Dhrupad's self portraits! While I have picked up well on drawing in my Note 8, my son wanted to try it too. When asked what he'd like to paint, he said, "I want to paint myself".
In 10 minutes time, the picture on the left was ready. I saved it immediately ;)
He started to share details of the pic. 
He: "Mom, look, I am wearing the orange dress and a green T-shirt . I used to wear them when I was small.".
Me:" Wow, wonderful, is this small Dhrupad? But are you also wearing an orange mask?"
He: "No, but my skin color matched closely with only this color on this phone!"
Me: "Oh ok, never mind. Why are your eyes yellow in color?"
He: " No, it is light yellow. My eyes are not as white as the color here offers"
Me: "ok, closest match! Ok cool. Why dont you have any hair on your head?"
He: "Do you remember that you got my head shaven when I was small? So I have not drawn it here"
Honestly I didnt remember!
Me: "Why dont you have fingers in your hands and toes on your legs?"
He: "Mama, I was small then. So my hands feet and fingers were all small. See closely, you'll be able to see tiny tiny fists"
Me: "Ahaaa! I see... Ok, how do you look now?"
He immediately snatched the phone from me and started drawing further. As he drew he mumbled - "Now this is BIG Dhrupad!" As he said that, he extended his hands and legs that became the picture on the right.

Within no time, the current Dhrupad's portrait was ready. It was v hilarious and cute to watch the way he buddy extended the hands and legs and introduced bigger fists and feet (which he called fingers and toes!) I laughed my lungs out.

After a while I realized, it really did look like the grown up version. When I applied deeper thought, dont you think, the solutions to some problems can be as simple as this. We generally end up overthinking and bring in all other irrelevant things into picture. I awed at the simplicity of the thought, focus on what really was required and how beautifully it was achieved.

However, I still wanted to suggest some improvisations over the picture.
Me: "You've forgotten to draw the hair of grown up Dhrupad"
He quickly went to the mirror looked up and told me,"Mom, dont you remember, Dad cut my hair that day (he still doesnt know weeks, days etc). See, my hair is hardly visible now!!"

Well, the hair aspect was not overlooked after all. All the stuff were thought out in those few seconds to draw out a beautiful second self portrait!! Lot to learn from kiddos!! The real and natural things they know so much better than we grown ups and we try to teach them to be aware of the mishaps that can be caused due to man invented ideas and things.  If not for the things that society demands,  there is nothing that an adult can teach the kid. They are quite natural at knowing what to do, when,  socializing,  sympathizing and almost everything! The human instincts are at their best. 

Coincidentally, the COVID-19, a dreadful virus surfaced in the year 2019 December with Wuhan, China being its epicenter. A lot has happened and has been happening since then. This quickly spreading Pandemic has reached almost 90% of the countries across the world and most of them are under lock-down as on today. Indian government has declared nationwide lock-down for 21 days which started on 24th March 2020. As people are eagerly waiting for the lock-down period to end, there lot of fun games, Quiz time and other interesting stuff doing rounds on Whatsapp, one of which is - "What is the first thing you will do after the lock-down?"

Well, many answered, they wanted to watch their favorite movie, visit their dream destinations, some just wanted to get out of the house, and some wanted the rest of the people out of their houses! :D The latter was my choice too and I love the idea of being quarantined single at my home! Lol... But on giving it a serious thought, apart from these answers, what is the real meaning of ending a lock-down? How does it guarantee that the Virus spread has/had stopped and the problem is mitigated? Will anyone dare go out knowing that people are picking this up even now or have been quarantined suspects of this deadly Pandemic?

The idea behind the lock-down from my perspective is this:

Considering the Virus life cycle to be 21 days, the areas and people affected and infected would end the cycle and break the chain of spreading it further. Absolutely a fantastic way to cut down further damage. But isn't it equally important to know when to end the lockdown. In India, lock-down was exercised in an earlier stage than in other countries like Italy, US and other European nations who have been the worst victims of this Pandemic. However, India , considering its massive population does see all the probabilities of entering all the stages that these other countries have been through and are at. Given this situation, when is the ideal time to end the lock-down?

Lets take a look at this from a logical angle:

COVID-19 is said to have ended under the following circumstances:

1. There have been no new cases registered in the past 7 days (incubation period) to 21 days (entire life cycle). 21 being the higher side, safer to pick this one to leave no stones unturned.

2. All the positive tested patients must be cured (tested negative in 3 consecutive tests with a gap of 5 days each) 

3. There shouldn't be any more such floating cases (like awaiting results, repeat tests etc)

4. All suspects who have been quarantined needs to be tested and confirmed negative.

Even if one of the above conditions are compromised, we will be back to square one. Also, the above cases are listed considering there is still a ban on international travels.

Lets derive the numbers with math now on best case possibility:

Considering the official lock-down end date is 15th of April:

This cannot be, because even as I write down this blog, many new cases are being identified. More suspects and cluster infections are identified too. If tracing people and their contacts shall easily take up a week's time, it takes few more weeks to identify and quarantine them to contain it, (unless they start showing symptoms, they may or may not require hospitalizations) best of worst case.  Please note that there are no tests conducted at this point of time. Only people who are symptomatic are tested. Corona virus can exist without symptoms too! 

Now the math: Even in this hypothetical scenario of best case (all samples been tested, no new cases from tomorrow and no new quarantines starting tomorrow and everyone strictly follows the lock-down guidelines and doesn't break rules), the lock-down cannot end before beginning next month. 7 days to track down contacts and 21 days of their quarantine.

Worst case:

This is a more easy one to derive : Until they find a vaccine and/or cure + 21 days !!

What is more feasible?

Instead of keeping the entire nation under lock-down, or having a blanket lock-down end date, it should be conducted in phases. The lock-down relaxation should happen from the lowest level. Today, the smallest unit of isolation is a house. The relaxation should expand at next levels like streets, blocks, communities, set of few blocks/lanes, group of communities, area etc. Before expanding an isolation level, the people in the current one should meet the 4 criteria above. This can be achieved with a tag or certificate indicating the test conducted date and the result. If in a street/block, all people are tested negative, the isolation level can be elevated to that of a street. They may not be fully equipped with all the rights but now they can at least visit houses, share a snack or watch a movie together in someone's house. The kids are especially benefited when they find their friends to play together. This elevation doesn't mean they still have an access to the outside world, but at least they have a better breathing space than earlier. The monitoring and surveillance of these small groups of people shall continue with revival checkups and updating the tags. Common entertainment areas if comes in the jurisdiction of the isolated expanse, that s a bonus! 

This can be tracked by some volunteers. I'm sure one volunteer to keep check of the condition of people in their lane (like taking temperatures, asking for help) in each lane/block/street will work wonders. Excuse me for giving this example (I wont be surprised if I get trolled for this) but, if you are in the IT industry, this is similar to having a scrum model where each volunteer is a scrum master and makes it easy for the people in that expanse to have a normal life. There can be a simple daily stand-up meetings too :D

The rules within an identified isolation area remains the same. Travelling outside the isolation area for work/community events, etc etc should be STRICTLY not allowed.  As and when the new expanse is identified,  it is important to also support them with basic essentials (which volunteers can take up). A small set of support staff can be confined to an expanse identified latest. When this happens in parallel at all places, we can at least get 80% of the country out of lock-down at the earliest. As the infrastructure and facilities improve to facilitate the lab tests, the quicker can we distance less.

Though its all easily said than done, the blanket coverage of a lock-down start or end shall not work and we will end up in a series of loops of such lock-downs, with perhaps, increased severity every-time. This may trigger frustration and agitation eventually and there maybe a day when the entire nation is let loose and things go haywire. God forbid we shall never see such a day!

PS:  Please excuse the language, grammar and typos in this post, if any.