Mum’s the word on Lockdown’s Mother’s Day

Quarantine’s first Mother’s Day may be the season for a different travel – Guilt trips galore!

Trips to trot the globe – Guatemala to Gulmarg – are now history of the #OldNormal. So, which trips are the #NewNormal? Guilt trips, of course!

For many a man or woman of the house who’ve earlier been at the receiving end of guilt trips for non-availability of quality-time parenting, #WorkFromHome seems a blessing in disguise. (Getty Images)

In #lockdown’s zero travel, many a compulsive traveller is doing the next best thing – laying the guilt trip. Safest on the pulmonary socket, lightest on the pocket.

What we’re witnessing is a new breed of “business” travellers – those making it their business to take you on a guilt trip, to kill time in #quarantine. India Quarantining could thus be in the throes of three types of guilt trips.

OF PLANET WA & PANDEMICS

Why look far – not that India Quarantining can goggle farther than the laundry or lolling legs on neighbouring terraces or, for the luckier lawn-lounging ones, farther than the shrubbery or snobbery of their sprawling greens – Yours Truly was propelled on a guilt trip just the other day.

Now, in a New Normal where the virtual is the only place for clubbing, pubbing or social shoulder rubbing, any netizen not navigating the social media mindlessly, WhatsApp (WA) in particular, is thought out of his or her mind.

Now, certain Tweeple who’re good with the “mind” – how to mind other’s business better than their own – took it upon themselves to chide Yours Truly for no longer populating Planet WhatsApp.

To put things in perspective, it may be recalled, dear readers, that one fine day upon finding my membership of WA group chats outnumbering my membership of clubs or credit cards, Yours Truly downsized – to Zero WA.

Lo Behold, Biradri, BFFs & Co unlocked their guilt trip, left right and epicentre. “How on Earth can you survive Lockdown if you’re not on WA?”

This compelled Yours Truly to apply the mind in a manner smacking of pondering profundity that can come only from having to don the “thinking cap” at a time when pyjamas, not caps, are New Normal’s National Dress and when the only caps consuming contemplative activity are Closedown’s “caps” on incomes, expenditures etc. Rolling my eyes heavenwards, not that in quarantine there were substantial spectators to savour my pupillary histrionics, save scoffing Brats and a couple of cats, I resorted to my sole serious exercise in ages – jogging my rusting grey cells for a repartee. Bingo, the way out-of-the world wisecracks are wont to hit Donald Trump like a truant tonne of a truck tearing into Lockdown’s barricades, Enlightenment embraced me, in utter violation of social distancing protocol.

“Hey, well I’m surviving without WhatsApp the way William (Shakespeare) and Isaac (Newton) survived the plague ... Or the way, without WA, Walt Disney and Mahatma Gandhi survived the Spanish Flu!”

Disclaimer – Evacuating from Planet WA in pandemics can be hilarious to health.

OF #WFH MUMS & (S)MOTHERING

The Mother of Guilt Trips may be of the parenting kind. For many a man or woman of the house who’ve earlier been at the receiving end of guilt trips for non-availability of quality-time parenting, #WorkFromHome seems a blessing in disguise. Ah, except where it’s seeing New Normal’s New “Business” Travel take off – Reverse Guilt Trips.

Lockdown’s first Mother’s Day might find many a #wfh mum, who’s working overtime on her (s)mothering too, inviting free tickets for “business” guilt trips from piqued progeny, “Mind your business, mum… Gimme space!”

Seeing the scarcity of ‘space’ for Middle Class Quarantining India, packed onto Planet Puny Living Room 24x7, this politely translates into a reverse guilt trip with a not-so-exotic destination – “Go to Hell!”

Disclaimer – New Normal’s guilt trips are injurious to mommyhood’s health.

OF QUARANTINE’S CALL OF THE HOUR

Just when you’re falling in love with Lockdown’s long silence – no pesky phone calls or constant trilling of the doorbell as noisy as Arnab & Co’s lubricated lungs – there come “calling” ‘n’ caterwauling Tweeple whose idea of social distancing doesn’t constitute telephonic distancing.

Voila, you land in the throes of the third guilt trip – contacts you haven’t heard from since the Tsunami or their Great Depression (emotional not economic), call out of the blue to drive away their blues. “Why haven’t you called in ages?” calls Guilt Trip Three, as you mumble or fumble for retorts to the effect that but for Lockdown, they’d not have called in this century.

It’s like a bored Trump, thirsting for a tête-à-tête, dialling for a chummy “hi-bye” not just the Queen but even the Chinese Premier.

Disclaimer – Call of the Guilt Trips can be contagious to bye-lateral health!