BackOld habits die easy if they’re in a corona-induced coma
Habits that we had taken for granted have been turned on their heads, be it taking one’s keys along while stepping out, that morning bath, or putting on those contact lenses in a jiffy.
PremiumThe other day, there was a moment of dread when I mulled over the prospect of not being able to wear earrings again. I had not adorned my ears with jewellery in months, ever since the virus got viral, and, as I scrutinized my faded ear piercings in the mirror, they looked like they’d probably shut shop—due to neglect. The covid era has been the only time in my life when I’ve gone without window dressing on my biological hearing aids, although here I must add that I’d been a late responder to a trend that besets women when they are (usually) little girls: I got my “ears done" when I was at the fag end of my college life.
My ear-piercing experience had been a traumatic, sado-masochistic one. The doctor—an uncle of mine, relatives really have the worst bedside manners—insisted on pulling a fat needle right through my lobes, end to end, declaring that, as a woman, I need to have a heightened threshold of pain (whatever that means), while I let him have his way. It has remained with me as a tryst with terror, one I would never want to relive.
In the present, I panicked. Gosh, are my deconstructed piercings a sign that it’s the end of the line for all those family heirlooms?
I dug out a pair of studs that had been cooling their heels inside a dusty trinket box for almost half a year, and gingerly tried them on. It took a fair bit of elbow grease, generous dabs of moisturiser and careful manoeuvring—together with a hot flush of stress sweating—but they finally pulled through. Yippee!
A couple of days later, I had to step out to meet people for dead-serious work, and needed to wear contact lenses. The last time I wore them was sometime in March (that pair had dehydrated into nothingness inside the case, I noted with some anguish). When I tried on lenses after the gap—earlier a “gap" meant the weekend, at most—I just couldn’t put them on right. I’ve been wearing contacts for longer than I’ve worn earrings, and till a few months ago used to be such a pro at putting on or taking them off that I didn’t even need a mirror—or light, for that matter. Now, it suddenly seemed like I was clutching at straws. It took a long time to wear them and feel comfortable.
As I was struggling with vision 2020, a friend called to inform me that he had been locked out. “I am so unused to using a key these days, since I’m normally holed up at home, that I clean forgot to carry it with me when I left the house and banged the door shut. Now I’m trying to find a lock fixer who can break into my place. Man, covid has really made me lose touch with my good habits."
“Tell me about it," I grumbled. “I’m still trying to get used to my contact lenses."
Clearly, habits we had taken for granted are being turned on their heads. Another friend who moved back to Delhi a few years ago, after a longish stint in Singapore, used to talk about her love for morning walks and how she had finally managed to overcome her fear of hitting a striding track—in her case, the road in front of her apartment block—in an entirely different milieu. These days, she says, she tries to go walking with a mask on, but the “ease" evades her. “It’s a weird feeling. At times, I feel I won’t be able to cross the road. The sight of a car nearby throws me into a tizzy. When I spot a stranger without a mask, I begin to hyperventilate. When I spot a stranger with a mask, I think he looks shady, so I hyperventilate even more."
Someone else said he gets startled when, during the course of rare drives, he’s invariably accosted by mask-less beggars at traffic lights. “Normally, I’d roll up windows on instinct—but now, in this current haze, I forget." Like I’ve also almost forgotten what it’s like to shop “in person". I started, reluctantly, to buy stuff online despite having been a strong advocate of the touch-feel-buy retail experience, and have now become quite a whiz at turning anti-bricks and mortar.
A few days into our lockdown, I got into the habit of having a bath in the evenings—unimaginable in the days of yore when I always did so in the mornings, even on weekends and holidays. I have no idea why I switched timings, so I spoke to someone about it, someone who fancies herself as being “shrink-like". Earlier, it was like setting an agenda for the day, she told me. A watershed in more ways than one. “Now with the ongoing continuous stream of psycho-babble, about nights being more difficult to get through, you probably believe you are giving life a new construct by getting ready for the ‘dark side’…. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism." In a strange way, it made a lot of sense.
Practice makes perfect, they say, so it may only be a matter of time before the comatose old habits are brought back to life.
But I’m not so sure. We may hate to admit it, but I think the fear, the uncertainty and the ensuing edginess that covid has triggered off have made us way more tentative. Our reflexes are down—on autopilot. Even if our habits have nothing to do with human intervention, social distancing, by proxy, has pushed us into intellectual abstraction.
Sushmita Bose is a journalist, editor and the author of ‘Single In The City’.
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