In hindsight, the lockdown has not come a day too soon for me personally. It has given me much of my active time to see myself and the meaningless and unproductive routine that I had allowed to imprison me. Now I have had enough time to see myself, where I have been heading, if heading at all in any direction. Now I also recognize that one can easily survive on minimum wants and one need not believe that the world will collapse without my attention or that my friends will fret in my absence. The world has continued to move and hopefully, friends are doing pretty well without me.

Yes, there are a few who are becoming a little restless. But they are the ones for whom a variety of company acts like green and organic manure. I was always a loner, as my mother used to warn me. That was the time when we ate sitting on the floor while mother was serving chapattis straight out of the chulaha with hot air steaming out of them. My index finger would refuse to cooperate with the other fingers and thus it stuck out even as I was putting a morsel of food in my mouth. That was the sign of a loner, she said!

However, I feel this has come as a boon for me. How much time in a day do we, the ones who believe that they can indulge in meaningful writing, waste during the day trying to prove our friendships by idle conversations? Plenty I would say. I know now that we need to set our priorities right. If we think God has given us some talent then we are duty-bound to see that it is fully explored and used. With a major portion of my life behind me, I have had the time to evaluate myself, contemplate about life. It is no use thinking about the roads not taken and the trophies won. Finally, the purpose of life is well summed up in the couplet of Allama Iqbal:

Guzar ja akal se aage ki yeh nor

Charagh-e-rah hai, manzil nahin.

(The writer is a renowned Chandigarh-based academician)