A Boy in Wellies
India entered a complete lockdown in March 2020 as a response to the spectre of novel coronavirus transmission and a probable public health catastrophe. In Bangalore, a four-year-old, eager to explore the outdoors, found himself confined with his parents in their plush 30th-storey apartment, overlooking the silent and motionless northern stretches of the city.
With only a large collection of Lego toys for company, little D spent his days building imaginary worlds and watching cartoons on television. Realising that four-year-olds are not meant to be cooped up at home, his mother packed his clothes, toys, books, and his favourite munchies and sent him to his grandparents’ cardamom and vanilla farm in the verdant countryside of Kodagu (Coorg). The least populated district in the state of Karnataka, Kodagu is in the Western Ghats, one of the eight biodiversity hotspots in the world. So off he went, away from the high-tech classrooms of his city school to take online classes from the rain-drenched courtyard of his grandparents’ home on the estate.
From high-speed Internet to slugs on the farm, YouTube entertainment to watching caterpillars metamorphose to yellow butterflies, walking through manicured gardens with paved pathways to sauntering around newly sown paddy fields, and from snacking on packaged chips to relishing farm-foraged mushrooms, little D’s world and his understanding of it, underwent a remarkable transformation during the pandemic.
