I slept a lot, but I was doing that in any case before the lockdown.  I read some but it is becoming increasingly difficult to focus for long with my failing eyesight.  I stopped watching the TV because the debates were more about noise than substance and the music channels are no longer interested in broadcasting the old melodious tunes of Lata Mangeshkar.

I stopped looking at my phone, as the increasingly polarized messages caused me avoidable anxiety and WhatsApp, by reducing the number of forwards I could forward at any one time, caused me intense strain on my fingers.

I stopped my walks, within the colony at 4 am in the morning after there were shrieks from the LoH  (the lady of the house) of  “Where are you going?  Don’t you know what the Prime Minister has said?  “Stay at home”!

And then the eventual “Don’t you know… You are in the extreme danger zone, 70 plus, a heart patient, eternally hypertensive.” And when that did not work, the ultimate threat: “I’m sending a message to Arjun, in faraway London, this instant, of how you are refusing to obey even Modiji.” That did it. I gave up.

And so it was, at the end of my tether, out of sheer boredom, I decided to one day take a walk around the house to see how, over 42 years of married life, the power equations in here had changed, much as they did when we opted for the collective responsibility of cabinet system in governance.

I always thought that I was the lord of my castle but my questing mind asked: “Was I”? What about the kitchen, galley, cookhouse, scullery, call it what you will.  Did the writ of the lord run true here? Wasn’t this the place that actually ruled the home through the insidious and delectable hold it had on our senses, this place that dictated the mood and sense of well-being of everyone at home? Like the Minister of Finance, it held the strings of power and could make the inmates dance to its tune.

As I reflected on the coronavirus and the lockdown, it suddenly struck me in the paraphrased words of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan: “Gender equality is critical to the development of peace and harmony of every home”, except that Netflix plays an equally important role.  And while half of humanity is clamouring for gender equality outside of the home, the other half is unaware that they are entitled to the same sort of equality at home.

So began the slogan “Gender Equality Begins at Home.”  Why should I, the nominal head of the household (HoH) during the present forced period of isolation, be relegated to the scullery duties of “doing the dishes”, while the LOH is the alchemist, the dabbler in the chemistry of tastes and smells and the magician entrusted with the transmutation of matter (and spices)?

And so, having identified the problem and assigned a catchy slogan to the same, I retired to my favourite armchair and wielded the sceptre of my sovereignty (the TV remote), to ponder on the giant step I had taken to reestablish my authority. I am still doing the dishes and operating the vacuum cleaner.

But there were other positive changes that have taken place from the then 'normal' to the 'now normal', which I fervently hope will continue in the post-COVID era.

Firstly, in the old 'normal' the fashionable thing to wear for a 70-year-old retired commodore when going for his evening stroll around the colony used to be a pressed and neatly creased pair of trousers, a sporty-looking T-shirt or a smart bush shirt (which hid the expanding midriff), also neatly pressed, and a pair of expensive Nike walking shoes. One of my friends, equally retired, insisted on green-coloured shoes, bright red socks, electric blue shorts and a white monogrammed T-shirt. He was making a statement; he used to tell me, something he had been denied during the regimented and colourless life he led in the service.

Come COVID-19, and how the fashion trends have changed - all to the better in my view! Locked in for two months, there was not much point to dressing up for anything, unless, of course, you belonged to the Supreme Court Bar association and had to argue a case online, in which case you had to wear appropriate formal and courtroom wear above your waist.  What you wore below, was, however, left to your creative imagination, being beyond the pale of the camera.

And so from the lockdown era has emerged a new fashion style, in line with the Generation Z standards of minimalist comfort which looked sneeringly down on the Imelda Marcos format of owning dozens of shoes and matching ensembles. The preference now is to having live-in loungewear, a term coined by a smart marketing executive forced to use his brain while lounging in, well, loungewear.

In more practical terms for the 70-year-old commodore, it meant indulging in crease-resistant, soft, wash and wear, very comfortable pairs of contrasting tops and bottoms which go by the term loungewear.  You can lounge all day in them, watch TV, slurp beer and munch popcorn, go for short walks in them, entertain guests online et al.

Life simplified. Freedom from conformity and reduction of your carbon footprint. Power of the spirit of one!  Life during the lockdown. Cheers!

(The writer retired from the Indian Navy in 2001 and is a resident of Bengaluru.  He can be contacted at viswanathanpk@gmail.com)