Lessons learnt from the virus May 14, 2021, 11:00 PM IST An eclectic mind in a peripatetic body! The world outside has never seemed so beautiful as now, seen on the other side of my window For the past year or so, a lot of us have got to experience what life must have been like in a zenana—whose predominantly female inhabitants never ever really stepped outside for most of their lives. They had to make-do with limited space and limited company, with all its concomitant drawbacks. The only difference is that our confinement will not be lifelong. Hopefully. Never have I appreciated the world outdoors more than through the bars of my window for the past few months, first due to lockdown regulations and now, more recently, because of my own bout of Covid. I can now understand the longing of birds in cages and animals in enclosures even more acutely than before. I have always hated zoos; I despise them even more now.