How Covid Changed The Way We Live And Love
Covid changed the way we live & work. We pared friends or embraced dear ones; switched partners, jobs, cities, writes Priya Ramani
In 2021, author Neha Dwivedi was ill with something that felt like Covid (it wasn’t) when it hit her: “If I don't come out of this…I don't want my story to end like this. I don't want to be the woman who lived a half-life.”
Dwivedi, now 35, had gotten married a decade ago. They were young, enjoyed partying, and they made an attractive couple who got invited everywhere. But by 2018, they knew they had grown apart. They didn't want the same things from life. They separated, but their families kept dissuading them from getting a divorce.
Then the world was struck by a rogue virus. Her mother persuaded her to give her marriage another shot. “I did go back. We changed our home, I even redid the upholstery and curtains,” she says. “I also realised within the first few weeks that it wouldn't work.”
Still, Dwivedi stayed on. They lived as friendly flatmates in separate bedrooms, splitting household chores, interacting as a couple with their social circle, and maintaining the status quo. Until she felt ill and understood that life was too short to just go through the motions.
“I think that over the years we have glorified living and working through bad marriages,” she says. “We valorise those who stay and suffer. And we have demonised walking out.” Now her divorce is almost nearing completion and the former partners continue to be friends.
“I’ve become more vocal about things. I don't see the value in living a life of pretence,” she tells me.
An elderly couple holds hands while walking on a path. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
As one 2021 study in the United Kingdom put it: “We are asking ourselves questions about where we live, what we do, and who we love.”
“Over three-quarters of people reported reconsidering what is really important in life because of the Covid pandemic,” the UK think tank Global Future found.
Confronting mortality tends to have this effect. Frankly, I spent a lot of time wondering why we didn’t change more, giving up our petty religious hatred and discriminatory histories for the values of shared humanity. Ping me if you know the answer.
WFH certainly gave us time to tackle important things that our hectic lives had forced us to put on hold.
Before Covid, Rutuja Shinde’s spouse was a management consultant who travelled Monday through Friday. “We called ourselves a weekend couple,” says Shinde, the head of digital marketing at a pharmaceutical company. In the lockdown and the months that followed, the duo spent more time with each other than they had in 9 years of their relationship.
They did what they had never been able to before: schedule a pregnancy. It was a lonely pregnancy with no help and no family but Nihira is now nine months old. “It feels surreal to say: we wouldn’t have gotten here if it weren't for the lockdown,” says Shinde.
“We moved our parents closer to our place. Spending time with family and friends has become very important,” she adds. The couple also stayed in their jobs for longer than they had planned. “Our companies’ attitudes have changed. There’s a general appreciation for family life now.”
Covid certainly changed where we stood on the introvert-extrovert scale. A friend who thrived on meeting new people says he now feels like he can be happy meeting the same four friends for the rest of his life.
Tourists and other customers sit in a cafe in the McLeod Ganj area of Dharamsala. (Photographer: Sara Hylton/Bloomberg)
On the other hand, M, a researcher who lives in Europe, says Covid made her more attentive to the elders in her extended family. She reached out even to those she wasn’t close to, to let them know she cares. She says it was as much for her as them. “Covid really stripped away my sense of community and I am trying to do everything I can to gain it back.” She flew back home in a difficult time, stayed longer (despite financial consequences), and visited everyone she cared about. “I actively made time for others: meeting people, getting presents, etc. The usual stuff, only that it was not usual for me pre-Covid.”
S was one of those whose relationship didn’t survive Covid. “Circumstances changed our dynamic quite a bit,” she says, adding laughingly that “in a way, it’s interesting to be a statistic”. She also switched cities but the story that I loved the most was the one about why she learned a new skill.
“As a family, we took public transport all our lives. We were all three siblings WFH but our nearly 60-year-old mum had to go to work as her government job was classified as an essential service. When the city shut down we felt helpless. Suddenly, there was no public transport,” she recalls.
Idle trains stand on platforms at the CSMT station, during the lockdown in Mumbai, on March 25, 2020. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)
Eventually, the family pitched in and bought a car. Her sister learned to drive, and a year later, she taught S too. After S moved cities, she bought her own car on loan. Her mother helped with the down payment. “It has been one of the most empowering feelings to be the person picking everyone else up, or the person going out at night without continuously looking over her shoulder,” she says. “It’s the single most fantastic thing that has happened to me at 34.”
Vaishnavi Suresh is still recovering from the trauma of the second Covid wave. She lost family members and her father was hospitalised for a month at a time when hospitals didn't have beds and oxygen cylinders. She was one of those who had to source expensive medicines on Twitter. “That’s when it hit me I didn’t have money to buy medicines,” she says. Through this time the freelance journalist kept working but had no guarantee of when she would be paid. “I couldn't plan my finances and realised that this career was not sustainable.” She continues to be an independent reporter but now has a communications job for an environmental non-profit. “I got Covid a few months ago and had to take two weeks off. Unlike my freelance life, I still got a salary,” she says. “It was incredible.”
Suresh says her before and afterlives are dramatically different. “In my early 20s, I lived out of my suitcase, travelled the country, worked on projects. I could afford it because there weren’t any serious medical concerns,” she says. “Now I’m tired all the time. I have cats, I pay rent. I feel like I lost a part of my 20s to the pandemic. It’s a time when you are supposed to figure out what you like to do. Instead, I spent it staying alive and keeping my family alive.”
Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.