Now is the best time for everyone (except for the heroes who are running around and making sure that hospitals & other required regular services are in place) to take a step back.

Take a step back from the regular busy schedules and lifestyles. This is a golden opportunity to spend precious time with your loved ones at home and the whole world wants you to just do that for now.

Do not let the stress / fear spoil this moment. It is time to rejoice, rejuvenate and rethink about ‘Life’.

It is time to come together and Celebrate rather than fear about Corona.

Celebrate each moment of joy. Stay Safe , Stay Positive.

Considering the special Stay at home initiative by India Government and also by many other countries, I have put together options to keep yourself occupied when staying at home.

1. Start your day with an online Zumba session

If you want to do a fun work out session along with your kids :

Yoga session for the kids and for the elder ones who want to start exercising 😉

2. Some breakfast recipes to start the day with yummy food:

3. Learn a new Indian language: Visit BharataVani or learn to Speak English : Visit Englishbolo

4. Time to get nostalgic. Now watch DD National from across the globe:

To watch Mahabharat, Ramayana, and other serials / news on your mobile phones now, download Newsonair App. Android iOS

5. For Kids / Students :

• Ministry of HRD initiative: SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high-quality
  educational programmes on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite.

• Visit Swayam. Another initiative from Government of India. The platform that facilitates hosting of all the courses, taught in classrooms from Class 9 till post-graduation to be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to any learner. 

• One of the edutech platform which received investment from YouTube recently: DontMemorise can be a good online learning platform. You can read about their startup story here.

• You can also check Zero 2 Maker for more home based activities for young students. It is a project based program to introduce school and university students to ideation, creativity and technology (based on Prof. Rajesh Nair’s research). Every few days, they will be publishing a new design and fabrication challenge. These challenges are intended to introduce certain fundamentals of science through hands-on experience.

• Visit this website of MommyPoppins. It has a good collection of DIY activities across age groups, Science experiments, coding, etc. to keep the little champions in your house occupied for at least a short while.

6. Read about the history of ‘Hand Washing’: https://globalhandwashing.org/about-handwashing/history-of-handwashing/ (though Hand Washing was part of the regular lifestyle even during the old generations across the globe, this is one of earliest instances which showed a relation between hand washing and health)

7. Call your friends / family members who are staying away as part of the self isolation / social distancing. In addition to the regular WhatsApp, FaceTime, Duo calls : you can also try using the tools, used in your offices for virtual meetings , like Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc. to get in to a group chat of 10-12 people and it can go upto 100 as well. So maybe you can get your whole neighborhood, classmates or old school/college connections together in a call.

8. Looking for options to read online books ? Check out https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page (61,570 books available as of now)

9. Kids (& others who want to relive their childhood days): You can get a copy of Amar Chitra Katha & Tinkle (they have opened up free membership for one month): For FREE access to the ACK app, http://bit.ly/ACK1Month For FREE access to the Tinkle App: http://bit.ly/Tinkle1Month

10. Lot of museums , zoos and some theme parks have virtual tours. You can sit on your couch and do a virtual tour. This website has got a compiled list https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/travel/a31784720/best-virtual-tours/

11. It is Mother’s Day on 22nd March, 2020 (in Ireland): Wish your Mother – wherever she might be, for sure will be praying for a better tomorrow :). One early mother’s day wish for people in other part of the world.

12. Tune into some live quizzing: https://www.youtube.com/user/sreshthshah / https://twitter.com/sreshthx

13. Dancers across the globe are once again coming together. The Digital Dance Collective (3rd Edition) .

14. Missing all the travel and travel plans ? This is my personal favorite: Visit https://www.airpano.com/ to get a glimpse of various tourist locations across the globe.

15. Looking for some South Indian or North Indian recipes for lunch ?

16. Want to replicate a Gordon Ramsay recipe ?

17. After a sumptous lunch, you would like someone to read a book to you ? Audible is streaming books for free, courtesy Corona.

18. eSports Lover ? Check out this Dota 2 online event taking place.

19. Even F1 is starting their new virtual grand prix series starting with Virtual Bahrain Grand Prix on 22nd March.

20. Love Gardening ?

21. Leave everything aside. Take a digital detox. Just relax and enjoy things as it is without any stress.

22. Don’t forget to Wash your hands 🙂

It is definitely going to take some days or maybe some months for things to go back to normalcy.

But don’t wait , start celebrating life together in whatever possible way now and let us beat the Core out of Corona.

Till then just maintain the required Self Isolation, Social Distancing.

Stay Safe, Stay Positive, Stay Healthy.

Yours Truly,

Just Another Malayalee trying to Break The Chain.

(Pic used at the start courtesy ITL)