Namrata Sharma

While growing up as a child in Nepal, I was brought up with a savings-oriented approach in life. My mother taught me to keep the taps closed while washing face to limit wastage of water, keep the electricity on only in the rooms that were occupied and turn it off in unoccupied rooms. She also taught us to make do with what we had and never to demand stuff that were out of reach. My father, on the other hand, taught me to get answers to my questions when in doubt or confusion by reading books and see sky as the only limit to pursue my dreams. He also taught me that if there were no friends to make books my best friends. So I grew up making books and dogs my best friends.
Therefore, to be locked in during the pandemic hasn’t been too difficult as far as satisfaction and connectivity is concerned, especially with the virtual reality of being connected with friends, family and professional activities. Around the need to address the anxiety created with concerns regarding the safety factor of family and friends, the values that were incorporated during my growing up days and the coping strategy I developed individually have kept me sane.
Adaptive response
As humans, we may have evolved from the ancient days when we lived in the caves to today’s modern civilisation. However, the need of safety, satisfaction and connection may very well be the same. During the cave days, if any of these three needs felt threatened humans, like any other animal, would flee from the place where they were threatened. As a species, our nerve system is wired through millions of years of evolution to fight or flee or in some cases freeze in response to threats to our safety. While studying biology we learned that our ancestors developed adaptive responses that helped them to survive the physical threats they faced, and they ultimately passed along their genes to us.
Adaptive responses can protect us, but is this enough for us in modern times to cope with the stress we may be facing during the current pandemic? At times, we may all be facing that the fight and flight response that our ancestors mainly adopted could be taking over us. But this might overpower us with stress, fear and negativity, especially as many start losing their near and dear ones and as the others start hearing of deaths that float in the social media. The need of safety, and satisfaction could be disturbed completely. In modern today we may need a mechanism to accept, stay and deal as opposed to fight and flight.
During the absolute monarchy days, there was always the fear of my father being arrested for his bold writings, speech and advocacy. On the other hand, my mother always faced the challenges of keeping the household safe and her children well-fed and educated, and at the same time making sure that she was not fired from her job. During those days our family was often ostracised as a political family, so I developed skills of how to cope with my emotions as a child and just focus on each day at a time. On the other hand, as most children growing up in the Kathmandu Valley, I too was introduced to religious and traditional practices that a Hindu household observed.
As I grew up, I gave up many of those practices that I felt was not right, but I retained qualities like compassion, control and faith that were incorporated within me. My spiritual growth increased as I reached adulthood through my own readings and the values incorporated within me as a child. The exposure to fight injustice, be calm no matter what family members are facing and forgo meals when hungry political activists who had been underground for days at end were part of my growing up. This has helped me in coping with several stressful events in my life and is definitely helping me through the current Pandemic.
I see several articles on net with 10 points on how to cope with stress, nine points on how to avoid anxiety and so on. I read them but what I have realised is that just reading those points will not help. Most of them are much attuned to western life style where mostly individuals live alone. In Nepali families, we still have joint families where grandparents, parents, newly-wed couples and new-born babies live together. In such situation to have space, food, safety, satisfaction, and communication for all has to be approached more from a socialist approach as opposed to the capitalist mindset.

Liberal mindset
In such settings it is also important to note that there could be individuals with liberal mindsets and individuals with very traditional and conservative mindsets living together. When all are locked in together for weeks at end and need to share the household chores and resources in an efficient and effective manner, it is more important to be able to demonstrate compassion and resilience.
Pandemic has indicated that we now need to raise children with a value system that will help them to adopt a sustainable approach for life and search for safety and satisfaction within themselves as opposed to outside. Rather than aggressively amassing wealth they can never use during one life time they need to be taught to be more sharing, caring, and giving and satisfied with what they have. This will help them to deal with crisis and manage emotions so they can deal with different ups and downs in life.

(Namrata Sharma is a senior journalist and human rights activist. namrata1964@yahoo.comTwitter handle: NamrataSharmaP)