The After-Life

It was 8 am, I hurriedly opened the Ola App. There  was a pop-up "Welcome back, please login to proceed". I sighed for the first time. This was just a sample of the many things that would require a restart that day; when you are literally dragging yourself out of home after almost half a year. 'All is well' I tell my 'Dil Bechara'. 

I boarded the cab, there was a glass sheet partitioning the front seats from the back seats. I was going to miss talking to these drivers, who sometimes share amazing stuff about the city and what's happening around. I paid using Olamoney for the first time.

My mind was still pondering over how we would have survived, if Corona had attacked during the pre-ecommerce and pre-smart phone era. Life in 2020 AC (After Corona) without  the likes of Amazon, Swiggy, Paytm, Ola was unimaginable. Just then the old security guard waved at me, his gleeful smile and the broken tooth were concealed behind the mask. I settled with waving back and didn't exchange pleasantries. Life post Covid is going to be strikingly different. I stepped into the lift, carefully placing my foot on the yellow-marked sticker and facing the wall. It felt like I was entering FBI headquarters.

When I stepped out of the lift, the receptionist greeted me; the narrowed eyes meant she was smiling from ear to ear. She gestured towards the sanitizer and pointed the thermometer to my forehead at point blank range. The finger scanner for attendance had been replaced by a face scanner. I pulled down my mask and stared into the screen. My poor fingers will have to wait till God knows when, to resume all it's normal activities.

Finally I entered the place I had been longing to be back; but the eerie silence and the abandoned corridor was not what I had expected of the place I called my second home. All the cubicles were  partitioned with stickers of safety precautions pasted on them. This is the new normal I reassure myself, though a big part of me missed the old workplace. 

A day dream it was, as I tried to visualise how 'back to physical office' would be like. My little one broke the dream to show me the castle she built for a dead mosquito! She was making the best out of her extended vacations, oblivious to what was going on around her. 'I'll play till Corona goes away' she says cheerfully, I wish I could be as carefree as her and live life one step at a time.

"In life there are some things we might never really get over, sometimes the best we can do is just get through."