Mincing Words - Not !!

Hello everyone!  So we have arrived at the end of the initial phase of lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. Although I have enjoyed each and every entry in my journal describing how it has been for the past 21 days I think the last 72 hours have been phenomenal. I say this because for the past 72 hours I have not been on duty except tonight and still have enjoyed each and every second of it. I know it is difficult to believe that a person could enjoy in the time of pandemic but do not confuse my attempts to keep myself happy with the normal joyous atmosphere a person has in normal times. I got back to my habit of reading, jogging and listening to jazz. Listening to jazz has been an easy task as compared to before when I was doing my under graduation. Now, we have millions of songs at the touch of our fingers if we are a member of any of the streaming services. Few of the readers had also asked me the reason for citing two of most uncommon heroes of my life in the previo...

Hello everyone! I hope all of you are fine and following the rules of lockdown. Today is the 18th day and we are almost at the end of the initial lockdown period. Although there has been some news about the lockdown being extended in few of the states which are hotspots for the coming up cases still I feel that the government might allow a little restricted movement for economic purposes. The reason why lockdown was sought was to control the spread of this pandemic and avoid overburdening our health care system. The current figures represent that we have been a little successful in what we thought we could achieve from this lockdown but there are certain confounding factors like the lack of testing capacity in most of the states in our country. I hope it all goes according to the plan and with the increasing testing capacity, we are able to control this disease in all of the states like Kerala and Rajasthan. Today's blog is a little special for me as I will be discussing an ex...

Hello everyone! So I am back again with another blog but this time I am writing to you after 72 hours. I have taken 24 more hours to come back and talk just because there have been some problems which I have faced in the duties which we have in Corona Clinic. So, I will straight away get to the point that for the past 72 hours I have been pretty busy as in the first 24 hours I was posted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on regular duty hours in my department. The next 24 hours saw me doing my first duty in the screening clinic in which I am supposed to sit wearing personal protective equipment and swab all the patients which come as suspected cases. Before, when I was in touch and described that we underwent a lot of training still when I reached the clinic yesterday I found out that there were many discrepancies in the training which the staff posted there had been getting.  When I reached there yesterday I observed that there was no coordination between our department and the d...

Hello everyone! I hope all of you are fine and are trying to cope up with the stress of the lockdown. It's already 6th of this month and its 9 more days until this lockdown. The past 48 hours have been a little surprising for me as I have been able to enjoy my time in the lockdown. It all started with my last blog for which I got quite a few positive responses. Some of my readers actually loved my idea of avoiding social media for a few days and told me that they would implement the same. Apart from that great news I also have gone through a change of environment from my monotonous schedule of the lockdown. First, I have been able to cope up with my studies as a final year student should. When you have a habit of reading, learning and working throughout your life and suddenly your daily schedule is disturbed it makes you a little mad. I think the same phenomenon was happening to me to which I confused with chaos in my mind. Maybe it was no confusion or chaos but the feeling of...

Hello everyone! I hope most of your fit and fine, following the rules of lockdown. The past 2 days have been a little slow for me as I have not been on social media and have not been following much of the news. In my personal opinion, it was one of the best decisions which I have taken for a very long time i.e.  I took 'Sanyas' from social media. I say this because, for the past four days when I have been out of the touch with most of the news and things which people have to say about this pandemic I have eaten better, slept better and have been able to work better. To be very frank at some point I have even felt that everything is normal maybe that is because I've been ignoring the obvious pandemic upon us by being outside the circulation. Anyway, I think it is necessary for each and every one of us to have a lockdown from the information which is going around. It helps guys, seriously, it helps.  As usual, during the last 48 hours, I had an 8-mile run which w...

Hello everyone! It has been 48 hours since we have connected and I hope all of you have been fine and are following the rules of the lockdown. Past 48 hours have been as I predicted. Due to the lack of news about this pandemic and the pandemic of shitty information nowadays which has been created in the past one month I could sleep and think better. As I said that explosion of information was creating chaos in my brain. Apart from that, there have been two major developments in my life.  First, we have been told to come every day to our laboratory even if we do not have any work. In case we are afraid of exposure to COVID-19, we are supposed to take our leaves which are actually not much for us postgraduates. Although we are being paid less than most of the postgraduates in this country still it is mandatory for us to come even if we are at risk of developing a disease from a patient sample. The most amazing thing is that only the postgraduates and faculty for my depar...

Hello everyone! Today is the 7th Day of this lockdown. I hope all of you are in good health and spirits. As time has progressed so have my thoughts about the lockdown. Earlier I used to think about this lockdown mainly in terms of how should I spend my time meanwhile this disease leaves my country. Now my thoughts have progressed to what should I do right now so that it will be helpful to me when all of this is over. For the past few days, I have frequently mentioned that I feel a little sad or a little depressed due to this pandemic. Today while thinking retrospectively I found out the reason for the same. The explosion of information, news, memes and various other articles have confused us. They have thrown our world or I would say brain into more chaos then it can handle. In my opinion, everybody has a threshold for unreal and challenging things which they can handle in their personal life. This pandemic, lockdown and various other articles regarding both of these have c...

Hello everyone! I hope you all are fit and fine. First of all, I would like to apologize for being late to deliver my sixth day of the lockdown. The reason why I got late is that I was busy doing some bureaucratic work. So let's just start with the day. My day began with a very depressive sad feeling of what was happening in this world. I know I've been a little repetitive about saying that I am sad sometimes, thinking about the current pandemic, but that is the truth of my life. I do not like the idea that I have to sit at home while some virus is wiping out humanity. Although I am at the beginning of my career and there are a lot of things which I have to experience and learn still, I feel as if I should be in middle of it and fighting. I am very sure that many of you too get the same feeling.  Most of my evening was spent in trying to lift up my mood. I tried to watch Netflix, went outside my room and met a few friends in the hostel, tried to study in our cafete...

Hello everyone! I hope you all are doing fine. It already is the fifth day of 21 days lockdown and the differences between the last five days or maybe the coming days seem to become more blurry as the lockdown proceeds. I feel the major reason for that is is a lack of routine which I had been following since the beginning of my life. I am pretty sure that I was this free only when I was less than 3 years of age. Since then, I have been under a very strict schedule of the school, sports and working hard to get good marks for a better future. I know many of you might have been following a stricter schedule or might not be following any schedule at all but I feel that this lockdown will make us realise no matter how redundant our schedules were for a third party, they still made sense. It was that schedule which made me get up every day and go to work. Nowadays I keep on forgetting days and dates when I get up in the morning. All this seems so unreal as there has never been a day whe...

Hello everyone! Today is the Day 4 of the lockdown and I hope all of you are feeling fit and fine. I am hopeful that most of you are not bored at your home and enjoying a good time with your families. As compared to the other three days, I had a pretty average day. As I decided yesterday I started my day pretty early with a small training session for all the residents who are to be posted in COVID-19 screening clinic. Although, most of the instructions which were given in the training session were the same as before with some extra added instructions according to Government's Advisories which have recently surfaced.  The thing which I would like to discuss today is - Fear. Fear of the unknown, to be more precise. When I woke up in the morning I suddenly realised that I was in the middle of a pandemic and was about to be posted in the middle of the positive cases. I believe a metaphorical battlefield. The gravity of the situation gripped my mind. I will not deny that my...

Hey guys! I hope you all are doing fine and staying away from the world outside. Today was the best day of my lockdown. I say that because I got to go for my regular duties breaking the monotony of the previous week. Although the lockdown started 2 days back, I have been out of regular work for almost ten days now. Most of it is because of the leave which I had taken to study for the final exams. Unlike other departments, we in Microbiology are not relieved one month before exams. We mostly get 15 days, if we are lucky then maybe 20. Due to the pandemic, we have been asked to rejoin the duties even if we had applied for leaves. It is compulsory for one of the senior postgraduates to be present in the department at least once in four days. So, as I reached my lab, that old smell of disinfectant mixed with old and new bacterial cultures from samples filled my nostrils, suddenly waking me up and making the laziness go away. It might sound like a bad experience in regards to the usage ...