Listening to the music and getting inebriated with the rounds of vodka mixed with lime cordial on the new year eve party on 31st December 2019 @ Hotel Le Meridien, Kochi; wishing goodbye to the year 2020 and awaiting the clock to chime 12.00 soon, there wasn’t any indication or a thought in me to make a guess, on how bad the year 2020 is going to roll out before us.
Yes, almost an year later, sitting at home on the eve of Christmas of 2020, thinking really how bad have the year 2020 been, mainly due to Corina virus, feeling sick of the new normals; e-meeting, e-commerce, WFH, Zoom, WebEx, Google Meet and all; I now yearn to get out, travel and see people and move closely to interact with them to enjoy their company that I always naturally did but the wretched news of the virus coming back in different version, is it going to be a repeat of the year 2020, next year too? It is indeed trepidation times........
Did anything go right in 2020? The businesses got screwed up, the economy went deep down south, people lost jobs, everyone got locked down for months together, relatives returned from Middle East & other nations after having lost their livelihood, many becoming sick with some dying early deaths and all that still continuing, no celebrations and no get-togethers, with predictions of another wave to come by. Preposterous indeed!
Just before it all began, my daughter and S-i-L shifted to Cochin by changing their jobs, settling down in the modernistic surroundings of DLF township @ Kakkanad with our dear granddaughter, whose company we always relished. While the dreaded virus restricted the movements, taking chance to visit them or get visited by them, of course, with lots of elapsed time in between, kept our happiness alive.
By early April, daughter the teacher announced her second pregnancy, which though should have given us more happiness to hear, got me worried initially, thinking of the times that we were passing though. Though my reaction was unappreciated by my daughter; my wife, as she always has been, was more relaxed, not only took the news pleasantly but also spent time in making me understand things in perspective. While externally I did put up a brave face, inside I was trembling, because it added to the challenge that we already have, the 85 year old mother of my wife with us, an asthmatic through-out her life, also who had undergone a mild MI in the last month of 2019. All these kept me indoors most of the time, though at times, I evaded the guilt to meet a client or two in a week, wearing all the precautions of social distancing. Thank God, our daughter delivered a healthy boy on the last day of November, but not before giving us anxious moments due to Placenta Abruption which necessitated a surgery.
By August-September, our son, who is researching on brain sciences in Caltech at Pasadena California, gave us the fantastic news of his article being published by Nature, the mother of all scientific journals, a dream come true for any researcher worth his salt! Having not seen him in person for close to two years now, gave us such heartburns but my wife’s prompt exercise of engaging him daily on WhatsApp, gave us his (virtual) presence at home practically all the days. He still has miles to go, his guide, the famous Prof. David Anderson, (author: The Neuroscience of Emotion: A New Synthesis) who had been able to get MS Cofounder Paul Allen and entrepreneur TianQiao to support his research with Billions of dollars of endowments, while still grappling with the primitive but representative brain of Fruit-fly and Jellyfish to unravel the process of emotional flow in neural networks, is slowly entrusting the mathematical and computing models of the research to our son’s care.
Good thing it was that my wife started using her time creatively in this pandemic year by deep diving into mural and acrylic painting, going through newer learnings and by coming out with some beautiful creations and exhibiting it online through some leading platforms. Also, following our sons footsteps, she is learning piano and getting it certified by the Trinity School. She has miles to go but her passion at this age indeed surprises me. All the best to her!
Another development is the S-i-L, daughter and grandchildren coming to stay with us. Daughter on post-delivery leave and S-i-L getting transfer orders to go work in Hong Kong by the next year beginning. Suddenly there is lots of people at home and it is noisy but such a blessing with 2 grandchildren around, boy, aren’t we sapped out by the day end?
Coming back to self, what have I been doing to match up with the creativity on the other side? Nothing much at all! My book on entrepreneurship in Malayalam which was four fifth done, is still in that shape and the English translation of my Malayalam book ‘Shubhayatra’, though complete, is still to be finally read before being handed over to the publisher. My novel on the splintered ‘tharavad’ of south Kerala have not left my grey-matters to the pages. Am I at my procrastination best? It looks like so. The only redemption is the blog and the LinkedIn postings that I do regularly on matters contemporary…..
So what keeps me going? The usual pro bono stuff, the mentoring of the start-ups & early ventures through Zoom and Google meet, the visiting professorship at some institutions and the keynote address at many professional podiums & institutions on varied subjects. Am I making any money? Doing some consulting, I do make some pittance, but when did I seriously look at making money? Ha ha! Yes, I do enjoy the professionally conducted board meeting every quarter of a leading listed NBFC’s fully owned subsidiary where I am an independent director and that gives my travelling out too, in these pandemic times.
As a professional-body man, having been part of leading managerial, entrepreneurial and L&D bodies on the one side and movements such as Rotary & Career counselling Services, servinf differently abled children etc. at the other; all of these happen now on the neo-normal routes (online-virtual). As usual, my hands are full and it is something I actualise, of course, at the cost of my creative writing! There is some national level involvement that I do in the country’s premier L&D organisation too. Here, I must make a conscious mention of my waning interest on the entrepreneur’s body whose chapter I helped found in Kerala. It is partly due to the fact that it isn’t doing much for the true beneficiaries and partly due to the inwardness of its key players, the body is now slowly progressing into a chitchat club of the rich & famous and that of single malt drinkers! I am seriously thinking on what I should do of my association with it for it having lost its raison d’etre.
So, what is going to be my resolutions for the New Year 2021? Absolutely nothing, I will take everything as it comes by and if possible, I will complete my books. The 61 years of running around is slowly helping me understand the real ordinariness of everything and the insignificance of life.
Sayonara 2020
