LifePedia | Anand Sharma
When was the last time I….
I stepped on the gas pedal and zoomed away on a busy road.
I got fleeced at a Cinema hall to watch a horrible but well-marketed biopic.
Sipped on an over-priced insipid Latte at a lousy Café.
Puked inside a pub.
Cursed traffic.
Shopped offline.
Dated in person.
Worked from an actual office (away from spouse)
……besides doing a million other essential and non-essential things but most importantly what I fail to remember is when was the last time I held my near and dear ones in a tight speechless embrace, a bear hug and felt their warmth, the warmth of the human touch.
And yet today, as Ellias Canetti author of the 1960’s book “Crowds and Power” observed, “There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. All the distances which men create around themselves are dictated by this fear.” Never have those words sounded as prophetic as they sound now.
Recently, I underwent a confirmed Pandemic induced hallucination or was it a premature attack of anxiety that robbed me of the most simple of pleasures in these Corona times, my TV Viewing, got ambushed.
While watching Crime Patrol TV series, I found it hard to comprehend why the cops and criminals were standing so close to each other and that too without masks. I could see the invisible corona rays floating in the air about to affect both the good cops as well as the hardened criminals till I could hold my breath no more. Suddenly I saw them both through the prism of ‘humanity’. I wanted the safety net to spread evenly and not just on the good guys. Such has been the impact of this pandemic that everything is being experienced only in binary mode: Corona Positive or Corona Negative.
When was the last time I enjoyed a weekend?
WFH, has more or less completely blurred the lines between Weekends and Weekdays. Between Domestic chores and office-work it’s getting hard to figure which one is worse, considering the venue remains the same, home-not-so-sweet home!
Monday morning’s quick porridge-milk breakfast has made recurring reappearances on Thursdays and sometimes even on Sunday dinner menus, not so much in their quickie avatar as much as in their easy to cook forms, the net result of a tiring day owing to long and futile ‘zoom’ meetings or those Godforsaken time-consuming ‘Webinars’, one that our PNL sheets will soon confirm to be just as useless.
When was the last time I sprayed an expensive, exquisite chic-attracting PERFUME ? The answer should have been ‘four months ago’ but sadly it was last evening. Not really inspired by a mysterious Lady in Red, but compelled to competition by that smiling Amazon delivery boy, who came to drop my parcel; Bathed, clean-shaven, gelled hair and dressed in a crisp ironed T-shirt and smelling of a flowery deodorant he looked down on me in my unkempt
appearance wearing crumpled and stinking clothes.
When was the last time I prayed for a second chance?
Right there at the main gate of my housing society and voila God instantly answered my prayers. The P.O.S machine failed to read my card so I had to go back home to replace digital money with hard Cash and that was my golden chance to redemption and redeem myself, I did. I marinated myself in my most expensive buy, a Swiss-Arabic perfume and as he counted the money he knew I had tenned his nine.
I returned upstairs still smelling a million bucks when a triumphant smiling me grinned at the mirror and wondered, When was the last time I wore formal clothes, the Power-dressing types?
I slipped into my formals only to realise moments later that my trousers’ belly button had separated and divorced the buttonhole owing to irreconcilable differences (in size).
Now the only thing running on my mind is – When was the last time I ever went on a diet?
Anand Sharma, is a Media professional from the Indian TV industry specialising in Content creation in his parallel roles of Creative Head/Director, and Writer (for TV production houses). He has also written a ten-episode audio-book (for Storytel) titled – “Tinderella in Jyotishland” . He is based in Bombay.