Lockdown Diary – Travelling down the memory lane

 Image Credits: Al Jordan – Hartford Courant

With the COVID-19 induced lockdowns and Work from Home (WFH) life, many including me are actually finding invaluable slices of time that would have otherwise got generally wasted in the office commutes. And in the busy metro cities, the commute times added up to 3-4 hours every day!

This time saved can be used more productively with more time with family and also one can rediscover their subdued passions e.g. music, poetry, writing, etc. - all leading to a better work-life balance.

With travel and tourism thrown out of the window due to COVID-19, I travelled down my memory lanes to go back to my days of youth – school, college, etc. Below is the travelogue of the same.

I was born in Agartala (capital of Tripura, one of the seven North East sister states of India) and my formative years was in Holy Cross School, the top convent school there. I made incredible friendships there, many of whom are still in my close circle. A few anecdotes and memories from those days in Agartala:

·        We were toddlers during the 1971 India – Pakistan war. India liberated Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) as an outcome of that war. During that war whenever there was an air raid on Agartala by Pakistani planes, sirens used to go off. In our ancestral home there was a make-shift underground bunker dug up, where we used to run hearing those eerie siren sounds. It actually sounded fun for me then, as being just a toddler In had no clue about what this was all about, was simply told that you have to run to the bunker when you hear the sound of siren!

·        Mother Teresa had visited our school once. That was a once in a lifetime event for us, she was such a loved, world-famous personality and all we students meeting and hearing her from such close quarters was indeed an overwhelming experience

·        Saw a computer for the first time in the late 1970s! This was as part of the CLASS (Computer Literacy and Studies in Schools) project, wherein our school was given one computer. We were thrilled, curious and overawed seeing that machine then. Who knew then that computers would become so intertwined in our daily personal and professional lives now!

·        Television – it was early days of television those days. The only Indian telecaster then was the state-owned Doordarshan. It was a mixed fare of Hindi movies and song programs, and then there was the Krishi Darshan program! I am sure all Indians of that era will remember this program with a queer feeling of nostalgia and sense of absolute ennui! But we were luckier than the rest of our countrymen. Owing to the geo proximity, we also used to get signal feeds in our TV antenna from Bangladesh. And thanks to that we were privileged in our childhood to have watched telecasts of cult program series like Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Gilligan’s Island, He Man, Charlies Angels, et al

·        Reading – grew up feasting on Tin Tin and Asterix comics, Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew books, novels of Alistair Mclean (Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, so many names), Ian Fleming (almost finished the entire 007 books), amongst many others

·        VCRs – we used to pool in money and rent a VCR and movie cassettes and a close group of us friends watched unforgettable movies like Mckenna’s Gold, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Roman Holiday and so many more

·        Sports – after India won the World Cup in 1983, cricket had become a religion. With a few friends we formed a club called Young Blood Club (YBC) – we had our own library of books based on voluntary contributions of club members, participated in local tennis-ball cricket tournaments, etc.

Nostalgic memories, and all of us will have our own stories and anecdotes. Do express yourselves and pen them down. COVID-19 and WFH has given us this unique opportunity of finding time from our otherwise super busy schedules and LinkedIn has the given us the platform to express and share.

Thank you, LinkedIn! Thanks but no thanks, COVID-19!

PS: This article was published on LinkedIn during the peak of COVID days!