Life in the US without toilet paper
Born and brought up in Bengal, Pratyush Nag presently resides in Florida, USA.
The first reaction of Americans to the Coronavirus scare was to buy toilet paper! And to buy plenty of it. No one could understand why! For those of us with Asian origins, we are quite familiar with the alternate means of personal hygiene; however for the rest, this was a basic human necessity.
As people continued to hoard and some fought over bottled water, others jumped into selfless deeds. Some made sanitizers with alcohol while others delivered meals to the elderly and home-less. Schools arranged lunch pick-up to feed the hungry kids. Neighbours started helping each oth-er when in need. While the government fumbled to figure out whether to close airports or schools or issue lockdowns, common people showed resilience and self-discipline. And then there were the crazy ones who kept partying at the beaches and worst of all, stood in line to buy guns!! Meanwhile, the virus kept spreading from the coast to coast. As we all know now, US has the maximum number of cases in the world at present, even though it is only the 3rd most populated country of the world.
All over America, people are getting used to a new lifestyle. People are getting to know their family members - for better or for worse. Kids are getting used to online home schooling. Parents adapting themselves to work from home, and socialise over Zoom and Skype. And some have started having “beer hangouts.” This virus is pretty unbiased, it does not discriminate between the Chinese and the Italians, the Americans or the Indians; the rich or the poor; white or black or brown. This virus is levelling the playing field and teaching us once again that we are all human.
We have started to learn a socially distanced lifestyle. Grocery stores are drawing 6 ft perimeter lines for shoppers. There is rationing of essential items like eggs and meat and bread.
And it’s amazing to see the victorious ‘lottery-ticket-winning’ look on the faces of those who have succeeded in snatching the last package of TP- Toilet Paper!
