Lockdown Lessons

Lockdown has been quite an experience for everyone. The range goes from one extreme to the other. We have people whining and complaining about the boredom of it all, and we have others meticulously rationing their resources to last them through. But what is most fascinating is the sheer amount of closeted chefs and bakers who have decided that this is their cue to come out in style. Every day I see Instagram stories with the most delicious looking food- varieties of baked goods, pasta, salads- you name it! Perhaps it’s amounting to an element of peer pressure because I bet some of you are thinking “I should also make something!”. But I’m not writing this to analyse the repercussions of social media on human behaviour or to push people to put on that apron and get your hands dirty, rather I write this to appreciate the abilities that we have, which is not a result of talent but simply of having time to think about what we can do that is different from our otherwise mundane routine in the BC (Before Covid) period. In the animated movie Ratatouille, the renowned Chef Auguste Gusteau writes a book called ‘Anyone Can Cook’ which is the inspiration for a rat to be the chef that he aspires to be in a world of humans. I’ve often thought of this as I swiped through the stories and statuses of aspiring cooks displaying their mouth-watering results and really, anyone CAN cook!

These are interesting times, the world has never felt so connected, in a sense, with people from Los Angeles to Milan to Kohima posting similar lockdown stories. It is one of those rare times when you completely understand each other’s predicament. Cooking, for the most part, has played an important role in coping with the times. This therapeutic activity has kept many occupied with the lucky people around them playing their part as well-fed guinea pigs. This discovery of hidden abilities (not talent) is perhaps what a society like ours could use to rethink the way we perceive development moving forward.

With the lockdown, the scarcity of goods is slowly becoming evident. It is revealing of how dependent we are on the other states for our basic needs, not being in a position to manufacture or produce enough for our own. How different it would have been if we were more innovative, self-reliant and could sustain ourselves, if we had thought hard about our abilities and taken on that challenge to do something we had never done- much like how I did not know what yeast looked like until I bought a packet and the discovery of a bread mould rising because of it was an experience and, if anything, education! Through cooking, this lockdown has proven that we have pushed ourselves a little- going into stores looking for ingredients you cannot spell, looking up YouTube videos to get that pasta sauce right, fiddling with your oven to make sure your croissants are the perfect shade of brown, telling yourself in the morning “I can try something more intense today”, and turning your kitchen into a war zone but focussed on the end product. This is the attitude we desperately need to have. Imagine we apply this to our ideas on innovation, entrepreneurship, teaching, public service, medicine, farming- we would be looking at a far more advanced society, prepared and ready to deal with hardships like this. If we in the urban areas could manage baking our own bread, perhaps the many loaves of bread in the bakeries would be easier to access for those who do not have the luxury of baking their own. If we cooked more often, we wouldn’t have to be dependent on getting helpers to cook for us. If we know exactly what we’re consuming, we would maybe learn to balance our diet and avoid health complications later.