Humour: The great indoors
There’s so much to do when nothing’s going on
I’ve never watched it, but there’s a TV show, The Great Indoors, that ran for one season a few years ago. The phrase has been jumping up and down in my head like an attention-seeking brat ever since the world changed into a sci-fi drama with gallows humour. We’re all in the same biblical boat right now, it’s safe to assume. Locked in. Looking out. Lacking meaning. A few thoughts, in no particular order. Because order is, like, so 2019.
1. Eating one’s own cooking is the gift that keeps giving. Firstly, and most importantly, cooking gives shape to the days. Next, it’s not very good, so you eat less. You eat less, so you stay thin. You feel less guilty about not exercising. You wash the dishes mindfully six times a day, half-starved but feeling fully accomplished.
2. Merely locating the streaming services of Satyajit Ray’s films at this unnerving time has therapeutic properties. I’ve earmarked the The Apu Trilogy. The idea of watching it is in itself a step towards self-improvement. I know it will endow me with a complex understanding of a bewildering world. I’m basking in the glory of the thought.
3. Always ask the others if they too have their video on during a Skype or Zoom work meeting. It is a special kind of hell to realise all your earnest nodding and plastic smiling has been in vain.
4. Do not allow complacency to set in once you’ve taken the yoga mat out of the washing machine.
5. That person you met at the music festival 12 years ago? Now’s perhaps not the best time to bare your soul to her. Everyone’s needy, but objects on your WhatsApp are farther than they appear.
6. Why did I not eat an extra serving of pasanda (flattened strips of meat, marinated, fried and seasoned, preferably by a magnanimous Hyderabadi) on that glorious day three months ago?
7. If anyone’s laughing right now, it’s the god of group chats. We’ve all thoroughly dissed them. Mocked their hyperactivity. Lamented their hollowness. And yet here they are now, anchoring us at this unmoored time. I’ve even begun opening video messages. Might as well debase myself fully and host a Zoom quarantini party in fancy dress.
8. Now is not the time to beat yourself up about not being productive enough. We’re all home because of a crisis. The human heart and mind are not battery-operated machines. All those corporate overlords demanding twice a day catch-up calls when there’s nothing to catch up on – try putting a yoga mat in the washing machine instead.
9. What I tell people I’m doing with my time: Satyajit Ray, William Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky. What I’m really doing with my time: Gilmore Girls, memes, George Michael.
10. What it’s a great time for: putting a drawstring into that flagging Patiala salwar; learning how to use a mixie and pressure cooker; perfecting the art of ignoring dust gathering on a bookshelf; trying to revive the money plant wilting symbolically in the beer bottle; going bald; changing your signature; settling the nagging question of what vegetable you resemble the most; decluttering your desktop; rearranging the pain balms in your medicine drawer; post-breakfast naps… so much to do, so little lockdown!
11. Like my friends’ nine-year-old daughter, perhaps I too will make a list of things to do when the world stops being a Beckett play. I will resist the urge to make every entry food-, drink- or handshake-related.
12. In these austere times, never throw anything away. I can vouch for the suppleness and radiance that a face pack of rotten muskmelon and rancid curd can bestow. Fruit, cereal, dairy – it’s all part of my beauty regimen now. I’m drawing the line at pav bhaji leftovers.
13. Give, give, give. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented kindness.
And so to that post-breakfast nap.
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From HT Brunch, April 12, 2020
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