Caught with masks down
As the state and the city slowly gears back to normal after the deadly second wave of the coronavirus, people have been breathing a sigh of relief, literally, with their masks down.
A cursory glance at people on the streets with their masks slithering below the nostrils, sometimes reaching down to the chin, may not be a welcome sight but it is also an unmistakable sign that the COVID-19 situation has eased.
Recently the administration issued an order making double masks compulsory for people in public spaces. They allowed people to wear a single mask only if it was an N-95 mask. However, the implementation of the order on the ground is far from satisfactory.
The SJ team spoke to a shopkeeper whose mask had fallen below the nose. He had a curious response: “What to do. The elastic is loose.” A customer outside the same shop had her dupatta wrapped around her face and was quite nonchalant about it. We did not prod her further.
The situation gets further relaxed in the late evening hours. At this time, you may be able to notice only a handful of people diligently wearing a mask. This led us to the deduction that people wear a mask not because of COVID but because of the police.
We only wish that the unmasking begins soon!

Boon or bane?
What started off as online learning for a nine-year-old boy on a regular day, turned into a worrisome experience for his parents after what subsequently unfolded.
As usual, his mother provided her smartphone to the boy to complete his homework sent from school. As she invested her time in doing household chores, the boy occupied the cell phone to do his school works.
When she checked on the kid, she discovered that the boy had somehow been viewing a website which had obscene content. The phone was snatched from the boy, who was scolded and whipped too. The boy’s explanation was: “They pop up on their own”.
Most of the times, parents are compelled to leave their little ones alone with smartphones connected to the internet for online learning. With the phone connected to the internet, various adverts and commercials pop up on the mobile/computer. Such links on the internet can lead you to questionable websites. The parent’s advice to others is to be careful. The incident was deliberated over by other concerned parents who were privy to the matter.
“From YouTube, WhatsApp, to Snapchat, she knows it all. I have to yell at her every time as half the time of the online classes she spends messaging her friends,” a parent said. “She has turned into a tech savvy,” she adds.
“We both are working parents. Therefore, we cannot sit there (with the children) throughout the online classes. I have other works to finish like cooking, cleaning, and other chores,” she explained. “Sometimes, I have to take away the phone while the online class is going on as I have to go to work,” she added. This parent wants the pandemic effect to fade soon for children to attend school again.
Another parent of a 5-year-old is worried that her son has not learned anything till now owing to the prevailing situation arising out of the pandemic.
Following COVID-19, education has become contrasting and inconsistent. For a prolonged period of time, learning and teaching have changed dramatically — students and teachers meet each other on a mobile and computer screens now.
The challenge pertains to teachers, students and parents, too, who should all be given the credit for keeping up — in whichever way they have been.

Just how convenient?
In the beginning of the pandemic — March 2020, remember how hand wash stations were installed across several locations in the city?

Do you see them now? If yes, in what condition?
What happened to being grateful to the sincere efforts and contributions of the very few who took the initiative to build and place the facilities in locations across city?
Just like this picture (near Passport Seva Kendra, Lower Lachumiere), many other such hand wash stations are in a sorry state of affairs — unused and deprived of care.
As challenges of the pandemic began to lessen compared to the grim days, people have disregarded most, if not all, COVID protocols.
The practice of hand washing, once flagged as “crucial” living in the midst of a pandemic by the Shillong Municipal Board (SMB), has gone down the drain. Some citizens prefer using sanitisers as they say it is more “convenient”.
The SMB had installed these hand wash stations across the city.