News: How the lockdown has changed the way people window-shop, love, work, smoke and play-17-05-2020
Updated On: May 17, 2020
How the lockdown has changed the way people window-shop, love, work, smoke and play
The lockdown has brought a lot of cheer to the world of gamers.
Home Run
“The first four days, I went mad,” says K Ganesh, Bengaluru-based angel investor and serial entrepreneur. He is obsessed with two hours of tennis every day. Travel, meetings, office — everything is planned around tennis. The lockdown has put an end to it. “It wasn’t easy. Now, treadmill is what I do,” he says. Sportspeople can’t play. Swimmers can’t swim. Marathoners can’t run. And gym fanatics miss the kick that group workouts brought into their lives. They are now reordering their fitness regimen to align with lockdown curbs. Some have signed up for virtual yoga classes. “It is not my kind of thing. But I have signed up and am now reluctantly realising its benefits,” says a swimmer, who has started doing yoga. K Sudarshan, MD of EMA Partners and a marathoner, now runs half a marathon and, sometimes even a full one, as he repeatedly races through the living room and balconies of his penthouse. Some have joined online workout classes, with Zoom trainers becoming popular.
Triaging Goes Viral
Triaging is what medical professionals do in a calamity. Faced with limited resources, they prioritise patients for treatment to maximise the number of survivors. Now, triaging is the key word elsewhere, too. Top-notch VC investors are triaging their portfolios — picking startups worth saving and offering lifeline funds to them while letting others shut shop. Companies are triaging their workforce — picking those who are most critical for their functioning and laying off others. Corporate conglomerates are triaging their portfolio — focusing on businesses that are at the core and hold promise while closing or hiving off, or selling others.
Bye Buy
You can call it lockdown window shopping. She scans ecommerce websites. And fills up her cart. It has the shoes she adores and the dresses she loves. Like earlier, this happens while she is working, is in between work, or even late at night when she can’t get sleep. Except that she can’t buy any of it now, as ecommerce companies cannot sell non-essential items during the lockdown. Still, every day, thoughtfully, she goes through her list and prunes it. She deletes items that she no longer likes and adds the new ones that she has discovered. “Now you have the time to rein in your impulses,” says the homebound window shopper.
With 50-plus shopping-less days, what else can a shopaholic do? She eagerly awaits the day etailers will announce a big sale and start deliveries. The world of compulsive shoppers with a taste for the latest has been hit by the lockdown. Their consumerism may look crass and frivolous in these difficult times, but these shoppers play a crucial role in keeping businesses afloat. Forced abstinence is having mixed outcomes. Some lie in wait, ready to shop with a vengeance whenever marketplaces open up. But there are a few, pleasantly shocked by their shrunken credit card bills, who are vowing to turn frugal in pursuit of a minimalist lifestyle.
The Game Is On
The lockdown has brought a lot of cheer to the world of gamers. Pre-lockdown, they were the spoilt brats who whiled away their time on frivolous indulgences. Parents were reluctant to splurge on such pursuits. Parents, overworked at home with no domestic help, are having a rethink. They have opened their purses and learnt to look the other way as children put gaming industry on an adrenaline surge. Gaming companies are giving a thrust to it, releasing new updates, waiving subscription fees and offering lite versions.
Swiping Right
The world of dating is full of possibilities, even in lockdown. Cut off from the physical world and with time on hand, people are turning to dating platforms. From Truly Madly to Tinder, dating sites report a surge in daily active users, engagement levels, “like” rates, chatting time and extension of the peak band late into the night. “Members have become more flexible. It’s not that important to find someone located in the same geography,” says Snehil Khanor, cofounder of TrulyMadly. Women have become less choosy and their “like” rate has doubled on Truly-Madly. But “likes” cannot progress beyond the virtual world. Lockdown means the possibility of meeting for real is nil. “How long can you chat online?” asks a 20-something in Gurgaon.
Withdrawal symptoms
At first, he was being generous, like in old days. Having managed to pick up a full case of Old Monk early in the lockdown, he gave away a couple of bottles. Then he foresaw the tough times and changed his ways. “I started asking people for a bottle even when I had my stock. I wanted them to think I had none. Turning down requests was not easy,” he says. When a bootlegger broke open a booze shop in East Delhi to sell at double the price, the word travelled quickly. “Everything is okay in this world of alcohol scarcity,” says one, who surreptitiously bought a bottle from the bootlegger. Smokers looking for their nicotine fix breathe in a similar world.
Three things bind the world of tipplers and smokers in this lockdown. They band together to get their hand on a smoke or a drink. They are either downgrading brands or rationing to keep things going. Surge pricing — almost double the MRP — has become acceptable. As prices zoom in the black market, sellers and buyers engage in negotiations. In Andheri, Mumbai, when a corner shop started charging Rs 700 for a pack of cigarettes that cost around Rs 300, smokers ganged up. The shopkeeper was warned to cut prices or be prepared for a boycott. Finally, the deal was struck at Rs 550. Some, who didn’t smoke or drink at home, say adjustments have been relatively easier. For a few, abstinence has even triggered introspection. “I looked at my outgo on cigarettes and then kept reading about the plight of starving migrant workers. My conscience pricked. So I quit. Of course, one also knows the health benefits,” says a smoker of 30 years.
Being Together, Being Apart
For partners and lovers, the lockdown has been a time of discoveries, finding spaces of togetherness and separation. For a few, the lockdown has forced secrets out in the open. Take a musician in Mumbai, who moved in with her boyfriend early this year. Her conservative parents knew about the boyfriend but not the live-in arrangement. In the lockdown, things became difficult to hide. Her Instagram post brought it out in the open. “My parents weren’t as mad as I imagined,” she laughs. For many couples, separated by distance, the lockdown has been a make-or-break moment. Some relationships are crashing, weighed down by the miles. Some couples have gone the other way, rekindling their romance, as virtual tools like WhatsApp video and Netflix Party help them connect and be with each other. Meanwhile, some globetrotting executives, forced to be with their partners 24x7, are gasping for fresh air and distance. For a Bengaluru-based executive, the lockdown and work from home helped him keep a difficult secret he wasn’t ready to reveal to his family: that he was laid off in February. The lockdown offered a good cover. Now, with the lockdown lifting, he knows that he has to muster courage to come clean. Soon!
Different Flavours
In the lockdown, some have discovered fire in the kitchen. For newcomers in the culinary world, their skill is worth an Instagram or Facebook post. For experts, this is a time to experiment with scarce ingredients. Others, meanwhile, have fallen out of love with cooking. With their cooks and domestic help on leave, daily cooking has become a chore. “I used to love cooking. But, frankly, now I just don’t. Cooking as a chore has taken the juice out of it,” mourns one.
