“THIS IS NOT A SPRINT; WE ARE RUNNING A MARATHON.”

HOW DOES ONE NAVIGATE THIS NEW WORLD WE WILL BE ENTERING POST LOCKDOWN AND THE PANDEMIC – RAVEENA JOSEPH MIGHT JUST HAVE THE ANSWER…

- RAVEENA JOSEPH

Ever since this pandemic took over global consciousness — restricting movement, limiting contact and requiring recalibration — I have been on break. Don’t be jealous just yet; I use the term ‘on break’ lightly. I was on a five-week academic recess to prepare for exams, so that I can get one step closer to getting the Master’s degree I’ve been working towards for the better part of the last year.

I got no work done in the first two weeks. Most of my time went in frantically following news channels and trying to make sense of the many pieces of information that was coming out then. World leaders were taking distinctly different decisions, countries were increasingly closing their borders and the global death toll was rising rapidly. While so much about my life seemed the same — I still lived in the same place, ate the same food and had access to Netflix to distract myself from every day exhaustion and unpleasantness — it wasn’t really the same, because the realities of so many other people were changing, in a way that was sure to alter and affect my own.