One Giant leap

She smiled but it was plastic. It looked like her boss was happy with the way things had been materialising till then. He seemed confident, but she was nervous and checking the diagnostics repeatedly. All good, thus far but there were still some critical milestones ahead , the thoughts of which got her adrenaline pumping at the rate of knots. The ghosts of the past failures of such missions seemed to have had an effect on her, making her worried. 

The announcement blared “150 seconds to land. Stage 7 initiated”. Those 150 seconds seemed like aeons for everyone in that building, the huge crowd outside and the billions glued to their screens , waiting for the most important landing in the history of the Homosapiens race. She , the head of such a critical mission was staring at the visuals with the timer counting down to 10,9,8… The world seemed to stop for her. “No! Not now ! I want to bask in this moment”, she told herself. 

She saw the capsule decelerating and touching the surface smoothly like a feather settling down on the sand during gentle afternoon winds. The only difference was that the surface was an alien one, few light years away from earth, ready to be mankind's first colony in space. There was a resounding applause. Her entire team was elated and exchanged hugs and handshakes. She , from her cabin just smiled but this time it was not plastic , it was completely out of this world. After all, it was another giant leap for mankind made possible by a group of brilliant brains headed by the powerful of them all, 'Matsya', an Android(humanoid robot), sharing her name with the incarnation of Lord that helped to start the human civilization afresh after the deluge at the end of the earliest of epochs.

Day-D(A day at a 'Distance')

"Yes! Still 5 more minutes for the alarm!". Waking up before the alarm in your mobile phone and turning it off with a victorious smirk is nothing short of bliss. It just gives that feel of power, as many a days, we feel powerless and are always at the mercy of alarms. Laksh has been feeling this power off late during the lockdown period almost everyday by waking up before the alarm set at 8:30 am. With unlimited time at home for the past one month, he felt 8:30 itself was a Herculean challenge.

With one challenge completed already, it was time for Laksh to move to the next one to get the veggies for the next two-three days. Outside the shop, people were waiting in queue without any quarrels or arguments as to who came in the queue first or who placed their gunny bag first to get the first turn to get in the shop and buy stuffs. With people standing at one-arm distance, disciplined and not trying to turn around and ignite a random conversation with the person behind him/her about the recent episode of Chiththi-2 , how the Veggies shopwala was a miser by not giving free curry leaves, the previous day, everyone were surprisingly minding their own business (It is surprising. If you don't find it surprising, you are mostly an online ordering fellow :)) Laksh joined at the tail of the four member queue . Just to pass time, he was fiddling with a coin in his hand and it fell down and rolled towards the person in front. He instinctively stepped forward to grab the coin. It was then he heard the ashareeri(voice from the sky) telling not to cross the white line ("Vella kotta thaandadheengo!!".Read in Anniyan Ambi style)  Oops! He realized that he had stepped outside the box drawn to denote the position for the people in queue. "All have become box to box players, for a good reason", he thought.

After reaching home and obviously sanitizing the hands, it was almost time to login for work. Laksh decided to quickly glance through the sports page in the newspaper only to realize later that there was no sports news to report and in turn no sports page itself. Just then he realized that the status call at 10 was going to be a video call. "Why do we have these video calls when the hair saloons are locked down and beautification products are out of stock? ", he wailed and got ready for the call. After logging in, it was always hard work ; roaming around all the rooms with the laptop; charging it in all the switch boards; muting and unmuting in the calls; lunch and snacks in front of the laptop. "4:30 pm already? How time flies? No long coffee/lunch breaks and chit chats like in office, but still the time for work seems insufficient at home. Something's wrong. Did I doze off after the lunch? May be!", Laksh gnarled with a few yawns escaping in between.

With a heavy heart(actually heavy head, because of the disturbed afternoon nap, thanks to the ping notifications in the work messenger platforms), he logged off for the day and decided to pass some time first by browsing the list of series/movies to watch in the various OTT platforms, grouping them and adding them to the 'watch list'. One look at the ever growing watch list seemed to lighten up his spirits . After watching the watch list for almost an hour, the next task at hand was to decide which of the umpteen titles to watch , a job easier said than done.

After thinking long and hard, he decided to play some random movie outside the watch list, with dinner in between. The eyes started protesting for rest almost at the end of the movie, having been strained more by reading the subtitles at the bottom than by enjoying the movie. Drawing curtains for the day and lying down on the bed, he planned for the next day(s) " I should wake up at 6 am from tomorrow, start learning Hindi to avoid such strains while watching Hindi movies and finish the office work quickly and on time". Another day completely at home and another resolution before sleep. Nothing seemed to change but just the resolutions ranging from learning some new language to aiming for a Dwayne Johnson type muscles in the leisure.  For Laksh and many others, it looks like even the brains want to maintain a social and safe distance from all such resolutions the next morning, in these times.