BENGALURU: Hola, fellow citizens!
Everybody I know in namma ooru is suffering from a sense of Cardi-V fatigue. Either they are convincing themselves (with a mad glint in their eye) that ‘now there’s nothing to worry about, macha’ or they have started venturing out, tentatively dipping their toes in the water, sticking their heads out like turtles and generally surveying the scene.
The second lot is constantly scanning their Aarogya Setu apps or better still, consulting their WhatsApp gobble-de-gook, trying desperately to decipher between the riff and the raff. I fall between these two categories. You can say, I slip between the cracks.
I desperately want to show bravado and on the other hand, my heartbeats seem to rapidly increase every time I catch a lout using his or her face mask everywhere else but on their face! A couple of girlfriends and yours truly steeled ourselves into meeting up and going to the Thai restaurant Bo-Tai, in the posh environs of the CBD Area. Mind you, this wasn’t an impromptu meet-up like the good old days.
This was a carefully planned military manoeuvre. Time, date and venue were carefully picked out, reservations were made and most importantly, dresses and masks were colour coordinated! In this ‘new order’ (new normal is verrrry passe), there are strict dress codes. No one glances towards one’s shoes anymore.
On Zoom calls one can wear wellworn bathroom flip flops without a qualm, but when one ventures out. your mask should be on point! You can actually see ‘the-unkind’ snigger and titter (our erstwhile men-folk included), when one makes a mask faux-pas. I have heard unkind jibes like, “OMG! What was she wearing? It looks like she draped her entire curtain collection on her face’’ or “Seriously! Is that a mask or her Victoria Secret undergarment’’. Boy! Was I happy I wasn’t at the receiving end of that V V (viper venom). The whole experience of a lazy afternoon lunch was sublime.
Close friends catching up, talking, laughing and being pampered by Bo-Tai’s chef Arup Katkai. All the dishes were steamed and delicately flavoured, but without doubt his hand-made noodles with Asian Bolognese and his Truffle- scented chicken dim-sums in a gentle TomYum sauce were the clear winners.
It is admirable how most hotels and restaurants are trying to woo back their diffident customers by adhering to a strict policy of sanitising, masking up and physical distancing. Of course, as a race we like to cozy up to each other and I’m pretty sure, the acronym FOMO was made for us.
The fear of another Indian person, doing, saying, eating or feeling something without another Indian person hanging on to every nuance is almost sacrilegious! There is so much and no more that concerned establishments can do. the rest we must comply with. I shame people who don’t wear masks (unmask them so to speak), and many times have sometimes actually joined my hands to belligerent people and it has always worked.
So, it was with a great sense of disappointment that I walked into the lobby of this ‘star’ hotel plonk in middle of the CBD area and found the senior personnel of the hotel all unmasked, sitting and chatting right under a sign in their hotel that said wearing of masks was mandatory! This was the second time and I have complained to their head office before.
For shame! I happily togged up again (I’ve forgotten how to use makeup!), and meandered to Oakwood Hotel to participate in a boondi laddoo-making session for Deepavali instead of the usual archaic ‘cake-mixing’. Great fun was had by the small niche crowd and protocols were strictly adhered to. It was great to see people laughing as their eyes crinkled behind their masks. Truly a New Order. Be safe, be kind.