Personal stories during Covid-19 lockdown; Learn to see a silver lining in a dark cloud

Days were going well. Life was performing routined tasks. Everything was happening so naturally and systematically. But suddenly an unseen enemy called COVID-19 evolved from the northern pole of our country. Many Asian and European countries were already suffering from this harsh pandemic. To fight against this disastrous time, Nepal government also decided to declare lockdown pausing all the economic, governmental, and academic activities around the country.

Since I am from outside the valley, I decided to return back to my home town so that I could protect myself from the crisis on the way. During the initial days of lockdown there were unnecessary rumors in the social media, exaggerated news in TV and online news portals, and scaring facts about the spreading of corona virus across the country. I was literally stuck with my habit of checking corona updates in worldometer after every few minutes in the same manner I used to do with NEPSE website for every change in stock prices during trading days back then. Because of these reasons I was unable to concentrate myself in any productive activities.

As time passed positivity started spreading across my head. Since I am a stock investor I got to know lots of facts about stock market so I compared life with NEPSE chart where you can find lots of ups and downs. But it is pretty sure that there is always a bullish rally waiting in the market after a panic bearish fall. An investor is said to be intelligent if he/she could take such panic as best opportunity to accumulate the best stocks in the market so that he/she will be benefited in future for sure. This thought motivated me to be more optimistic and take this harsh time as the best opportunity to make my life more easier and prosperous in future. So I tried to engage myself in some activities that would be fruitful and productive for me.

When the whole world was worried about the devastating effects of this pandemic in human health and world economy, I started thinking about the natural causes of this pandemic. For this I started reading some related articles but could find nothing out of it. Suddenly I remembered about the Malthusian Theory of Population and Struggle for Existence by Darwin. The Malthusian theory explains that the population grows in a geometrical fashion but the food supply grows in an arithmetic progression. He believed that a balance between population growth and food supply can be established through preventive and positive checks. The preventive measures such as late marriage, self-control, simple living, help to balance the population growth and food supply. Nature has its own ways of keeping a check on the increasing population. It brings the population level to the level of the available food supply. The positive checks include famines, earthquakes, flood, epidemics, wars, etc. When humans fail to control excessive population growth, nature plays its role. So I got a sight that this COVID-19 pandemic can be a action taken by nature to bring balance in the ecosystem of living being in this planet. In the other hand struggle for existence refers to the competition between living things to survive. This can be relate to the present scenario because people are struggling to survive from this pandemic and those with high immunity are recovering from the infection while with low immunity are passing away from the world. The combine effect of these two theories helped me to think the phenomenon of this world and human existence differently

Moreover, I have already mentioned earlier that I am a stock investor. To improve my knowledge on this regard I watched some movies related to stock market such as Wall Street, Wall Street: Money Never Sleep, Bazaar, and other stock market related documentaries. I recommend you people to watch these movies if you are interested in stock market and want to broaden your knowledge in stock market. Along with the health crisis the world economy is suffering from the recession and IMF has predicted it will be more severe than the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Since, I am a student of MA Economics I thought study about such economic crisis might be helpful for my further study and research. So I started my study from The Great Depression of 1929 passing through the Dot Com Bubble of 1990's, Asian Financial Crisis of 1998, and The Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Even I watched some documentaries related to these economic crisis. From my study I got to know about various causes of such crisis, effects on global economy, and various monetary and fiscal measures to mitigate such crisis. I truly believe this knowledge will be fruitful for my further career in economical research.

Furthermore, I love to play with words and phrases so I enjoy reading and writing literature. During this lockdown I read lots of poetry and have written few poems. I will give continuity to this for sure and further I am thinking of engaging myself in the study of other many economical variables like inflation so that it will be fruitful for my further study. I hope you enjoyed reading my lockdown story and I suggest you all to utilize this crucial time in something that will assist your further career.

Bijay Sapkota, a stock investor and MA Economics student

Dear readers,

We at Sharesansar believe that each of us have stories to share from our Covid lockdown experience. We also believe that someone’s not-so-interesting personal story can become a reason for many to feel in comfort because most of us are going through strange times these days.

So, Sharesansar has decided to provide a space for your thoughts and is accepting short write-ups from our valued audience for our new Readers’ Corner section. You can email us your write-up with positive message to sharesansar@gmail.com and we will definitely promote positivity as much as possible from our platform.

#StayHome #StaySafe #StayPositive #FightCovid19