03 Jul 2020  |   06:03am IST

Life……Before & After Covid

Life……Before &   After Covid

Sathappan Narayanan


We are at the beginning of the end, waiting for a new beginning.

Frequent visits to shopping mall, movie theatre, dining at restaurants, celebrating birthdays with friends, holiday travel, gym classes, family visits, hugs and handshakes — all rescinded from our list of privileges! Have you ever cherished your visits to these places with attitude of gratitude in the past? Doubtful, worse still we humankind took everything granted and continue to exploit/spoil environment for selfish goals.

Yes, changes happened after World War I & II and after earlier pandemics, but Covid-19 created the big time change of peacetime which is history-defining. May be we are the last generation with experience of watching movies in cinema halls, shopping at crowded shopping markets, attending weddings, religious functions, public meetings , etc., with huge fellow crowd of companions.

Those who complained about growing mismatch of income to spiralling expenses are in for a pleasant surprise of drastic reduction of their expenses due to life style changes brought in by Covid. Recently a senior IT professional friend of mine said that almost all their clients are happy and pleading to continue home working for ever. May be with imminent danger of salary reduction or losing jobs employees are over contributing, extra cautious and filled with full of gratitude. What a positive change by a minuscule virus!

As far as salaried sector is concerned, housing, schooling and medical care used to rob close to 50% of their income; not any more. Education sector will see a sea change. Covid opened a plethora of opportunities for reputed academic institutions to enrol students in thousands for online courses at reasonable prices and amaze revenue in millions; while posing imminent danger of closure for not so great schools, colleges, universities. 

Cinema halls, reality shows, events involving gatherings, public meetings will become increasingly difficult to sustain and pave way for DTH releases of movies, virtual events and meetings. Time and money saving online shopping will gain further momentum at the cost of  retailers.

Working from-home translate into huge vacant spaces of already built commercial and residential buildings of prime location. Property prices and rental value are bound to reduce with very few exceptions. Part of saving of expenses hitherto spent on travel and hospitality sector will get diverted into acquiring modern digital gadgets facilitating virtual meetings. Reduced restaurant visits mean healthy home foods and thereby better health and lesser visits to hospitals. Lesser maids and other house hold service providers mean increased sales for house automation, gadgets and household appliances.

Writing in the wall being crystal clear, its time to focus on hygiene, masking, washing, social distancing to sustain our life and skill development for professional growth; it's going to be the world of those who are ready to adapt fast and clever enough to learn new skills.

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