This illustration is taken from Saikat Sarkar’s page

“For the last couple of days I have been noticing you are reading books on World War I. Why is that?” Lalmohan babu asked Feluda.

He was sprawled on the settee in Feluda’s drawing room, his head resting on the cushion placed on one hand-rest and his feet up on the other. Two days prior to the lockdown, Lalmohan babu’s manservant had left for his village and that’s when Feluda had insisted that his friend shift to his home at Rajani Sen Road, at Ballygunge.

“At this age you don’t have to fend for yourself all alone. If you are staying with us, I will feel more assured,” Feluda had said, flashing his rare smile.

What was meant to be a lockdown of 15 days had extended to 40 days now and Lalmohan babu, as always, marveled at Feluda’s prudence.

“I am not exactly reading about the World War I, I am rather reading about the Spanish Flu pandemic that took over the world when the war ended in 1918. Then also schools, religious institutions and business centres were closed, people were asked to wear masks, stay at home and practice social distancing,” said Feluda.

He did not look up from his book.

“Ki bolcchen moshai, taai naki? (What are you saying? Really?)”

Lalmohan babu had sat up, alert.

Researchers are now trying to use the lessons learnt during the Spanish Flu to contain this coronavirus pandemic. At that time 500 million people were infected and almost 50 million died, but there was no chance of developing medicines or vaccines then. So, before you start hyperventilating and coming up with Doomsday predictions, let me say it’s not that bad a situation now.”

Feluda’s face was still expressionless, but he looked at his friend fleetingly with reassuring eyes.

“You have your online Literary Meet in half an hour. Have you prepared?” asked Topshe as he entered the room after finishing his online classes.

Lalmohan babu looked perplexed. He kept looking at the Kindle tab he was holding in his hand, his expression a trifle dejected.

“My books are on this machine and now literary meets are online. I can’t cope with this Tapesh.”

Topshe worried that Lalmohan babu would start crying. He hadn’t been in the best mental state in the last few days.

“I will help you out. Let’s create a structure of what you will talk about,” said Topshe quickly.

“Idea! Idea!” shouted Lalmohan.

He was literally jumping up and down clappping his hands and Topshe stepped back.

“Like I write under the pseudo name Jatayu, I can have a lit meet as a pseudo person. Tapesh you will be Jatayu in this online meet. You will do this for me right? Won’t you?”

Now it was Topshe’s turn to look aghast.

Then it suddenly happened. Lalmohan babu sneezed. Another one followed quickly.

He breathlessly ran to the window, peeped through the curtain.

“Nobody around thankfully,” he heaved a sigh of relief looking at the deserted road.

Feluda was watching all these histrionics quietly.

“Your phone is ringing,” he told Lalmohan babu.

*

Feluda reached for his cigarettes. The packet was not where it was always placed. Forgetful was the last thing you could call Feluda, but smoking was a very old habit and the hands went for the packet spontaneously. Then his brain got into action and reminded him he had just kicked the butt.

He had been planning to give up smoking for a long time and the lockdown gave him the right pretext. Cigarettes weren’t an “essential” he was going to go out for he had decided.

Lalmohan babu was back to his old position on the settee. The call that had come in the morning had pushed him into immense grief. His niece had contracted the dreaded coronavirus and died in the morning, he was informed.

“Even yesterday morning she had sent me a greeting video on WhatsApp. She never said she was unwell or anything.” Lalmohan babu was murmuring.

“In the last few days she never told you about a fever or cough or anything?” asked Feluda.

“Na moshai! Even a couple of days back she had cooked chicken kasha and paratha and uploaded on Facebook. I can’t believe she is no more.”

Lalmohan babu wiped his tears with a white handkerchief.

“Who told you she had Covid 19?”

“Her husband. He told me he had asked all relatives not to turn up since he had quarantined himself.”

“Did he call the concerned authorities to take your niece to the crematorium?”

“No, he said he had called the family doctor, who gave the death certificate. He had called the hearse and taken the body to the crematorium. After that he went into self quarantine.”

“Milcchey naa! Hisheb milcchey naa. (It’s not adding up) ”                                                    

Feluda looked out of the window at the blooming chrysanthemum tree, a furrow clouding his forehead.

“Do you have any of her recent photos?” he asked suddenly.

“Many! She sent her selfies frequently with her morning greeting.”

Feluda peered at the photos after magnifying those in the smartphone.

“I am sure you never noticed the marks,” he said after returning the phone to his friend.

“Marks! What marks?”

“She was abused frequently. The nicks and cuts are all over her face. She used to hide it with make-up.”

“Abused! You think so? She was such a happy girl. She never told me anything about abuse.”

“Very few talk about it Lalmohan babu. Do you know their family doctor who gave her death certificate?”

“Yes I know him. I have his number even. I had gone to him once when my house physician was out of town.”

Feluda called the doctor. He had thought he would be a tough nut to crack, but the opposite happened.

“Prodosh babu please help me,” the doctor pleaded.

The man came to my house with a gun at midnight. Took me to his place. He had shoved his wife down the stairs. She had died on the spot. She had a weak heart. I wrote heart attack in the death certificate. I didn’t want to do this. Please can you help?”

“So she didn’t have Covid 19?” asked Feluda.

“Covid! Who said Covid?”

“Now it’s crystal clear. The husband is saying it’s Covid, so that no one would go to his place and he wouldn’t have to give any explanation. If he is in self quarantine people would stay miles away from him.”

Feluda’s next call went to the Police Commissioner.

*

“I can’t imagine you solved a case in one day and that too sitting at home,” said Lalmohan babu.

“This is the new way. Work from home or WFH,” said Feluda.

They were at lunch. Piping hot khichudi was being served.

“I have been seeing you are wasting your time sulking at home Lalmohan babu. You could have very much finished your next mystery novel during this time. I even have the title chalked out – Covider Kobole (In the grip of Covid).”

Lalmohan babu was sprinkling pepper on the khichudi. His eyes widened and his lips broke out into an effervescent smile.

Then it happened. A sneeze came. A resounding one.

– By Amrita Mukherjee

Disclaimer: On Satyajit Ray’s birthday today May 2,2020 this story is written as a tribute to his Feluda. In no way this is an attempt to plagiarise the characters he created.

If you want to read on Ray’s mother Suprabha Ray click here.

Picture of a slum in Kolkata. Taken from the internet.

Jewellery is not something I have anymore. The scanty I had has been pawned, sold, traded. Now these marks are my jewels that speak of my husband’s lost love for me. Below my eyes, on my chin, sitting on my neck proudly like a necklace where his fingers had squeezed too hard the night before, on my arms where the belt created a dark gash or that short round, red one glistening almost like a ruby ring where he had pressed the burning cigarette butt.

I used to marvel at the marks on my body. We had ran away from home, married in a temple and settled in a small mining town in Jharkhand. The room was as small as it is now. But it was airy and not dingy. It was enveloped in warmth and there wasn’t any sign of aggression. Each room was connected by an elongated balcony and when I stepped out every morning to use the common toilets, I would be greeted by the giggles of the ladies all around.

I would keep looking at those marks with admiration in the broken mirror in my room. I wore those proudly as the ladies teased and laughed at our gossip sessions in the evenings. The moment he would come back from work I would run to our room making tea, making food, looking forward to the night.

Now I sit on the footpath outside the slum till 1 am. If I am not home, he passes away on the bed sloshed and cold. Another night gone, another night of terror avoided. After he’s lost his job as a driver, he’s home most of the day, drinking. I escape to the homes I work in as a maid. Their large three-bedroom, airy houses, the endless chores, their dump of clothes, keep me busy and happy. I could be away from that 10X10 room with the small window, smell of mustard oil and liquor, a small ceiling fan that circulates the asbestos heat and a monster waiting in its midst.

But life has changed overnight. There’s some virus doing the rounds and we have been asked to stay at home. All those ladies who would keep calling me if I wouldn’t turn up a single day, tell me to stay away now.

I couldn’t believe the same security guards who used to joke with me everyday wouldn’t let me into the building to collect my pay. No one from outside was allowed in, they said. Really? Strange!

Madam came to the gate and paid me my salary. I had thought I would tell her I would stay in their maid’s room and won’t return home. I would do everything for them, they could just watch TV. I am a good cook. They could use me. I could use their air-conditioner. It was on in the living room all day, anyway.

But when I looked at her masked face, I couldn’t tell her what I had planned. There wasn’t any sign of that warm smile in her eyes. Her pupils darted in all directions as if trying to perceive an unknown enemy. She passed me the cash with her gloved hands. I felt like an intruder.

“Madam, how are you managing?”

I could finally bring myself to ask. They hadn’t managed without me for a single day in the past 3 years.

“We are managing fine. You stay at home.”

Home? If only she knew.

I returned home last night at 10 pm because the police asked me not to sit around on the footpath. I pulled out the shards of broken glass from my earlobe all night, crying in pain. The drops of fresh blood oozing down my neck, was my new acquisition, my new designer jewellery.

*

You can read my other short stories: 

Guest Of Honour

How To Deal With Death On Social Media

My books are available on Kindle:

Exit Interview (Novel) 

Museum Of Memories (Short stories)

Picture from the internet

…And to think of it now majority of the work force throughout the world is working at home because of lockdowns and the coronavirus pandemic. When I started working from home this was unthinkable and, in fact, the whole concept was accompanied by wrong notions of loss of productivity and lack of commitment. What one would do in the office one would never do at home – this was something that was oft repeated by work bosses in the year 2010. But now…

My first work-from-home stint

I was in Dubai when my son Vivaan was born and I went back to work when he was only one and a half months old. I was given the option of working from office for 4 hours and the rest 5 hours I worked from home. I reached office at 8am instead of 9am, was there till noon, and was home before son’s bathing time.

This schedule worked for me like a breeze as I could be with my baby when he needed me and could work at the laptop as well filing copies, editing articles and doing interviews over phone or email for the magazine I worked in. But my bliss didn’t last long.

In a department that worked with a skeletal staff my boss decided to take leave for a month to attend the wedding anniversary of her in-laws in India- strangely people she was perpetually cribbing about in front of her colleagues. But it was their 50^th wedding anniversary, she had to be there organizing the show for a month and then parading in Kanjeevarams as the perfect Dubai-return bahu. I obviously did not fit anywhere in the picture.

So my bliss was quickly slaughtered at the altar of bahu duties of the boss. I was asked to be at work 9-6, holding fort while she was gone. I had requested the management to give me remote access so that I could check the pages, do the edits and final proofing and continue working from home. That wasn’t an impossible task especially in a techno savvy place like Dubai. But they simply refused to give me access at home and said the final work couldn’t be done without coming to office and they didn’t feel “safe” giving remote access. (Not that I was working with any kind of confidential data.)

So in the end it was basically the belief that an employee, especially a new mom, wouldn’t put in her best in her work-from-home avatar.

Hence I was back to work, slogging out at my desk, being the perfect professional and churning out my supposed 100 per cent.

I quit my office job

Within 10 months I quit my job. Did I regret it? Yes, to some extent because I never went back to earning a pay pack like that every month no matter how many big projects I landed as a freelancer. Did I like working from home? I loved it because I could be with my son. I could work on my schedule in my own way and I could do other things like writing my books.

But working from home did come with a lot of negative connotations. Wearing fashionable clothing and driving to work every morning to a swanky office is one thing, and sitting in your pyjamas at the laptop placed on the dining table every morning, keying in some stories and interviews is completely another thing.

You could feel you are working but others might not. I had grabbed a work-from-home offer as the consulting editor of a health and travel magazine and was keeping rather busy all day, I was writing my debut book Exit Interview even. But tinkering at your laptop in your nightdress and occasional weekly meetings and interviews are not actually work. I realised soon. No one told me but it was written all over their faces. My demotion had happened in the eyes of my family, relatives and friends, something from which I could probably never rise.

Picture from the internet

The challenges of the work-from-home schedule

It’s actually more challenging to work from home than at the office. The world is realizing that right now I am sure. There are articles everywhere now telling you how to set up a work space at home, how to keep the self motivated and how to separate yourself from the household.

Let’s face it, it’s just not possible.

As someone who’s been there done that, I have realised you cannot stick to your work desk when the baby is crying, the cook is asking for instructions or elderly people at home can’t do without their daily dose of serials and the TV will blare. You like it or not, you will have to accept it.

It’s been 10 years now and I am still asked to move my laptop all around the house because someone has something more important to do in that space at that moment. Sometimes I refuse and let my anger speak, sometimes I move because I don’t want to lose my concentration in fruitless argument.

The seriousness that people had when I left home with my leather bag on my shoulders is clearly missing when they see me moping around on the laptop in my shabby home clothes. And you can’t really blame them for that, can you?

Related Reading: You might like this short story of mine on WFH The Bekaar Blogger

WFH has made me stronger

I must say I have developed concentration that wouldn’t falter if the walls in the house collapse on me and my time management and multi-tasking abilities have become so much better. If the son is playing with his friends in the same room and the TV is on and Sreemoyee is crying her head off on the screen, I don’t flinch at my edits. My mind is there fully and the world around is shut off.

It’s actually an art and people who have been pushed to their homes suddenly and gasping in their WFH routines will learn it over time.

And by the way, those who have been writing off WFH people like us for so many years will now realize how much harder it’s to function from home than to be at work. Like a friend of mine said, “I start at 7 am and can’t finish even at 11 pm.”

True, no matter how hard you try the WFH schedule could become a 24×7 thing draining you out completely. And you could be setting your own deadlines but the office could now give you work at unearthly hours and you wouldn’t be able to say no.

You could miss the coffee breaks and lunchtime banter with your colleagues but you could be there for your kid when he gets back from school. A friend of mine looks after her bedridden mom and works from home in the IT sector. It’s a Herculean task she has been performing for years now. Now that her entire work force has shifted home they would probably finally realize the mountains she has been moving to stay on deadline.

Now when people say they are finding work from home crazy, I say “meh” rolling my eyes just like my son would.

Related Reading:This post was written on my WFH experience My boss is always touching me

Witnessing WFH history

Picture from the internet

There was a time when WFH was looked at as the end of a career, was treated with disdain and with the repeated question, “What do you actually do?” Now WFH is a norm, everyone is doing it and I feel victorious and validated.

From the time when WFH was not looked at as an option at all, to a time when I have never met my employers except on Skype calls, things have changed drastically, thanks to technology. I have remote colleagues whom I have never met but we do talk about kids and deadlines on messenger. And now, of course, about the added load of housework because of the lockdown and virus scare.

But in our WFH world social distancing already exists. You don’t share details about yourself beyond the basics and when an employee leaves the job, that’s it. There’s no connection left after that. This is inevitable because the bonds you build sitting next to a colleague in office can’t really be built remotely.

“After this lockdown I will never complain about going to work I am sure,” said a friend. True. When you don’t have access to something anymore you learn to appreciate and value it. That’s why when the door flies open and people barge in when I am on a Skype call I now smile. I don’t lose it. WFH has taught me to appreciate the finer aspects of life.

There is no doubt in the maid-dependent Indian social setting (to think of it this is the first time since I stepped on this earth we are managing without maids) WFH in the lockdown scenario is truly tough. Work calls are greeted with, “I am mopping the floor can I call back?” or “I am finishing the dishes will be there in 2 mins.” It’s acceptable and not a wee bit unprofessional. We are all aware of the work-home balancing act we are doing.

In fact, this Lockdown WFH has come as a great wake-up call where bosses and managements all over the world are realizing that it’s possible to keep the ball rolling with a cut down of costs and carbon footprints.

And if we believe the futuristic reports then many companies who can function remotely could be still sticking to the WFH system even when there’s no lockdown.

I will end with a funny story. America has recorded higher sales of tops without bottoms, recently. As a friend shared on FB recently she had flung her top and jacket on her printed pyjamas she wears at home for a Zoom meeting. Then she got up to get her mobile.

Ahh! The hilarious WFH dichotomies.

PS: I wrote this blog between doing the dishes and frying cabbage pakodas that didn’t come out too well. But hope this post did.