A Peanut Battles the New World Existential Crisis
Why peanut? The association dates back to three decades before COVID-19 hit the world. On sultry evenings after my father came back from his office at exactly 5pm, he would take my mother and the little me out to the hilltop behind our house, in our little town of Ranchi in India. Once there I was usually encouraged to run around by myself, while my parents sat and caught up on what my generation likes to call ‘the quality time’.
In the world before news feeds were in existence, what accompanied their quality time was the sunset, and peanuts. These peanuts were roasted over sand with their shell on, and you were required to invest time and energy, and attention to break open the shells and get to the peanut. The pushcarts and handcarts below the hill, selling those peanuts wrapped in old newspapers would market them with the endearing nickname, ‘Time pass’.
“Time pass. Time pass. Time pass. Five rupees a packet.”
Peanuts, thus, became my metaphor for unhurried quality time.
The kind of time I had assumed I would be entitled to when the world entered this pandemic lockdown. I was so wrong!
The only things I could give a miss owing to working from home was that I could skip dressing myself below the screen level, and of course there was no commute to work. Rather plentiful other things got added on to my to-dos. This included elaborate planning to cook so that I do not starve multiple times a day, mopping and dusting my own universe, mowing my own outgrowth, and strategizing on NASA level to acquire grocery. The monster of it all, however, was the pressure to be an apostle of positivity and productivity.
Interestingly, it turns out that all your efforts towards filling your days and nights with productivity and positivity was quiet irrelevant on its own merit. The relevance came about only when your pursuit of the aforementioned Ps had been made available for consumption by all and sundry on a webcast, on social media live or at least a humble status update post.
All of a sudden, every soul seemed riddled with the burden of uplifting humanity, including themselves and their brethren — come I will teach you how to think a particular thought, how to grow a rhododendron, how to bake a cake without eggs, milk, gluten or even an oven, how to meditate or how to write a song.
Oh, I too could do an Instagram live about how to not give a baboon’s back about Instagram lives.
But then, I bumped into it — that old friend, FOMO, from the pre-COVID days.
What if those tiny people in those square and rectangular boxes on the Zoom calls become the only available human reality in the new world? What if hourly ‘content’ updates become our only signifier in the new world? What if followers on social media become the only qualitative analysis of our worth? If content stays the only king, good God, am I to perish as a pauper?
It’s like we are constantly and legitimately living two lives — one outside and one inside our screens. And each one is as real as the other!
And then I wondered, of all things to be a winner at, was I pioneering the novel visage of existential crisis?
Let’s see. In the new world order, I have been overwhelmed by the amount of online wisdom that has come my way. And I have been feeling significantly threatened for my existence by my sheer lack of initiative or skill in the wisdom market.
The outpouring of creativity and enthusiastic ingenuity by the friends who until the day before lockdown hadn’t cared to switch off the lights when they left the room, has been wreaking havoc with my understanding of life as I sit around eating fruits for breakfast, boiled vegetables for lunch and a glass of milk for dinner.
On receiving an invite to join a friend’s Instagram live to celebrate the roaring success of her makeup tutorial videos, I took a pensive look at the hair on my limbs which had finally stopped growing any longer after attaining a certain length. My neighbour too had posted two dance videos that got more than 500 views and 300 likes within the time that I took to stand and stare at the blooming white hibiscus on my balcony.
On my part, I only manage to post on social media on the days I dust underneath my bed, which as you understand is not so frequent.
In my defence, I did undertake a few amazing journeys within the pages of a few books and watched many a sunrise from my window. With clearer air, I watched the sky every night as the count of visible stars went up. I watered my peace lily and stood in rapture as the white flower made its journey into existence, unwrapping its maiden bounty at a divine pace, undetected by naked eyes. I had long conversations with a few loved ones.
None of it was captured on my sizzling screens, neither did it make its way to the news feeds of my tribe.
So, tell me how does a peanut exist in this world of like, comment and subscribe?
(This essay was first published on 30 May, 2020 in the Commonwealth Writers’ website as part of their ‘Stories to Connect Us’ series.)
