Covid-19 is quite scary, but it did give me (and possibly many other working professionals) a thing that that they longed for – Work From Home!

The day my manager notified us all that we would have WFH until further notice, I jumped in joy. I know how it feels when you WFH. Having your home as your workplace is perhaps the best thing that you can ever wish for. I have been a freelancer and I know the perks of it.

Cut down – 3 days later.

It has been 3 days since I last visited office. I stocked up essentials after the city lockdown, and I have largely confined myself to the four walls of my room. I have everything within reach – food, water, books, laptop, phone, speakers, good internet connection, guitar, and everything else – you ask for it, I have it all around me. Do I need anything else? Perhaps, no.

But as I sat down with my laptop this Sunday morning, a thought struck my mind real bad. I read many reports of people being ‘quarantined’ and ‘isolated’ to prevent the spread of the infection. Yes, the infected, and the suspected, were isolated. And so were we – everyone else as well.

I already received messages from a few close friends about how lonely they are feeling at their homes, and how badly they want to get back to their social circles. Me? Not much. I don’t mind it either way – social or anti-social – it has never really concerned me much.

Well, that’s not the point anyway!

This is not what bothered me much. There was another thought that this news led me to. I thought of a person in my life who has been alone and isolated for a long time now – maybe years. And yet, people around her failed to notice it. I am talking about my mother.

She is a homemaker who lives in a different city. I visit my parents twice a year and I am sure those few days are the best ones for them. So why do I only talk about my mum here?! Well, dad is a working professional too. Every morning he leaves for work, gets to meet new people, talk to his colleagues at office, go on field visits, and yes, be among other people.

Mum? Not so. She is a blood pressure patient with a medical record that could make a lot of people panic. She is literally confined to the boundaries of the house. Not by choice or compulsion, but by the environment around her. She is not at the best of terms with dad, so there’s very little talk that she has with him too. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t separated, it is just that dad has his own ways of occupying himself post-work – be it with work, with colleagues, or whatever.

People in the society are occupied with their own work. Her children, precisely my sister and I, are busy making money to settle down in to a lavish life. All this while, she had one good friend who ran a shop nearby. Every time mum was bored and felt alone, she visited her friend and the two used to have endless conversations. The day I got to know that she has found a friend, I was happy because I could see her happy.

But fml, her friend had a heart attack recently, and is now hospitalized with critical illnesses. I won’t get in to the details here. But now when I see my mum share WhatsApp stories like ‘Miss you friend’, it is like an arrow running right through my heart. I know I have failed her by not being with her, by never noticing that she has been alone all this while, and even now, when I do know this, there is very little that I am doing about it.

People are quarantined by diseases and infections for a short while, but she has been quarantined for quite a long time now – the infection still unknown.

I will make up for this. I promise, Maa.