The pandemic made us aware of our Home as Office, or Office at Home, blurring the lines between the two as we juggled the dual roles. For those who survived 2020 and after, life will forever be split into two eras--- BC & AC (before covid & after covid). BC was when reporting to office was the norm whether the work week started on a manic Monday or any other sober day after your weekly off. After Covid is a strange feeling for all, from the time a pandemic we never imagined about pushed people indoors, the office became a distant memory, colleagues at the next desk became moving faces on a laptop screen and bosses turned into talking heads. Companies are pushing reluctant employees to return to office on a regular basis, from only two days weekly and WFH (Work From Home) on other days to various combinations of the hybrid approach.

Students in school and college, forced to look up mobile screens during the mandatory online classes, as relaxation in pandemic restrictions created a new normal in education, deserves a separate discussion. This essay is reserved for a new thinking from the ‘top down’ in the Indian corporate world, contemplated by a Mumbai-based talking head, about a wish to get colleagues to report to work on Sundays, alongside a 90-hour working week. Hammering home his own perception of a work ethic may have been the intention, the actual achievement was to get a foot-in-the-mouth. The reaction of those at the receiving end of this outburst is not known, it would have taken some time for it to sink home. Sunday at work, after slogging from Monday to Saturday in a tough week gone by will be like jogging on a non-stop treadmill, falling off the only way out.