Lockdown Diaries 02_ Skills, Hobbies and Habits

Amazon ‘Alexa’ has a feature called ‘Discover and Enable Skills’.

I guess this lockdown ensured that quite a few of us discovered ours!! Family members, Friends just had to command verbally, or on social media to take up a ‘challenge’ and surprisingly most of us fared well. Be it the Dalgona coffee ( it tastes just like the awesome coffee that we normally make, but it definitely looks awesome on FB/ Insta posts) or sharing old photos, themed photos, writing limericks on those photos ,etc.

My personal take on this trend, is that instead of someone challenging you on social media, its best to challenge yourself to make use of this time that the Lockdown has given us, to polish our skills or take up new hobbies. I am sure most of you must have managed to find time for the same, in between ‘work from home ‘hours!

A hobby a day keeps the boredom away!!!

Phyllis Mcginley

Since the house helps have stopped coming, obviously everyone has found time to do the daily chores like sweeping the floor, mopping the floor, washing utensils, etc. This probably made us realize the importance of not only the house helps but other ancillary agencies like the newspaper delivery guys, milk delivery agency, the security team, the garbage cleaning people, the car-wash person, etc. It has made us realize the amount of hard work that they go through daily, to earn a livelihood. Of course it has also conveyed that we need not be totally dependent on them and it’s manageable and healthy, to take up this chores once in a while, if the house helps have or want a holiday. I am sure there will be lesser dependency issues on the house helps post this lockdown (I hope so!!).

On a personal front, the ‘Skill sets ‘that I managed to address, if not master, are pretty varied. I already have written down some blogs before (www.gadgila.com is the blog site) but this free time gave me the liberty to blog more frequently. It gave me a nice channel to pen down random thoughts that keep popping into my head because of this free time.  I do not pride myself on having a good sketching skill but I was quite decent at sketching since my graduation days in architecture. (With the advent of computers, we hardly sketch now!!) I have got back to that skill set. Since I am missing my cycling tremendously, I thought of combining the two and decided to sketch a few ‘virtual cycle rides’!! It gives me some satisfaction to sketch and ‘cycle’ too!!! I do keep cleaning my cycle once in 10 days and it feels therapeutic.

Of course, cooking stuff has been a great go-to activity. I tried my hand at making some Kerala style/ Malabar chicken the other day and it turned out pretty well. I can now knead the flour pretty well(not learnt to make the chappattis still!!) As a family, together we have tried different recipes of chutneys from stuff available in the home garden, like home grown ajwain chutney, homegrown Curry leaves and green chilies’ preparation. Have tried my hand at making some different cocktails for that weekend drink (Going slow on the stock till the wine shops reopen!!)My wife tried her hand at baking bread at home and boy! It was awesome. It is going to be extremely difficult to have any other bread henceforth. Since me and my son have had our birthdays during this Lockdown, we tried doing some recipes together at home which made those meals super special. Thankfully our son also has been helping out with all the household chores and he too helps out in the daily cooking and cleaning of the house. Probably this is not the conventional ‘skill set’ but this habit might help him in the future when he ventures out to some foreign land for education or career. We have encouraged our son to take up some online language course for fun. Jigsaw puzzles, card games, board games have been out of the cupboard for a really long time now. Only they are making him feel like the summer vacations are happening!!The missus loves doing creative stuff, so she too did find out time to do some minor decor modification in our home, painted her white shoes to a funkier style, repainting our bar cabinet based on the Gond style, homemade masks for the current scenario etc.

The Amazon kindle is suddenly being used a lot these days by both of us.  The reading habits are back. (mine had disappeared due to TV, you tube and stuff) We have started spending a lot of time in our small terrace.

The terrace garden is better managed, looked after and tended to and it has shown us the results with roses blooming, and the mint and lemon grass growing abundantly for a lovely homemade mint cooler. The evenings have started seeming much nicer with a hot cup of tea and a lovely summer breeze.

Happy is the man who is living by his hobby.

George Bernard Shaw