The First Week

I knew it all the while or at least I had the feeling that I knew it (may be a hindsight bias). Our generation and our parents were lucky so far that they have not really witnessed a crisis of this scale. Well there were some economic slowdowns, some personal setbacks but we never really seen what freedom struggle looks like or a situation of world war could have been. As India fights the impact of Covid-19 by announcing the lock down, this is the closest to a crisis we would witness in our life time. So I thought it is worthwhile to document some bits of feeling.

Slight Panic:  Well to be honest, I felt a bit of panic. Why would not I? I am deemed head of the family with a wife and 2 small kids to provision for and protect. Also it happens that my old parents (including father recovering from a major surgery) are also to be looked after in this crisis. Slight panic is natural. Ahead of the lock down, couple days prior, I did my share of panic buying of provisions enough to last for 3-4 weeks.(reason1 for my opening statement)

Hectic weekend: Weekend prior to the lock down, whole of our management teams were quite busy to understand what it means to our teams. To be honest, it didn’t feel like a weekend as we were on for most part of the week. I still cant imagine, what I would have done if my team mates didn’t have equipment to work from home. (reason2 for my hindsight bias)

Working from Home: If I would have worked as hard as I have during last week, I might have become a CXO by now J. Jokes apart, initial week of full work from home, teething issues, inadequacy of experience, requests from management for impact analysis, colleagues trying to ask for help, too many twists, many unreasonable expectations - all meant one thing, more than I usually do in a typical week. Being not a great fan of work, I am hoping this would change soon.

Kids: Kids are great. They are omnipotent. They can relieve stress, they can induce in the same magnitude. When you are on an important call, when you least expect it, they can come and press disconnect button on your headset. They most certainly can! At the same time, when you are off a point less meeting, they come innocently ask for a biscuit or something as if that’s the most important thing in the world.  More often it feels like yes it’s the more important than the meeting we are on.

Level headedness:  Well this is the most important characteristic in life. There will be highs and lows. Usually people walk with bloated chest and heads held high when things are going in favor. On the other hand, people stoop heads below shoulder, when the tide turns. We all need to have a level head, irrespective of what’s going on around. This is the time when we need to collect ourselves and show our strength when we face an adversary that we can fight it. Taking all precautions, staying put and staying home is the need of the hour.

Learning: Signed up for FT trial for  one month for $1 and trying to read markets across the world and response to Covid-19.  Read 2 chapters of Accelerate book on Devops. 

Optimistic: When this is all over, I would want to narrate the tales of how usually frivolous characters turned into conservative when it comes to using provisions and how scared we were but tried to maintain balance. Hopefully humans will reach to a solution in the war with the invisible to naked eye enemy soon.

As we end first week, got some time to rest and geared up what new week brings.