Family & home in lockdown the only stay?

As the world struggles with the shutdown of almost everything, India is in the second phase of the lockdown.

This spring when many sakura buds wanted to play safe and stay ‘home’ within the protective confines of their green covers, there were others who just had to step out into the dangerous terrain of the Covid-19 in full bloom. The first set is ‘us’ who are following the government’s stay home advisory to prevent the coronavirus epidemic from spreading further. The second set is ‘they’, ‘the corona soldiers’ who have to go out there in the danger zone and fight so that all of us are safe and healthy.

As the world struggles with the shutdown of almost everything, India is in the second phase of the lockdown. With us shut out from every possible place in our lives, markets, malls, offices, cinema halls, schools, universities, airports, railway stations, flights, trains, roads, jogging-parks, amusement-parks, recreational resorts or restaurants, there’s only one place open for each one of us — home. When we cannot and should not meet anyone at all outside, there’s but one entity we can interact with — family.

Howsoever deadly the virus maybe, but this epidemic has come to this world as the universe’s greatest realisation till date about what exactly is essential to our living and what we can do without. We have been brought back to the very necessities of life, the very essentials. Life, as it stands today for every human, is stripped of all luxuries, extras, non-essentials, you know all that we thought was indispensable to our living but now comprehend that they were all peripherals we could have done without. We are doing without them for the last five weeks.

Family is the only basic entity of our life and home the foundation on which we build our entire outer structure. Do you ever see the foundation of any structure — Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Sydney Opera House, Darling Harbour or the tiny little bridge leading to your simple little home, do you ever get to see the foundation on which they stand? No. But they’re all there standing tall and beautiful wowing the world because of their strong foundation lies hidden, metres and metres beneath the ground, unseen, unrecognised and unsaluted.

That’s what our family and home are. The basic infrastructure of life! During the calamity, if any building or structure collapses, falls, tilts or is partly or wholly broken or razed to the ground, it can be rebuilt over its foundation because the foundation has not been damaged. So are our family and home. No matter what happens in this world, our family is like that hidden foundation which is always there and you can rebuild any of your outer structures anytime with its support.    

As the skeleton of a human is the basic infrastructure on which our system depends, the family is the support structure on which our existence depends. The flesh, the skin, the muscles, the fat are all then filled in just the right places to give us more aesthetics, outer beauty but without that skeleton inside, the rest of it cannot be built.

The skeletal is what provides the framework of the human body giving it the shape and support structure required for its various functions. It is what allows us movement, protects our internal organs, produces blood and stores minerals. Ditto our family.

It is our basic infrastructure without which we cannot exist and cannot build a world of other things, outer circles. It is the skeletal structure of our life. And… just like we don’t see the skeleton inside our body, the very bone structure that supports us into standing, sitting, working, whatever, we also don’t see our family and home all the time and are too busy with other, more important issues outer relationships, work et al. But in times of crises such as this unparalleled pandemic, we are left with just what we started into this world.

At birth, we just have our family, however big however small. We go on adding more and more stuff, just like we add kilos and kilos of fat onto our basic skeleton, forgetting what lies within supporting our outer frame and structure in shape and place.So, like the strength of a building lies in its strong foundation and that of a body lies in its strong skeletal structure, the strength of a human lies in the family.

Manisha Gupta

International Award Winning Screenwriter & Filmmaker and Founder-MD of LOGIHQ, a HAPPINESS start-up

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The New Indian Express
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