2020 - is it really over?

A tumultuous year has ended, and another has begun and we once again hope this year is going to treat us well. 2020 was the biggest disappointment - a year that sounded so good to the ears "Twenty twenty" turned out to be horribly nasty one. 

Still we made the best of it - we learned to relax at home, spend time together, washed hands and rubbed sanitisers more often, and masks became second nature like wearing a watch or sandals. A virus in faraway China initially didnt merit more than a cursory glance  when it began making front page news. I cant remember when in January I started reading it with some interest. 

Till March 3, when Mira's final exam ended and she insisted on joining the nearby gym which I obliged, it didnt sound any alarm. But in a week's time things began changing. Ash wrote the last two of his Grade 10 board exams in heightened security around the school campus. Parents dropped and picked up their wards to school and back as school buses stopped running, sanitisers joined pens and erasers in the clear pouch and so on. 

But it hadnt reached the kind of precautions Mira now has to follow to write her exams in school - no bags, no food, only a clear pouch with pen pencil eraser etc, boys and girls go to school on separate days and the school bus takes only a limited number of students in each. Masks, sanitisers and temperature checks are mandatory to enter the bus that goes non air conditioned. After a plea to her old class teacher, I was told she could carry a small energy bar or biscuit to tide over hunger pangs considering that she has her breakfast at around 6 am and isn't back before 12.30 afternoon.

I am glad that I don't have to get up at 5 am every morning - the worst trauma being switching on the kitchen lights and letting my poor eyes get used to the sudden brightness - since online classes begin at 7.30 am only for Ash, who wakes up 5 minutes before or after depending on the teacher. Though it has been the best part of the COVID situation for both of us, I will have to send him to school next year to ensure that he is actually studying or listening and not upto other tricks.