Malls, theatres, gymnasiums, parks, zoos, museums, restaurants, cafes have all been ordered to close in Tamil Nadu. Prime Minister Modi announced complete lockdown for the entire country for 21-days that will end on April 14. With no means of entertainment, not even the boring grind of a usual work day and commuting, many are finding themselves quickly bored.
The graveness of the situation is unmistakable. The need to isolate oneself and one’s family take precedence over everything. Yet, now more than ever, the need to keep yourself entertained while being isolated at home is important for physical and mental wellbeing. How are people coping?
Quite a few of them have started dialling up their old contacts on their phones, to interesting results, but this is bound to last only for a couple of days.
Of course, many have discovered the joys of cooking and baking, some undeterred (like Sisyphus pushing the rock back up again) by the challenge that comes after (did the dishes just multiply?) More are channeling their inner Mary Kondo, occasionally surprised by the “artefacts” their own wardrobe is throwing back at them. And many are listing out activities like they did under the ‘Interests’ section of their resume - “reading books, listening to music and watching movies.” It is only a matter of time before we bring back the hobbies that were all the rage in the 80s and the 90s - coin collecting, notes collecting, stamp collecting etc.
Before we digress more, here’s how cities, like Chennai, are making this self-quarantine bearable.
Brush off the dust from your Skype account
Listening to R Chandrashekar talk about the new game he and his family are now playing, one can’t help but think, “Why didn’t I think of this?” The 70-year-old retired Railways employee from Chennai who flew to Delhi with his wife earlier this month to visit his daughter Jyoti Shekar has now extended his stay owing to current circumstances. His two other daughters are in two different cities, Mumbai and Bengaluru, respectively. And this situation need not be dull as Chandrashekar knows the perfect game to play even if your family is scattered around the country.
Together with his daughters, sons-in-law and grand children Chandrashekar has taken to playing dumb charades on Skype. On Saturday, about nine members from the family came together online to play dumb charades. “We would discuss film titles on WhatsApp,” says Jyoti.
“My nephews are all home. Their exams have been cancelled and are now bored. My sister in Bombay came up with the idea to play a game online together. We hopped on a call and split ourselves in two groups. It went on for about two hours,” she explains.
She continues, “My parents are very game oriented, they would always join us too. In fact, my father is the one who usually initiates it, although he has slowed down a bit now. When we are together we would play cricket or Uno or Ludo. It only made sense for us to play online too,” she says adding, “You also carry the memory of having had good fun. The next few hours are also quite smooth. We plan on doing this again.”
Board games and quiz groups
While online games like these open up a whole new world, it's always comforting to go back to the joys of board games. Writer Nivedita Louis shares that by playing board games, from traditional ones like pallankuzhi to the Hungarian magic cube Ribik’s cube, with her 16-year-old son and her 14-year-old daughter. “I'm enjoying it because the kids are opening up a lot. They also love it because we are finding more ‘us’ time now,” says Nivedita.
While that is indeed a great option, if you’d say you’re more of a Sheldon than a Penny, joining a quiz group would not seem like a bad idea at all. H129 Quarantined Chaos, the WhatsApp group, started on March 17, has 142 participants and is going strong. The invite-only group started by four like minded friends — Krishnan, Prasanna, Aditya Dhathathreyan and Aravindan Sudarshan — conducted its first online quiz event on Sunday afternoon. “They were split into sub WhatsApp groups and the questions and final answers would be posted on the main group. It was a basic trivia event,” explains Aditya. In the coming weeks, the group plans on holding trivia + quizzes. “It was predominantly started to bring people together and not as a run of the mill quiz group,” he adds.
It’s a party on Instagram!
When Tamil indie artist Seinnor announced that he would be performing live on his Instagram page on Sunday afternoon he shared that this time would be different. (For the uninitiated, here’s Siennor singing “na na na corona.”) “The live was unusual. It had about 30-40 people and most of them remained till the end, for about 1.5 hours. Usually I play for 20 minutes and during this time, the people watching would keep changing,” he says. Seinnor also held another live on Thursday evening. You can tune in here for more updates.
Chennai’s very own poetry group Mocking Birds too held its online session on Saturday, World Poetry Day, that saw a small group tuning in. Its co-founder Michelle Ann James talks about the groups very first online Insta live turning into a success. “We had planned for readings on the 18th and two of our other events that were to happen later this week was cancelled. So we thought we’ll do an online reading session,” says Michelle.
The hour-long session saw readings of their own work as well as of poets like Adrienne Rich, Kannadasan, Mary Oliver, AK Ramanujam and Leonard Cohen. “We picked up relevant poems too. I read Adrienne’s ‘What kind of times are these,’” she shares. The group will be holding its next live soon.
Helping you keep your sense of comedy intact in these grim times is this group that is planning on holding an Instagram live for stand up comedy. “We shifted our weekly Comedy Sabha (every Friday mini-Show) to an InstaLIVE last Friday. We would be doing 1 more InstaLIVE Comedy Show coming Friday. Comedians can DM on our handle to join. Audience can join the LIVE to watch - Comedy in the time of Corona,” says Annamalai Lakshman, founder of Tanglish Comedy. The next show is on Friday, March 27, at 7.30 pm.
There are also quite a few online storytelling sessions you can tune into with your children. Book Lovers Programs for Schools is holding curated online storytelling at specific timing for different age groups. For more details, visit here. Liltrails will also be holding online storytelling sessions for children by Janaki Sabesh every evening at 5 pm on their Instagram handle until the end of this month.