The Omicron effect: Love back in quarantine

Venus, the planet of love and relationships, has gone into retrograde, and will be so till January ends, which is when we are hoping Omicron will start to bid adieu. (Photo: NASA via Unsplash)

Apart from the lucky couples who met pre-Covid and were looking for a date between lockdowns to plan their wedding, all singles have just about given up on meeting that special someone. Not that ishq was ever easy, but at least one could scan the weekly horoscopes for ‘an exciting meeting with a member of the opposite sex'.

Dating apps may keep pinging, but the old urgency to blow-dry your hair, wear that new dress and run to the local pub or café is gone, perhaps never to return. The gaps between suitable virus-free stretches when one can plan to meet and mingle, pine and party, are growing longer. The predestined prescient qualities ascribed to how we run into The One just like that one day out of the blue are now the stuff of fairy tales.

Even And Just Like That, the sequel series to Sex and the City, is stuck on ageism; the last two birthdays have only aged us, without furnishing memories we can circle back to later in life. Films and books are more about realities, shaken up as we all are.

And who is risking it all for love these days? A Matt Hancock caught kissing his aide is just a one-off. CCTV images of the Brit politician hugging Gina Coladangelo may have been damaging for their respective families but were a mere drop in the ocean for die-hard romantics.

A recent study from Perth puts love at first sight in the he-she realm; apparently, this works more for men than women. While guys tend to exaggerate attractiveness after a mere glimpse, women underplay the same. Post-Covid, this could translate into a slower trajectory for women then.

Real-life celeb hookups are on the backburner. Even if famous couples are frantically calling each other their twin flames, there is a general shrug all round. Kim Kardashian-Pete Davidson, Megan Fox-Machine Gun Kelly, Kourtney Kardashian-Travis Barker can pose away at holiday resorts and beaches, we only pause to add up all the children between them – 13 at last count.

Plus, Venus, the planet of love and relationships, has gone into retrograde, and will be so till January ends, which is when we are hoping Omicron will start to bid adieu. This is a month of watching each other’s lips for medical reasons; according to the American Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, lips and nails can turn grey or blue if the oxygen in our blood dips.

New variants wait in the wings, not wanting to steal Omicron’s thunder. Omicron, meanwhile, is fast-forwarding, spreading over cities without pausing to catch its breath. Weekend and night curfews are back. The first wave rendered us helpless, without hospital beds or oxygen cylinders, and the second we rode masked. The third wave sees us tired and resigned.

There are rumours of an endemic. That we will all get it and that will be the end of Covid. If that is so, we can get back to kissing strangers.

Also read: Adultery had a crap year, too