BENGALURU: As we readjust ourselves to three more weeks of staying indoors, we have some burning questions. Will we be celebrated for our “natural look”? (No, not the Instagram celebrity version of the natural look, with make-up that matches skin tone; I’m talking about hair that grows in all directions and greys that finally get their moment to break free.) Are pancakes dinner? (This one solved itself already. And the answer is yes.) Can cats participate in the social media saree challenge?
Most importantly, when will things go back to normal?
This is a question that’s on everyone’s mind, and it’s a hard one to answer or escape from. In the world of music, artistes are wondering when they will get to play to packed concert halls again. No one can possibly guess where we go from here, and the problem is, there’s no real mental health benefit of planning for that day. All it does is intensify the feeling that we’ve been put on pause; it’s a feeling that keeps us on edge more than we realise.
We need to plan for a new “normal.” We aren’t in control right now, we don’t know what things are going to look like on May 4 or a month from now. So why not embrace it?
Musicians are doing what they can to adapt. #Quarantunes are now a thing. You’re always only one scroll away from a great live music session. My band, The Thayir Sadam Project, and I put together a handy compilation of songs that are inappropriate for the times (like Closer, Where’s The Party Tonight or I Wanna Hold Your Hand).
Will we change the way we live, learn, work, and play? Looks like it. At SaPa, we’ve had to bring over 500 students online in a day (the youngest student is barely two years old). We (and all other schools) are now wondering how we’re going to bring the next 30,000 kids online in a meaningful way that doesn’t involve sticking them in front of a webcam for hours together.
The World Economic Forum said recently that we haven’t experienced a loss of control like this since the second world war. But there’s a beautiful thing here – I read somewhere that this is the first time the world is working together to solve the same problem. Maybe it’s time to start asking ourselves about the new order of things.