It is Friday. I am happy as I have just returned from a swimming session. But at the same time, I am truly exhausted and craving a plate of delectable food. Lunch is served and the first thing that I notice on my plate is CABBAGE ! Really ?!

“For the millionth time, Mum ! I do not like Cabbage”. I stomp into the kitchen to express my annoyance and I see my Mum smiling at me while pointing towards that big bowl of bitter gourd.

March 2020 and before-Everything was super awesome! I was leisurely continuing with my happy-go-lucky life, visiting families and friends, enjoying school , gossiping with friends , inventing new projects, turning playgrounds into battlegrounds, sprinting through shopping malls, gorging enormous burgers, wandering aimlessly but freely, pestering my father to ……….A never ending list of events…..and then everything suddenly turned upside down.

April 2020 and after-The world literally came to a standstill. A lockdown was announced, and I officially gave up all hope of stepping outside ever again. Over the last I year, 3 months and 10 something days{I counted}, the world faced and is still facing a terrible pandemic called…Covid 19!Believe me ! It was the first time I googled the key words such as endemic, pandemic, mortality{scary!}, infection rate, symptoms and weirdly, my mom was also scrolling through the same keywords on her smartphone. If smartphones were humans, they must have absolutely enjoyed this extra attention.

There she goes! My little sister rummaging into the refrigerator to fill her bowl with two extra scoops of ice-cream. She also grabs some candies and MNMs and hides it in her pockets. She looks at me from the corner of her tiny eyes and winks. I recall my poor Mum’s words “Just a SINGLE ice-cream scoop after lunch”. And then she plops onto the sofa and starts enjoying her self-earned desserts. My dessert craving gives in and I ask Em to share some candies with me which she sourly denies. By the time she almost finishes her dessert platter, the ice-cream is all over her face and her T-shirt. Mum, who was busy working suddenly appears from nowhere and glares at Em. Em fumbles and the ice-cream bowl topples, and our sofa and the cushion gets painted in shades of ice-cream. You should have seen Mum! She went into a frenzy thinking what to clean first. 😉.