Humans are inherently self-sufficient beings with a certain position in the food-chain. We can cook for ourselves, clean our modest dwellings, ourselves and our belongings, grow our own food.

There are some who specialise in certain things: medicine, surgery, smithing, construction, agriculture, husbandry, poultry, and the list goes on.

However, overtime, we forgot that we are self-sufficient and started to overtly depend on others to provide us cooked meals, clean for us, maintain for us.

We are now bound by the limits of our homes, or wherever else we happen to be. Suddenly, a lot of people are finding themselves stranded. That is never a good place to be.

But you can get up. You can become self-sufficient. You can learn to provide for yourself to the best of your abilities. And whenever you need help, don’t be afraid to ask.

This is it. This is the worst possible manifestation of the idea, but this is probably what we needed to get the Govt. & RBI and Apple working together to bring Apple Pay to India.

People are going to be afraid to touch payment terminals, ATM machines for a while. I am. Just the other day, I was running out of food for my cats, so I went to the pet store to get some. I insisted that I use the NFC mode to make the payment.

If we do get Apple Pay, I am certain Google will follow suit and bring their own system in place. Phones with NFC are ubiquitous now.

I am keeping the  Watch out of this scenario for now as not many people own them here.

Dear Apple and Google, let’s get this done. Please.

The IT & BPO Sector are two of the top four largest industry sectors in my city. Being in such close proximity to them, knowing what happens there in almost a regular fashion, I have some not so great outlook on the job security  of people working there. 

Given the dire situation of PPE for Medical Staff dealing with this pandemic in India at large, it is safe to assume, at the time of writing of this, that we are going to fall short, by a huge margin, of ICU beds, ventilators and the like. 

Most staffing in these two sectors happen from suburbs, small and large towns across the nation at most of these IT and BPO companies. It’s the “city life” dream that is used to attract them. I wont go too much into the mental stress they are put under for no fault of their own. 

Now think about the second and third paragraph of this post in tandem. Most of these people already lead incredibly stressful lives, have little to no access to good medical help for physical ailments let alone psychological ones. These companies are going to incur losses over this period and are going to look towards cutting jobs. This will continue until things stabilise. 

But the damage will already be done. We’ll end up millions without a job, hopeless, under incredible stress, with no access to medical facilities. The companies which employ the IT & BPO companies here will remain unaffected. I am betting there will be another country all ready to setup such an industry of their own to attract these companies. And once they do, the millions will keep growing in count. 

All of this can be avoided if we can act now. And act now we must. For these millions are amongst our friends, our colleagues, our family or we depend on them in one way or the other. And while you’re at it, call everyone else, your friends and family. Make sure they are doing okay, because these lockdowns can and will have an effect on everyones psychology. Stop ignoring the mental effects of this pandemic on people around you and yourself. 

Over the next couple of days, I’m writing down my thoughts on what this pandemic’s effects can be over the long term.

In the past couple of days, India has been under national lockdown with only the absolute essential services being allowed, including transport and fuel to enable such services. 

As people are now learning what the bare minimum services and who these service providers are, I hope they find a new appreciation towards them, their jobs and what they enable for us: the privilege of social-distancing and staying/working from home. 

I hope people realise and learn about all the non-essential traveling they do. I have personally avoided traveling outside a 5km radius unless absolutely necessary. I rarely travel for leisure. I can do all of this because I have the privilege to do so. Most people around me do not.

They will elect to rent out an apartment roughly 10-15km away from the workplace. They may get a small allowance for fuel for their vehicles from their respective companies and HRA, and they’ll waste a chunk of their salary on fuel for their personal vehicles, so they end up nulling out the effect of renting a cheaper apartment. They also end up increasing their overall carbon footprint by doing so. 

I hope we realise that this clean air we have managed to get back is only temporary if everyone goes back to their old habits after this lockdown. If we keep our non-essential travel, consumption of resources, and abuse of resources the same, we’ll be back to where we were. World 2.0 will remain a distant dream. 

Modern society has placed an incredible amount of mental debt on thoughts surrounding “Quitting”. Quitting something largely has a negative connotation around it unless you’re quitting a bad habit of chain smoking or heavy drinking or the likes. 

Quitters have often been looked down upon. Joined the gym but quit a week later? Society dictates you should feel bad about it. Quit a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere or was outright unhealthy for you? You must have done something wrong. 

Well, f*** that. Quit, leave the past behind, walk all over it and kick it while it is down if you have to. Quit the bad relationships, quit the bad jobs and bad managers, quit the toxic workplaces. Your state of mind, your peace, you matter more to the people who truly care about you. Quitting something isn’t bad. It is at best a temporary setback, or an opportunity to start fresh. 

Be a quitter once in a while. It’ll do you good.