A tale of Quarantine at the Joshi's - PART 2

This tale talks about the life of 4 individuals brought together by God as family, but brought together under one house at the same time by coronavirus! If you haven’t read part 1 yet go read it first, duh! A tale of quarantine at Joshi's - PART 1

This tale progresses as the entire country is now under a 21-day lockdown as per the Prime Minister’s instructions. You guys must not panic, every essential item would be up and available in the stores other than your will to live. I always assumed that if the entire earth would ever be in danger it would be by the virtue of some alien species, probably Thanos or Loki at least, not some stupid virus.

Anyway, here are the characters of this story! 

 Dad Joshi – the loud one

 Daughter Joshi – the young one

 Daughter Joshi – younger than the young one

 Mom Joshi – the feared one

 Poplu – the noisy neighbor

DAY 8

I woke up at 12. Yaay the brain is back on track. It is a Monday. I skipped living on Sunday. We spend our Sunday like any other Sunday, by not moving at all. This has been our Sunday for years; I don’t know why Modiji chose the Worldwide Sleep Day as the JantaCurfew day. 
With working parents, Sundays are pretty much seen as a precursor for a hectic week rather than a fun day. We had to prepone or postpone our fun because Sunday is a day to relax at Joshi’s. We also prepone birthdays or anniversaries for this reason. My first birthday was not celebrated because it was on a Sunday and my parents had to go on work from the next day onwards. Also, my second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth birthdays weren’t celebrated because they happened to be on weekdays and weekdays at Joshi’s are strictly no fun days! Seventh was okay, it is on a Saturday! People with a birthday on 29^th February get to celebrate once every four years while we celebrate birthdays only if they happen to coincide with the contingency free fun day, Saturday!

The lockdown is a new twist. Everyone is at home. My father has now moved to the living room because mom is home and she needs the room. The alpha male is alpha until his wife is home! My mother is a very considerate wife; she thinks about my father’s needs before her needs and of course what he needs is approved by her.

My mom is on a cleaning spree. Every Indian mother is Monica (from FRIENDS, not oh my darling) for some reason and I just don’t understand it! She is going to clean her cupboard, dad’s cupboard, the crockery cupboard, the neighbor’s cupboard, and every god damn cupboard build in this world. The entire species of Homo Sapiens is probably going to die and I don’t want to spend my last precious days cleaning. She just doesn’t get it! “Consider this a Diwali cleaning”, she says. WHYYYY? Why should I? I accidentally stepped on the wet floor after she cleaned and now probably, I won’t get any inheritance from her.                                              

                                                                   

DAY 9

It’s another day with another challenge. They say in order to win a battle we have to sometimes make allies with our enemies. Sometimes these allies are voluntary just like Jon Snow and sir Davos while at other times they are forced like Danny and Sansa. Danny and Sansa formed an ally, despite their differences to battle against their shrewd enemy, Cercei. 
Well, something similar happened at the Joshi’s as well. We had a common enemy, The Noisy neighbors. Just when I thought there can’t be anyone louder than my father, the downstairs neighbor’s two-year-old child proved me wrong. I named him Poplu because he seems like a Poplu. Poplu cries constantly, sometimes I think it is a secret call for the aliens. This baby cries more than an average Indian serial actress does.

We knew that in order to survive this quarantine we had to form an alliance against them. Now we sit together like adults with chai and rusk and bitch about them for hours. It has brought us close. My parents say that the child might be a fussy baby who doesn’t appreciate his parents and doesn’t help in cleaning while we think that maybe he cries so much because his parents didn’t celebrate his birthday because it was on a Tuesday. Whatever it is, it has united us as a family.

A complete lockdown was announced by our Prime Minister for 21 days. It is important for us, the lockdown. So, to avoid any shortage we immediately went out to get some groceries like many others, I guess. The nearest shop to our house was crowded so we decided to go a bit far (not more than 1 km from the house) and what we saw was shocking. Living in an overpopulated metro city, we all yearn for a calm, empty street and there it was in front of us. It was almost like a haunted street, with dead leaves on both sides and not a single person or car to sight. This was a Delhi that I had never seen before and the circumstances that led to this quiet road bothers me the most, I hope it goes away quickly with the least impact possible.

It is very refreshing and cute how people are engaging on social media, nominating their friends to do fun activities like tongue twisters or posting pictures, Sooo cute!

DAY 10

It was the most unexciting day of my life. I did nothing, I probably had more fun when I was 5 months old. I am bored! I watched Shark Tank for 5 hours and now I don’t think I have the capacity to watch anything ever again, I can become an investor now; all I need is some money!

While I have developed the hobby of becoming an angel investor, my sister on the other hand is trying her hand at cooking. She made some unique food items like palak paneer pulaav, fresh vegetable soup, wheat pizza and much more. I only have one thing to tell those bloggers, YouTubers who publish cooking tutorials, don’t you care about the safety of the people?

I think there should be a statutory warning issued before these cooking shows; “The following tasks are performed by trained professionals, please don’t try to imitate at home without supervision.”  Needless to say, she made some delicious food.

A very yummy vegetable soup! Very Healthy and Yummy!

A woman is very similar to a lioness and she has her territories and when someone tries to invade her territory, she retaliates with all her power. Something similar happened here as well. For some reason, my mother’s territory is her kitchen and when her daughter tried invading it by cooking weird food almost more than thrice, she had to retaliate to prove who is the actual queen. And hence came the pink paranthas. Needless to say, they were delicious too!

Pink Parantha - If you need the recipe, talk to my mom

DAY 11

I woke up early today, 10:30 because Poplu was crying downstairs and the Gods in heaven can also hear him. I wonder why he cries so much, is he going through a heartbreak?

I am thrilled because I have a business idea. Now that I am watching a lot of Shark Tank, my inner entrepreneur is waking and wants to come out in light of the day and make me rich. Anyway, my brilliant idea is of an alarm clock that instead of the regular tunes has the noise of a baby crying. You will wake up under a minute and it will also help in reducing the population of the country, one stone two birds!

I am getting a little annoyed with these nominate-your-friends gimmicks on social media. Please stop it, for the benefit of people around you, I beg! If I see one more person’s story nominating their friends to tell us about whether or not they have done a particular meaningless thing, then I am going to need therapy. I already have enough issues to handle at this moment, I don’t think I can handle another stressful issue to discuss with the therapist.

In the evening we played cricket on the terrace for ten whole minutes until the ball literally flew away into somebody’s house. I was really enjoying the game. We used the thaapi (used to wash clothes) as a bat which is incredibly convenient and we see ourselves as a family of innovators. I think we should play more often even after we are not quarantined!

DAY 12

What a beautiful day is this! The weather is amazing and Poplu isn’t crying. The birds are chirping and Poplu isn’t crying. It's raining since the morning and Poplu isn’t crying. What a quiet and peaceful day. 

I know that we all are stressed and scared right now, but all this will go away and if we continue isolating ourselves probably sooner than we imagined! If you are bored, unhappy, stressed or annoyed being in isolation, just try to be positive. Every crisis needs a hero, we all can be one! It is very simple being a hero right now let's just practice these few little things; staying home, washing our hands, feeding the dogs and saving water. Hopefully, we will live to see a day when we would be telling the story of surviving a pandemic and how we got to be a hero the world needed!

Stay home, stay safe and if you like my blog do share it. Sharing is Caring 😊!