The fear of Corona inculcated some covid Habits in our daily life like exercising or yoga, taking bath after coming from outside, doing gargle with turmeric water, taking steam, drinking kadha, sanitizing at the door before entering in the house, vitamin C, turmeric milk and many more things. It not only made us conscious about our habits but also about spaces and people around us. Temporary working space in the corners of the house so it doesn’t interrupt the rest of the family members. The whole going downstairs just to buy vegetables and necessary stuff and later in societies, people started calling vegetable vendor specifically for their society. This not only brought a change in the idea of market space but also ideas such as privileges for specific people. Exposure to the outside was just through window frames and sounds of distant as much our ears can hear. The concept of celebrating an occasion through making videos. Family time and bonds increased over tv, games, and some deep talks too but also the disagreements increased because of individualism, beliefs and principles. This affected the personal space of an individual in his/her own house. A whole lot of people started using Social media for doing work and as a source of income. It widely ranged from people using Tik Tok for various trends and influences to people opening Instagram pages for expanding their creativity, cooking ability(mainly deserts) to do online publicity of them teaching yoga, makeup, and much more stuff.

I left Mumbai on the 15th of May, with few clothes and some watercolour and papers just to spend the 15 days holiday nicely. The lockdown extended and I thought I should explore more about watercolour painting as I had a lot of free time. I started with making small watercolour flowers, mandalas and patterns at first. I started to watch some videos on YouTube and got inspired by Milind Mulicks landscape painting. From there I started to paint landscapes. My love for trees, huts, skies, mountains developed so much. Then I thought why not share my work on social media? On the 4th of July, I started my art page account named a.watercolourists, I got so much love for my artwork, that made me motivated to make more such paintings. In the monsoon elective, Sakshi and I had even taken watercolour sessions for two days. From which we got a really nice response.

Exploring different places, trying different food items, and archiving them was a part of my every day before the pandemic. As for gourmet, I love exploring and eating food and giving reviews. But cooking was never my forte. Due to the lockdown, the movement to food junctions was restricted which led to the urge of cooking. It was difficult at the beginning of the pandemic to adapt to the new lifestyle, new ways of meeting friends, attending college. Though these methods have allowed me to connect to all corners of the world virtually the fact that I am still in a room physically has made it difficult to embody the virtual world. Over time I realized that cooking was a shift that helped me divert my mind. From cooking to plating I started learning its methods and logic. I started bringing nuances in every next food I made. Gradually, I started archiving these through photographs and shot videos of the recipes. I starting learning food photography on the online platform which gave me a new perspective. Good food actually changes the mood and it is my survival pack so far.

The lockdown has changed a lot of habits and daily schedules. Where I would wake up at 6 in the morning for college, now the timing has changed to waking up 10 min prior the online lecture. The habits of having breakfast, taking baths early in the morning have changed not just for me but for other family members too. Where I would get space in my room to work now gets filled up by my mother and my aunt as they both have work from home. This lockdown I felt at first would give me more time to sleep and do nothing but later made me realize that the free time could be utilized. Since we have online lectures the traveling time got saved and I got more time to spend at home and paint which was not at all possible if we would have had a regular college. During lecture breaks or after lecture used to be the time to do all the paintings and now I even sold a few of them.

A few weeks since the lockdown halted the world, forcing us to get confined in our homes and waive physical and social interaction, it didn’t seem like we would be freed anytime soon. Another common issue that we faced was people witnessing a mad rush of buyers waiting in queue to buy basic utilities. “out of stock” was the most common sign seen everywhere from online stores to the general stores in the area, that’s when we came up with the idea of growing our own vegetables on a small scale. For the first few months, apart from binging Netflix, I tried out different hobbies, but the most relaxing one was gardening. We experimented with growing essentials like tomatoes, spinach, ginger, basil. Even the Ganpati idol that we installed this year was of sand and clay and such that it could be immersed in water and we can grow plants from the soil. Even I noticed that there’s an emotional connection to your food when you grow vegetables yourself. When you take something out of the seed packet or put the seedling in the dirt, then you have to tend to it, you have to shade it sometimes, chase away the birds. It's a lot of work, but is rewarding in the end. You are more appreciative of mother nature and value its resources.