#DistantSocializing a word on Plays

Pictures used with permission of Calcutta Parsee Club & Dalhousie Institute

[In this Lockdown article I'm attempting to capture some of the experiences I have had or come across where Socializing at a Distance is the objective.  The obvious channels like Social Media will be left out as there is so much more that can be done to bridge the distances.  Have a read, leave a comment, share the article if it makes sense - or leave a rant if it doesn't!]

The Play's the Thing

Last night my family and I were invited to be part of an audience at a play.  We settled in comfortably and my good friend, Sumit Lai Roy, popped onto the Zoom screen and told us how the play would be rolled out. With mounting excitement we watched the various people joining in from all over the world, on our screens.  It was so brilliantly managed, the "brochure" and links had been sent earlier by mail; some instructions came over WhatsApp too.  The play itself, Three Men in a Boat and Monty, was beautifully rendered by actors from Darjeeling, Mumbai, Denmark and USA with the production aspects handled from Kolkata itself.  I won't go into how we spent a delightful hour except to say that the audience interaction with the actors was the icing on the cake!

The term #DistantSocializing is not mine.  One of the companies I consult with has used it extensively to describe what the engineers are doing in addition to their work from home. Having fun, shaing experiences, talking about situations at home -- all the normal things we in Bengal would call adda - small talk, chats.  Largely to see each other, and feel good about it.  If there was ever a doubt that man (and woman) was a social animal, it would be put to rest during this lock down. Here are just some of the few things that have happened in the last few weeks that bear me out.

Kids in Action versus Kids Inaction

My earliest experience was when one of the parents from the Dalhousie Institute called to ask how to keep her child engaged - this was day 1 of the junta curfew which was a precursor to the lock down. I sent out a Zoom link to all the kids for whom I had numbers, with instructions to get online the next day at a fixed time.  It was chaos - but out of chaos is born order.  Once they had played around, chatted to each other, worked out norms of Zoom behaviour and settled down, we played a couple of quick games.  The response to that session was overwhelming.  The next day and the next and for every weekday after that, the kids came online and interacted, going up to 52 at one time.  We had sessions of story telling, poem writing, individual singing (group singing failed miserably as our internet does not allow real time synchronization), word games, solving puzzles, quizzes, drawing and painting, solving math problems, magic squares and the list is scheduled to continue after Easter.  In another time window, we set up a more serious session on Public Speaking for the older kids.  Those sessions, which will also continue, helped a group of teenagers to develop thinking and speaking skills and surprisingly high achievement levels. I'm getting used to one-to-one coaching now! 

A company that works from home is also planning an online event to celebrate Bengali New Year and a "virtual cuppa" with their smaller teams.  No agenda, just socialize online.  Of course, for those familiar with the term BYOB, it will be bring-your-own-food!  The company is also planning a quiz to be played across their four international offices in a few days - the closed group available in Microsoft Teams makes that highly controllable.  The company's local WhatsApp group shares all sorts of puzzles online while typical repartee and arguments about the answers keep floating back and forth.  Naturally, all this is in the backdrop of the hard core work meetings that continue throughout the day, with some stressful environments vying for attention at the same time!

The Parsees Lead the Way

One community that I have always admired has got to be the Parsee community - especially the ones at Kolkata.  Not a weekend has ever gone by without the community congregating at the Calcutta Parsee Club tent on the maidan, or at their community hall for a play or a social occasion.  Their Parsee food festivals are to die for, or at least get in early and pack!  So, when I was walking on my terrace recently, I stopped for a breather and my neighbour in the terrace across from ours, told me all about how the community was organizing a daily get together for all its members, of all ages, across the city.  The Organizer in Chief was happy to let me share some of the "events" that they have held -- ranging from Facebook Live events with luminaries across cities to Zoom video events which I shall describe below.  All this is faithfully recorded on their private Facebook page for those who could not be there.  They have had Antakshari across the ethernet, they have had quizzes run by different families.  I glimpsed a fully blown musical performance by one of them and online chats with celebrities such as Cyrus Broacha, Boman Irani, Baichung Bhutia and Leander Paes.  The community organizes Housie - a slightly complicated process involving whatsapping "tickets" across, then cross checking the winning claims with the originals.  I am not sure how they get the prizes across, though. For the younger ones there are games like  crosswords, Taboo, memory tests, Box of Guesses, and Kiddy games.   I really need to thank my neighbour, Farida and the organizers, Behnaz and Ratan, for this information. It really increases my belief in the "peopleness" of people.

Good Theatre, Good Cause

On the unobtrusive and un-advertised side, many of these youth are helping older members of their community (and a few others) in getting essential goods delivered to them. There are so many young people doing this, without the benefit of a camera or TV crew, that it boggles the mind till you realize that the religion of humanity is bigger than any other religion in the world.

This brings me back to the Red Curtain production we watched last night.  It was subtitled Good Theatre for a Good Cause.  One of the would-be actors, Aditya Krishnan, could not take part in the production as he is busy saving lives during this crisis.  He works with the organization Teach for India and they are running out of shoestrings on a shoestring budget.  They are, quite frankly, feeding the poor - they have 1000 families to go to be able to feed for a week or two.  Short of 8.8 lakh just to reach a minimum basic needs requirement, Aditya and his team are requesting donations. Even if you did not attend the play last night, please click the link here to donate:  Give India 

What better way to maintain social distancing and engage in distant socializing.  It is an entirely positive activity, designed to help us to maintain mental health in these most trying of circumstances.  Try it!

Postscript - for my regular readers who expect a belly laugh a day, I thought that this particular area of Socialization is important enough not to go tongue-in-cheek when people are living hand-to-mouth ... and any case, you're not supposed to touch your face too often!