WFH (ye kya hua…kaise hua?? Kab hua? In kishore kumar’s voice)The deadly Sars-CoV-2 virus causing the illness Covid-19 stepped into our lives in the year 2020. As it gradually started spreading its way everywhere, life kept unfolding per square feet behind closed doors.
Before we could even realize, Sadharan social behaviors like sitting next to each other, greeting with hugs and handshakes or even standing near one another became so Asadharan to all of us. Brewing the fear not only socially but economically and financially, this virus has seemed to us just like a monster out for hunt since day 1.
With social meets and workplaces, people pulled down the shutters to their lives outside the four walls completely and decorated their windows, terraces and balconies with hope, food and lots of throw backs.
Just when unpacking these many emotions felt overwhelming, ‘aaj ki taaza khabar’ every hour on the news kept reminding us of ‘picture abhi baaki hai mere dost’ and things only became worse like the multitude of ‘end of the world’ movies that showcase such destruction.
WFH: Swagat Nahi Karoge Humara
Everything from school, colleges, workplaces and every other public gathering space, got a sign board of ‘Yahaan par pravesh nished hai’ and went on pause.
Soon teleworking synced along the lines of the famous Bollywood melody,’wait kiska hai tumko intezaar, ‘Main hoon na’ and here, where WORK FROM HOME became a daily norm in our lives.
If we sit and recall, right from the age of ‘school ke liye late hora tiffin kaha hai’ to “office k liye late hogya, traffic me tha”, we’ve always been out of our homes most of the day, most part of our lives.
From the long meetings inside closed cabins and regularly rewarding chai sutta breaks, we’ve shifted to sticking our heads in the webcams of our computers for those never ending zoom calls while we hurriedly finish our brunch.
Single handedly multitasking, covering all the household chores like jhadu pocha aur bartan wearing that lockdown uniform (formal shirt over pyjamas) along with all day office hours, life has taken a 360degree turn.
WORK : HAAL KAISA HAI JANAB KA
These days work doesn’t start in our cubicle with a hot cup of coffee waiting to be relished at our desk but it starts with the minty taste of toothpaste stuffed in our mouth with the toothbrush in one hand while we’re looking at our colleagues and boss holding our phone in other while the camera and microphone turned off. This vision is ironically funny, personifying “bistar se nikal ke kaam le lag jana”, even before looking at ourselves in the mirror. There’s no hurry to leave home but hurry to leave the toilet seat. Washroom, cupboard or kitchen counter wherever the signal reception is good, parts of our minds stay in those corners for hours without moving an inch. Our body continuously singing,’ jaane kahan mera ye neend gaya re ‘ to the tunes of sleepless meetings and rush to meet the targets without any time restrictions which is the new ,’meri to puri zindagi kharab ho gayi’ for us to crib about our work life.
HOME: DIL KI BAATEIN DIL HI JAANE
Home feels not so homely when you have that 14×16 inches glued to our eyes and half cooked half burnt meal in front of us or in some cases just the food and you isolated from the rest of the family. Home stands for comfort and familiarity where bin bulaye mehmaan called work is now our new roommate. On constant alert of our mobile notifications, it’s so hard to even focus on watering plants.
Glass half full- half empty (NAZARIYE KI BAAT HAI)
Computer screen ke us taraf
The numbers look conveniently beautiful on the overall revenue sheets to big shot companies where the people who get work done are making profits with no definite work hours and paise ki bachat on transportation, maintenance cost of the infrastructure and most importantly time. This whole situation to this sector is so benefitting that few of them have made work from home as a permanent mode of operation.
Computer screen ke is taraf
What about the work ability of the workers who are working for the people from the other side? People hired with the ability to work for a specific period from 9 to 5 have a state of mind and body accommodated with various dukh dard of work life balance and now are expected to work for hours about which neither they were aware of nor their aatma. Why is it easy to spot a ‘ye dukh khatam kyu ni hota’ person than badhiya ghar pe baith ke note chapre, if work from home was better just on the basis of the stats rapidly growing up for the companies.
Also, wfh speaks wtf language in whispers for the employees nowadays. The never ending targets have drained out the energy from most of them,which affects their personal lives and causes mental stress not only to the individuals but to their close ones too. Some are fortunate enough to address it but many can’t even admit or get the proper attention and aren’t aware of the reason behind their anxiety, frustration and low productivity levels.
Warning:Following content is not very conventional and doesn’t believe in differentiating mentioned groups as per their financial status to be qualified ‘work from home’ members.
let’s get to know the kinds of employees working from home in Vistaar:
- THE HOMEMAKER
The OG of this work from home culture are moms of course.they have been doing it way before it ever existed without any complaints and we have to give it to them hands down. Whether it’s the dads or the children or ones working through the day on computers, they manage them all .from subah ki chai to the ‘kuch khaoge and paani piye ya nahi’ to the dinner, they never stop.This pandemic when its Housefull in every street,work from home for moms has never been this difficult. - THE STUDENT
Not just the working class people but the students who used to be the Raunak of school corridors running, shouting and laughing are now bound within the web. No “mummy mai khelne jaara” or “aaj school me kya hua pata hai” or “mujhe ghumne jaana hai”. It all effects indirectly but deeply to their psychology and it’s saddening to see how their bachpan is tangled inside those online classes and assignments. The innocence of the hand work has left smudged lines on the notebooks and are now printed on the pdfs and jpegs. Not only this but the complete social cutoff processing their mental and academic depression can’t even be detected or easily be known. Pehle hi sharma ji ka ladke ka pressure had been so tiring for them, now it’s all whitehat, byjus, vedanta or any random learning platform coming up every now and then. The dent is tiny but is screaming “bachpan ke din hai chaar” in caps.
- THE BACHELOR
The most Badnaam batch of the society especially those who are living alone ka alag hi rona hai. Right from waking up, making chai for oneself, doing the dishes, doing laundry, cooking (experimenting stuff) , cleaning their mess and handling excel sheets,struggling to get those gol rotis while zoom call runs in the background, to dragging oneself to bed thinking “Zinda hoon yaar kaafi hai” working whole day on computers extracts the “choti bahu” of individuals completely lachar in front of their respective khadoos saas a.k.a bosses demanding work at any hour of the day saying, “tumhe kaunsa ghar sambhalna ya biwi bachche dekhne” which leaves them unarmored and eventually lose the game. The story doesn’t even end here with few dialogues but the workload keeps piling up to the ceilings so high that ‘sochta hu job change karlu ya naukri hi chod du fir startup kar lunga’ is the new fav song of every employee. Also, how can we ignore the stats of suicides taken place or the job losses. Looking at these news, working from home feels like ‘zamana bohat kharab hai’ sitting in a break failed vehicle and just moving blank sight.
- THE FAMILY MAN
Yes, these are one of the most important ones, this is the phool wala part of ‘phool aur kaante’ picture of ‘work from home’ scenario. They are elated to be home and around their loved ones while working and getting the quality time, they have been missing out on while they were out. It surely helps at least this type from this community but for the privileged ones.
Now coming to the kaante part, people running small businesses or the ones on whom the whole family depends, in this lockdown are not earning anything. If looked at with the magnifying glass actually, the situation is worse where things don’t even work from home at all. - THE BEROZGAR
Listening to the continuous mean comments from family members and typing ‘interested’ at every job posting on linkedIn is quite a task too. These are maybe artists or poets or people not manufactured for WFH.
Also me, writing this blog on ‘WORK FROM HOME’ while working from home, at an untimely hour, cz ab tho office bistar se hai, kabhi bhi karlo! 😅
