Bonjour
Quarantine, Boredom & Corona - These are the most hatred word among plenty of us in the recent days. This Quarantine changed the mindset of every common person from
"I want leave!"
"I badly need a break!"
"I should enjoy my holiday" to
"Allow me to do my work from my office"
"Reopen schools & colleges shortly"
"I want to go out"
"I want to eat outside" and lots more. To that extend, Quarantine has created boredom in everyone's day to day life.
To kill this boredom, people do plenty of things and try to keep them engaged. This article picks the Top 5 activities that most Indians did during the months of April & May (the Covid-19 quarantine period). This article also speaks about the Top issues during Quarantine with a note that every coin has two sides.
(The article is not intended to promote anything, any product or service or mislead anyone or comment on anyone's behavior. This is a recap of Quarantine lockdown days)
5. Cleaning
Initially, almost everyone started their quarantine period positively with the cleaning activities. During the first two weeks, people found the Quarantine as one of the most useful period and started with cleaning their wardrobe, store rooms, kitchen shelf, water tank, loft or attic.
Few of them cleaned their automobiles after a very long period to pass their time and to kill the boredom (you can also clean them if you haven't)
4. Cooking
Cooking became a part of Fun, Viral, Trending and more about Social Media oriented rather than daily essentials. Plenty of challenges on social media tempted even the first-timers to cook something new and participate in those mouth-watering challenges.
Famous examples: Dalgona Challenge, Street food challenge.
In addition, plenty of YouTube channels & food blogs helped a lot of food lovers to explore and try new food varieties and cook their favorite dishes at their residence.
(There was also a survey that says, people missed the restaurants, food joints, food aggregators like Swiggy, Zomato a lot. Do comment if you are one among the respondents)
3. Hobbies
This lock down taught many people that "A Hobby a day, keep the doldrums away"
People started exploring a lot of new hobbies, apart from their regular commitments. Reading, Writing, Drawing, Gardening, Photography, Singing, Dancing, Origami, Art Work, Wealth out of the Waste and lots more have became extremely popular. These activities engaged their time as well as decorated the house.
Few enthusiastic people, happily shared the knowledge of doing an art work with family members, friends through their social media pages and YouTube channels. Very few conducted workshops on how it has to be done. These workshops received a very good response. Few of them were paid and few of them were free.
There were so many new blogs, tiktok or dubsmash videos, musically or smule songs floating across every digital platform.
2. Self - Care
Humans never forget to care. Few care for others too. Fitness played a major role. Many physical fitness coaches & fitness freaks, started their own video blogs to share the home based Workouts. These such videos received excellent response from common man.
On the other side a wide variety of videos and blogs educated people on health & beauty tips. Many ready-made chemical based creams and items got replaced by home made items.
Experts like Mrs.WormRani started sharing the tips & methods to prepare home made organic & natural dishwasher, detergents without any chemicals but with same results.
1. Entertainment - Smartphone
Smartphones - transformed into the most inevitable one during the Covid situation for everyone. They use mobile to communicate, to research, to check what is happening around, social media, to shop things and lots more.
Quarantine made Social media apps to gain the enormous user base. Everyone of us started using these apps for hours and hours. Plenty of people downloaded a lot of new apps which they haven't used before Quarantine.
* Entertainment Apps
Entertainment Apps like TikTok, Helo, YouTube gained a lot of users, new channels and subscribers. A bunch of new challenge arose and everyone was behind them. Saree Challenge, Couple Challenge, Black & White Challenge, Childhood Photo Contest and lots more. This also encouraged many people to download and use.
Google brought in Augmented Reality feature the 3D tiger in everyone's mobile. This was also must trending in its initial days of release.
* Online Meeting Apps
Due to Covid, almost every Government requested to follow work from home culture which paved way for online Meeting / video apps like Zoom, Google Meet, Google Duo, Cisco WebEx, etc. Though people used these apps initially for official purpose, Social media showcased the other side of these apps. Hence many Trainers & Speakers started handling webinars. In the latter part, educational institutions also started using these social apps for its online classes.
* Movies, Web Series & Podcasts
According to Ahrefs, YouTube is the most searched and used app. Plenty of videos, Channels engaged us a lot.
Movie apps like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar, Disney+, Zee5, Airtel Xstream, MxPlayer, SunNxt etc earned enormous user base. These apps grew like anything in this 2 months.
There were a lot of webseries, short films that attracted many people. Few short films became extremely viral that plenty of memes were revolving around the social media. In fact for the very first time a Tamil movie was premiered in one of OTT platform directly and also one very popular actor is releasing a webseries.
Amazon launched it's new venture of Audiobooks (Audible) during March 2020 and the was a success for the organization. There were a lot of podcasts in various platforms that attracted many listeners.
Source: Google Trends
* Games
Many people are using their 20% of time for playing online Games. Pubg, Free Fire, Ludo king, Call of Duty were some of the Grossing apps.
* Television
As the complete Nation is locked down, there were no new entertainment programs in Television. Hence, every channel retelecasted their most successful programs. Few famous serials like Mahabharat, Shaktimaan were retelecasted and once again all of them were successful.
Source: Google Trends
Every coin has two sides. The first half described about 5 positive aspects & Quarantine got Talents. Lets now see few serious issues / problem / negative aspects.
1. Food
Yes, the basic essential thing for living - the food is the first common problem during Quarantine. As the complete Nation was under lockdown, no shops were open to sell the food items. Many kitchens were empty. No one ever anticipated such disaster. Only few shops were selling the grocery items and they were pricing it very high.
A common man was not able to afford to such a price hike and purchase the things. Many kids, patients and senior citizens were suffering without proper healthy food. Even though many organizations through CSR, Government through public distribution system contributed food items, it did not satisfy the hunger of many.
2. Health
"Health is Wealth"
* Malnutrition
"Rich get richer and poor get poorer"
Because of no or less income and huge price hike for groceries and Vegetables, many people couldn't buy proper food and intake was very less. Plenty of kids, patients and senior citizens suffered from Malnutrition.
On the other hand, people who were able to afford, purchased a lot of items and started eating a lot. Many people never did any physical work hence it resulted in Obesity, diabetics etc.
* Physical Health issues
Everyone in the family including kids started engaging themself using mobile phone. A lot of hours is being spent by them on Mobiles, Television & Computers. As a result, many health related issues started popping out.
Vision problem, Neck problem, Back Pain, obesity, stress, joint pains and lots more. Only very few people did some physical activities while majority kept suffering.
3. Career & Financial Things
Financial matters and Career play a major role everytime. Owing to current situation, a lot of people were extremely confused & scared thinking the future, job, salary, achievements etc. Credit card & EMI threatened many. Still many couldn't figure out the ways to tackle. Offer letters of many freshers & Professionals who were about to shift their career were put on hold.
4. Cyber Security Threats
Digital Technologies
As Digital Technology is our only form to perform every single action of our day-to-day life, plenty of cyber security threats started emerging.
There was a news that a famous Video calling / meeting app was not secured to use. Many Govenrnment & Private organizations, banned their employees from using the same.
To summarise, Covid taught us so many lessons:
* Our nature proved us that it can Heal by itself (yes we paid a lot but worth learning our mistakes)
* We learned a lot of hygiene
* We understood the value of Health, food, work, people, financial things and nature.
* We realized the value of key Workers
* We started giving back to society
Let's continue to stay safe, stay healthy, stay positive and help each other to create a safe and healthy environment.
Thank you!
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References
Images Source Unsplash
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