Humour: Routine examination

What does a schedule mean in these unbounded, slow-moving times?

Time was when the clock was an ally, hurrying you on here, slowing you down there, like a caring coach. Now it’s that annoying thing on your phone screen, behaving like a temperamental teen: it’s never what you expect it to be and is cheeky to boot. In the long lists of lockdown tips (the second-worst scourge of our times), we regularly find advice on how to plan our days. But to those of us who have lived a relatively unstructured life so far, the challenge is, well, more challenging.

Routines are to a day what character is to an individual: you’re expected to stay within the boundaries(Photo imaging: Parth Garg)

Here’s where the plot sickens: if you, like most of humanity, are isolating in company, your inner commands cannot be your master