded me of that. How I miss airports! How the first time during lockdown I braved getting into a tram to go and get notebooks and other things from my office. How restarting the use of public transport felt like learning how to walk or cycle. How refreshing it is to get on a train or bus and go somewhere.
ii) Going to a restaurant: As a not so young urban millenial, going out for a dinner in a restaurant was something which I had never thought would become a big deal. When I was in Chennai it was like whenever I wanted to eat ghee roast I could go to A2B or Sangeetha. That one time when I found an Indian restaurant in my new city and had dosa before lockdown was a very happy day for me. May be it was because I am in a new country that not being able to go and eat in a restaurant didn't feel that bad - but after being devoid of any form of restaurant eating I really understand that I had taken it for granted. Also how much I crave for a ghee roast from A2B or Sangeetha. (Would I ever be able to go back to Chennai? Even if I went would I be able to eat dosa like I used to?)
iii) Shopping: 2020 is definitely the year which taught me how to shop less. This was the year in which the majority of shopping I did was only grocery. This is a stark contrast to all the previous independent adult years of my life where I would shop something or the other whether I needed it or not. That one time when I went to a mall after so long was exciting (another thing I had taken for granted). (Ofcourse now I cannot trial clothes like I used to and have to look at exact sizes and buy.) Especially now a days malls are often closed in view of health concerns. 2020 taught me that living minimally is possible. It also taught me that sometimes we need to buy stuff which seem "totally unnecessary" to some people - like cosmetics, jewellery and colour pencils/art stuff but are absolutely necessary for the well being of our minds.
iv) Getting ready/putting makeup: This is one thing which we often curse having to do when we are late to go somwhere and have been taking for granted (to the extend that in the past I used to think that it would be nice not to have to "get ready"). It is when I didn't have to go anywhere and didn't have to do it daily that I realised how much I like the simple daily acts of combing the hair, putting an eyeliner or putting a lipbalm, searching for a matching earring etc and how much they matter.
Now this brings me to the point where I wonder - "what is the basis of out happiness"? Is it just being able to travel, eat in a restaurant or shop and post pictures on instagram or facebook or is it something more else? Surely this year most of us were confined to the four walls of our homes (i,e if we belong to an economic class who can afford a home), working from there (again i.e if were are lucky enough to have one), confined in some sense, ripped of the usual things which we think are the bases of our happiness. This is the year which taught us never to take anything in life for granted (literally "Kal ho na ho") and find happiness in the smallest of moments and in the minutest of things which we do everyday - be it growing a plant from a seed or being able to find a small box of colour pencil or just taking a tram to go somewhere. And to apprecitate the privilage we may have. Not everybody was happy to sit at home. Not everybody was safe in their homes. Not everybody was privilaged to afford an internet connection to take online classes.
This post will not be complete without mentioning the following.
While those in post graduation and above might have managed to get online classes, the education of a majority of students has suffered this year. As much as there were webinars and talks for the internet privilaged people, the classes of small children, their daily meal program etc were disrupted. The academic year of 2020 is so-so for many. This will have to be addressed in a major way in the coming days - i.e, how are we going to keep education free and compulsary for the poorest of poor children who may not even have an ordinary phone or tv? Surely nothing can substitute children going to school. But in situations where children cannot go to school do we leave a generation to be uneducated and deprived of the right to education or are we going to address this and make internet and technology accessible to all? This may be a challenge but nevertheless doable. If 2020 has taught us or reminded us of anything that is how adaptable humans are. When we couldn't meet IRL, we switched to online platforms, those who could work from home worked from home. So there is an answer to this question and we should find it and implement it as soon as possible.
Same goes for a lot of social things - since we were concentrated on dealing with the pandemic, a lot of social issues which we would have addressed otherwise have gone unattended. Again the pandemic should not be an excuse to go back four steps into dark ages and overethrow every socially forward things which we have achieved in the past years. Once data comes wee will get to know what kind of beastly things 2020 had as a result of the pandemic. So we need to be aware.
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A word about technology and adaptability - As we all know we adapted our work methods. "Zoom" became a norm and probably has made us the real meaning of the word! For people like me in academia, attending conferences which we wouldn't otherwise happened. More than anything I will say that this is the year we used our laptop webcams (yes this is also the year when we might actually have appreciated this camera more than ever! Come to think of it till 2019 every other phone company was trying to make more and more powerful phone cameras - sometimes front cameras more powerful than the back ones so as to satisfy our selfie taking selves. This year as a matter of fact seeing a phone ad felt so weird. It was as if pre-2020, every other electronic company had forgotten that people would still need laptops and the larger 2D screens with usual keyboards and mouses but suddenly we were using ouor laptops more than ever. May be in the coming years people will try and make the laptops even fancier!
Social mediawise I would say that this is the year where our narcissistic pleasure seeking migrated from the number of likes and loves on FB to the number of views and likes on youtube. In a way this was an intensely academic year for those who could afford internet. We engaged in a lot of science outreach activities. The thing is this was all possible even before the pandemic - but with the lockdowns and so on everybody's attention was captured and youtube and online platforms were put to a good amount of use by academia to conduct public science seminars online. So much so that someone even made a meme with a graph of number of lock down vs number of webinars. The word "webinar" became common and I am sure it will be incorporated into the dictionaries at some point. But as time elapsed the number of webinars became overwhelming and at some point the number got reduced probably people also realised that there were a lot of webinars going on simultaneoulsy.
How can I not mention online "Kumbidi"? :D I was an online kumbidi this year. At some point of time I attended two different meetings with two different headsets in each ear! I also gave talks in webinars! As much as I love science outreach giving a public talk is much much harder than talking to an audience who works in your own subject! Before every webinar I used to panic "why did I promise to give this talk" but giving those talks were also a nice experience since it involved a lot of revision (and also those were the occassions when I really had to get ready, put on makeup or comb my hair to be in front of a camera). At the end of 2020, I wish just for the sake of not having to attend too many meetings online, the pandemic would end. As much as it is convenient to connect to people with the help of technology, this is becoming tedious. I may end up forgetting that we live in 3D and not 2D if this continues. Or else tech companies may now invest in fancifying laptops and popularize holographic imaging or something!
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Resilience: Above everything else what 2020 reminded me is the resilience of humans as a species. As a matter of fact I am not the only person to notice this. There were times when I used to wonder how people had recovered from the horrors of wars and other calamities over the centuries. The only answer I can find now is resilience. Whether we are aware or not our species is very resilient. It is not like this comes all of a sudden as if a switch has turned on and suddenly everyone is strong. But it is more like d/dx, step by step, minute things adding upto larger things - we learn to wash hands, keep distance, wear masks and we move on. We search of solutions, it builds up. One year ago we couoldn't even imagine having sanitiser dispensers in shops. One year later it is common everywhere. the human world adapted to certain things. May be our adaptability is a part of human resilience. And as a human being I appreciate it more than ever.
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PS:
1) 2020 was the 20th year since I was in 10th standard. Had someone told me that 20 years later I would see a pandemic I would not have believed! I would not have believed in 2019 that 2020 would be a pandemic year! Personally I was thinking that some climate/weather calamity would be occuring in near future. But who knew a pandemic was lurking around the corner!
2) Historic: 2020 has been historic in many respects. The world as a whole witnessed a lot of historic things apart from the pandemic. It is as if humanity was waiting to be stirred again and the pandemic was a catalyst.
3) The world will never be the same again for sure. But that is how it has always been. There was always something or the other in the course of human history that we have overcome as a collective and moved forward.
4) In a non-pandemic world, we would have seen Met Gala with the theme "About Time: Fashion and Duration" (may be masks would become an integral part of fashion someday) and the Olympics.
5) There were some silver linings in 2020. Good female leaders, 4 female nobel laureates, "Queen's Gambit"...
6) Hand sanitisers became popular. There was a time when an auto driver in Chennai asked me what was smelling so good when I had used a Lifebouoy hand sanitiser and I explained to him waht a sanitiser was. I was reminded of this at the beginning off the pandemic.
7) Character building: This year definitely did test everthing. In a way it was an year of character building step by step, day by day...
8) Hope: Hope is what leads us forward. There is always the hope for a better tomorrow. While hoping that the tomorrow will be a bit better let us not forget the realities and root our hopes in them. Along with hope let us be prudent and not forget the lessons 2020 taught us.
9) Remarkable: As much difficult it might have been, 2020 was a remarkable year. Who would have thought that I, a normal human being would experience such a thing in my mundane lifetime!
10) The otherwise unthinkable achievement of 2020: Watching 23 seasons of Pokemon something I would never have done in a "normal" year!
11) Gratitude: To all those who kept the world going. To all those who took care of others - medical staff, doctors, nurses, essential workers... Many many thanks to you all. <3
