Lockdown Diaries - Lockdown#1

This is a write-up from the lockdown dairies that I wrote during Lockdown #1 back in 2020. 

Side effects of Covid - The Changing Landscape

While taking a stroll on the nearby roads yesterday I could not miss noticing the change in the landscape. My neighborhood is packed with PGs and people who stay single. This basically means that they do not have functioning kitchens or no kitchens. These people depend on the number of small and medium-sized restaurants for the food all three times a day. 

There are the restaurants that normally serve Idlis, dosas, vadas for breakfast and chapati and rice varieties for lunch and dinner. Also, there are many North Karnataka-style hotels that served Jovar roti. There is nothing fancy about the place as such. But they just do what they need to do. Serve good food at a reasonable price. There were also Chinese fast food places that had tasty noodles, soups, and Manchurian options.

One of my favorite places was a healthy and tasty place called 'Just Food' where every dish was made from millets. The guy who ran the place was very passionate about the millets and traditional varieties they were making at the shop. He had transformed a very small 10ftX12ft shop into a beautiful kitchen with decorations and paintings. The millet Dosa, idli, and Rotti were just like home-made. They also made different millet rice varieties which were all fresh and tasty. Whenever I went for a walk there or went to buy from their shop, the welcome smile of the hotelier and the chitchat with their family was truly pleasant. The glaring thing that I noticed was that the place where this shop was there is now replaced by a mewa store which seems to be the trend.

Not just this but the Chinese restaurant also has got closed down. This I say is a side effect of covid since the crowd moved out of Bangalore after lockdown and the small businesses could not sustain during those blank lockdown months. Now when the situation is coming back to normalcy, there are new and bigger shops, restaurants that have mushroomed. The void this small yet fine place has created on this road is huge.

Lockdown Times - This is for "The Office" fan in me (that's what she said!)

After watching 188 episodes of The office, i conclude that this one of the best sitcoms I have watched ever.. 

Starting with the lockdown one thing which I have definately missed is "the office". 

The joy of reaching office after a long commute, the chit chat with colleagues, the hustle bustle of the work place - people laughing, people wispering which turned to  screaming sometimes... People rushing for the meetings, meting in the conference rooms,greeting people while entering and leaving office.. the small talk while filling water, the lunch hour in the cafeteria etc.. etc..

The Office had all that which a normal office would have.. It brought back the feeling of being in office when it was mostly needed...

The seating, the conference room meeting etc recreated the office images when I missed it the most.. office culture and the comfort.

While the comedy, story and all the characters of this sitcom is so entertaining, for me this time around it was mostly the feeling of being in the office had a greater appeal.

My daughter, my niece and I were totally glued to the screen watching this amazing series. I loved the series so much so that I also took part in the office quiz by Gyaan Space yesterday. The participants were such bigger fans that few had watched it more than 50 times! Well, I only came 6th in the quiz!

I totally enjoyed the series and the quiz.. and totally agree with Pam -  “There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn't that kind of the point?"