In November 2020, Vivek Lakshman M, his wife Abinaya A and their three-year-old son Rakshan Vivek were “billeted” at an independent house in Ganga Nagar, Kilipallam within Thiruvananthapuram city limits.
The resident family at the address was being their host. Viveks’ stay turned out to be a fortuity for that family.
The odds of the Viveks visiting them around the same period in 2019 were as high as a snowstorm in mid-summer Thar. Ditto for 2018, 2017 — in fact, that logic travels ad infinitum, in reverse chronological order.
For some years before 2020 dawned, 34-year-old Vivek did know the family, but it took that unusual year to place the Viveks at Kilipallam at a fitting hour. Incidentally, that family constitutes Vivek’s in-laws — for those keen on precise details, his father-in-law Ananthan and mother-in-law Kumari.
Working on the engineering side of the media industry and domiciled at an apartment complex in Pudupakkam on Old Mahabalipuram Road, Vivek had pulled up his stakes temporarily from Chennai to work from two locations down south, one on each side of the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border.
Vivek Lakshman and family with his in-laws. Photo: Special Arrangement
Now, around the time the Viveks landed in Kilipallam, there was also another visitor at Ganga Nagar — invisible and unbidden. It was the dreaded Coronavirus.
“My mother-in-law is in the habit of walking on the verandah of their independent house, where construction work was under way at that time. There was more than the usual footfall. Having made an interstate travel, we were serving the mandatory 14-day quarantine period,” narrates Vivek. “Both my mother-in-law and father-in-law ran a temperature, and they later turned positive for the Coronavirus. All three of us were also infected, but ours were mild cases. In contrast, both my father-in-law and mother-in-law required hospitalisation. If we had not been at Kilipallam then, both of them would have brushed it aside as a regular flu, and not tested themselves for COVID-19. With a severe bout of pneumonia much earlier, my father-in-law’s lung capacity was already compromised. Lack of treatment for COVID-19 could have put him in a spot of trouble. For, he required to be in hospital for eight days. My mother-in-law was also hospitalised for the same set of days. Around that time, both tested negative and were back home.”
Off to Tirunelveli
In the earlier months of the pandemic, the Viveks settled down to remote work and social engagement, similarly on the other side of the border, at NGO A Colony within Tirunelveli city limits.
This host-family at Tirunelveli consisted of Abinaya’s in-laws — father-in-law N Manoharan and mother-in-law Renuka Manoharan.
The Viveks’ visit could not have come a day too soon. The Manoharans had slipped into a routine that was not doing much for their happiness.
“Beyond the walks and television serials, my father and mother did not find anything outside of themselves to fascinate them,” points out Vivek. “The fact that their grandson Rakshan spent months on end with them brought a lot of zing back into their lives.”
On the work front, Vivek was pleased as punch, as there were no connectivity issues to rant about. At Tirunelveli, he signed up for a BSNL broadband connection.
“Within four days, they laid a fibre cable, created a junction point and gave the connection. At Kilpallam, I worked with mobile hotspot, and the 4G network delivered — 25 mbps — more than what I required to work comfortably.”
The Manoharans gave their son a room all to himself to work in absolute privacy, disrupting it only fleetingly from time to time when the mom would drop in with a bowl of snacks.
The opportunity to dote on the son, grandson and daughter-in-law was having a magical effect on the seniors.
“My father served the railways working at Thalaiyuthu railway station in Tirunelveli, as a railway manager. Years after retirement, loneliness was gnawing at him. He was planning to move to Thiruvananthapuram where relatives are domiciled, particularly at Valliyur in Radhapuram taluk. However, our months-long stay at NGO A Colony has now led my father to consider dropping the relocation idea. Also with remote-working, my brother is with them now,” Vivek elaborates.
The Viveks returned to Chennai for Rakshan’s pre-kg admission, primarily to attend to formalities that can be carried out only in propria persona.
With offices still continuing with remote work and schools still parked in cyberspace, the possibility of the Viveks making shorter sojourns — say, three-week stays in Tirunelveli and Thiruvananthapuram — is glowingly bright.
Enriching experience
Not just the seniors, the youngsters also feel enriched and energised by this experience.
“Earlier, that odd weekend — usually arriving in two or three months — provided the only window for us to travel to our hometown. You would start on Friday evening and land there on Saturday morning and the rest of that day would be lost to travel fatigue.
On Sunday, you would be fed at home till you burst at the seams. And of course, you would still be temped to try out the ‘special barotta’ at Tirunelveli or the ‘border barotta’ as it is called in Tenkasi. These barottas are a world apart.”
Vivek continues: “The moment you land in Chennai, which would be around 9 a.m. on Monday, you have to wolf down whatever is available and be off to the office. In the end, it would hardly come across as a great weekend.”
Vivek underlines that remote-working from Tirunelveli and Kilipallam meant Abinaya, who is a homemaker, had more time to herself and that Rakshan could be choosy about who he would play with.