Coping with COVID-19, virtually
Under lockdown, people preserve normalcy in personal and professional lives by connecting on video-calling apps
On Wednesday afternoon, Ragini Daliya’s joint family of sixteen members huddled together in their Kolhapur home in Maharashtra to celebrate Gudi Padwa, the springtime festival that marks the New Year for Marathi and Konkani Hindus. Unlike previous years, however, this time, the family huddled up around a laptop, waiting for their relatives from other cities to come online via a video-calling app Zoom, which her tech-savvy brother had installed. Even though the first ten minutes were spent on explaining the process to use the app, the end saw five families from different cities connecting virtually and joining in the celebrations.
At a time when the global hysteria regarding the ongoing pandemic is at an all-time high, and the only way to battle the novel coronavirus is social distancing, people are grabbing onto societal and community inhabitation strings by connecting virtually, using video-calling apps.
“Today, everybody is living in fear. In the last couple of weeks, we have not spoken about anything else other than COVID-19. So, we needed that moment in which we could talk about something else. And video calling brought everybody together, which was a much-needed moment right now,” says Ragini, whose state recorded 128 confirmed coronavirus cases — the highest in the country at the time of writing this article.
LOCKING DOWN TO CONNECT VIRTUALLY
While the extreme measures of lockdown have become the protocol in disease-stricken countries such as Italy, Spain and the USA and the UK, the sudden announcements have confined people in places, cities, and countries away from their families. In such circumstances, video-calling apps such as Zoom, Skype, Google Hangout and WhatsApp video call have enabled people to have the much-needed support and warmth of their family members.
Echoing the very thoughts, Mumbai-based copywriter Abhigyan Dasgupta, who could not leave for his hometown Kolkata owing to the sudden spread of the disease, says, “In such an adverse time when I am away from my family, it’s extremely reassuring for my mother to see my face via these calls. Especially in the lockdown, video communication is the closest you can come to for having faceto-face and physical communication.”
In fact, connecting virtually is happening in professional life too. Work from home set-ups have people holding meetings via Zoom. Founded as the video conferencing app in 2011 primarily for the desk workers, Zoom’s shares soared this year as the pandemic hit work cultures across the globe. More and more companies are using Zoom to connect from remote locations.
Elaborating on this, Abhigyan says, “When you are working in the communications industry, where you have to continuously ideate and receive feedback, it’s good to look into the eyes of people and clarify it out. So, Zoom makes communication more accessible and instant, and it has become almost a necessity.” And undoubtedly so because even the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson used the app to have a remotely held cabinet meeting recently.
PARTYING IN THE TIME OF CORONA
Zoom, despite having a primary role in the professional set-up, has been taken up as a social platform by self-isolating Millennials and Gen-Z to have online parties. Another video calling-app called Houseparty, which allows its users to play games and attempt quizzes, has also gained clout among the quarantined youngsters. It currently ranks at the number one spot in the Apple AppStore in seventeen countries including Spain, Italy and the UK— some of the countries that are the worst affected by COVID-19.
For Ritvik Srivastava, a 23-year-old professional from a non-profit sector, who has not been able to meet his group of friends thanks to the lockdown, one such online party is going to serve as catharsis. “I am planning a chill session with 10–12 friends of mine on Zoom. It is something that keeps you sane in such difficult times,” he concludes.As usual, please get back in case of anything at al.
Today everybody is living in fear. In the last couple of weeks, we have not spoken about anything other than COVID-19. So we needed that moment in which we could talk about something else. And video calling brought everybody together, which was a much-needed...
— Ragini Daliya