09.04.20, 4 am

Mumbai, India

I tried to catch up with all the comments on my previous journal entries and I did this after a long long time. I guess we can blame the lack of human contact for spending an hour on your comments to analyze what went wrong where or what worked how. 

Once upon a time, I used to read all the comments on my articles, this was 6 years ago when I had first started writing listicles for a living. I miss that buzz sometimes, just like the many things we all are missing during this lone time. But then there came a point when I realized the real meaning of freedom of speech and I started treating my readers’ comments as a healthy discussion I could learn a thing or two from. So, thank you for taking out the time to read what I’m writing every day, for you. 

Today, you and your comments are the reasons why I just opened my laptop at this ungodly hour, to write this journal. 

Just starting this on a very light note. Do you know when it’s right for us to say that we’re practising ‘quarantine’? You say it when you have isolated yourself for a short period because you may have been exposed to some infection or a contagious disease. Please note the “may”.

So, if you’re not at home for that reason these days, you can call it “house arrest”.

It’s rough, some of us self-imposed this suffocation on ourselves days before the lockdown was announced. Like me and my sister. I remember trying to be a responsible citizen saying ‘No’ to friends when they called to join them at a bar. I said, “I’m practising self-quarantine”. It would be fair of me to say that then because till then we had all been roaming around freely without any social distancing after the covid19 had already entered our lives in this country. But well, now I’m feeling the FOMO of not going out with my friends then because a week or two later Janta curfew was declared and then the lockdown.

That’s probably the only kind of FOMO I’ve been feeling but I see FOMO taking the rounds on pop culture more often than not these days. However, I feel that there’s another feeling that’s way more common than FOMO today worldwide but especially in India, simply because a majority of us in this country don’t have the privilege or luxury to feel such a thing as the ‘fear of missing out’. That feeling that you’re missing out on things when you see other people doing it, online these days. I guess that’s how the Dalgona coffee and Shakshuka became trends in a time when our poor country is drowning more into poverty every day.

It’s true, that all of us are going through a feeling we can’t define from the top of our heads. I won’t call it FOMO but some experts are calling it ‘grief’ and not one but different types of grief.

This lockdown may be temporary but many of us, at the moment, feel like we’re living an open-ended life where we have absolutely no idea what this misery will end up at or if it will end for sure. It’s normal to feel that but it’s also crucial to acknowledge the fact that we will survive this time, history tells us that. Collateral damage will happen and always happens, and that’s beyond our control. 

What’s in our control, however, is what we know - washing hands and maintaining social distance. And maybe, acknowledging what we’re feeling? Like, my friend and I often tell each other “I cried last night.” And the conversation mostly ends on a good note, last time it ended with a laugh. With a sentence that went something like this - “Hahahaha after this, we will swim in the sea of men.” 

So, you know what I mean? 

Honestly, if I got a rupee for every time someone goes live on my friend list these days, I’d be a billionaire by now. But FOMO is not the feeling I want you to address today.

I want to know how and what you’re really feeling today? Tell me in the comments below.

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