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Why you should worry about how you are feeling in these rare Corona times? #notaboutselflove
In no mind and space to write at length. But there is no better way I have yet found, to bear your own self and the world, in what we are consuming as information, conversing with near ones and reflecting our own.
And like Michael J. Sandel says before he begins his class on Political Philosophies of Justice, “Self-knowledge is like lost innocence. However unsettling you may find it, it can never be unthought or unknown. Once familiar turns strange, it can never be the same again.”
Moral pursuit is not solitary pursuit but a public endeavor and so I picked my self to write another piece of reflection in these ugly(-ier) times.
Bull Fights Versus Bharatnatayam*
*Indian-ised version of dog fights versus Opera
If you live in a country where majority of the people prefer bull fights as the means of entertainment over Bharatnatyam, would you justify Government’s act of subsidizing Bull fights over Bharatnatyam?
Take another one if a group of 10,000 or lets just say 10 million Indians for sake of the example, get their delightful happiness by seeing a dozen of Pakistanis stoned to death in a Stadium. Does the collective of 10 million enjoying the brutal murder of a bunch of Pakistanis still make it just?
Last one, if your government decides to increase the tax on rich to 60% of their income, will that be just?
If you agree that these ideas are unjust, we agree here that democracies are good but there are certain moralities which are much sacred and that no democratic government has the right to take that away from the society. Like Shashi Tharoor said in his book, Democracy is the worst form of governance, except from the ones that have been tried so far.
(Just in case you think any of the three acts can be classified as just, I will be happy to engage with you, but this piece will surely not be best suitable!)
The three examples illustrate the right to life and the fact that certain acts are heinous and there are certain pleasures which are of a higher value than the other. The quantity of pleasure being equal, UNO can still not be as good as poetry.
And this was just to home the point that no democratic government, just by virtue of being a democratic government, gets absolute rights over its citizens.
Does five lives matter more than one life?
This is a classic philosophical example. Let me take you through one of the many. If a doctor can save 5 patients who need a transplant, by killing one healthy person who just came for a regular check up to him, would you think saving 5 lives is justified?
If you think this is also unjust then how do you justify saving more lives by putting lives of few Indian migrants at stake? Whos lives are more precious and nobler?
Just a parallel thought, what we call as few is not even close to few. But I shall stand to the rule that even if it is only one, how, on this shameful planet of human beings, can anyone justify saying there was no better way for India to deal with this?
A man in Nashik, Maharashtra, carrying his 85 year old mother back to his village. Happy Mothers Day!
A 12 year old carrying her 5 year old brother from Delhi.
Today, I felt deeply ashamed that there are AC trains being run at 3-4 times the fares in the same times when our very own fellow citizens are desperately waiting to reach homes. They just don’t have the means and right in front of their very own eyes, you decide to run only AC trains that are unaffordable to them. All they can afford is to be crushed under these trains, and you with your logic can only wonder, what fools, why were they sleeping on the track. You can only be in someone else’s shoe if you remove your own shoe. You can’t wear both.
And our villages are not homogenous. I don’t even want to imagine when they reach their own village, some may face the caste super-structure and harassment that they had escaped by running to cities. But the only hope is perhaps that they do what they would like to do. They will be where they wanted to be.
And I know economics comes to rescue of our conscious, doesn’t it? We are in a dire state and need to revive certain sectors, make certain section of people travel and get back to work, raise the bar, raise the GDP. Markets and capitalism is, like someone said, the only system where taking a small sum from the rich is seen in shock; while people dying of hunger and nature dying of pollution is never a worry. And that’s why I doubt whether there would be any real change after all this is over, to be kind to nature.
And some of us may want to call India a Malthusian catastrophe, explaining how high numbers in population is the cause of trouble in our country. Remind yourself of the fact that more than 80% of India’s wealth is held by less than 10% of Indians. So scarcity of resources, for whom? Thank you Malthus, for the easy escape to conscience for many Indians.
Because the current times are worse than ever I have personally read or lived in the history of our country. Also perhaps because I am watching live media on a daily basis, half consensually. We have now a range of lesser humans, who are not bounded with labour laws. Conversations as I over hear on how to continue to push the labourers to work without pay given for lockdown days; and to bear the pressures of reviving the economy, work in least safe conditions, prevent them from leaving the state because that may harm the ‘economy’ – these are all just mini glimpses.
Let us be a bit ashamed as a collective, as part of the society that failed them. Because privilege is not easily felt. Celebrating mothers’ day is a privilege, not able to feed your child safe and timely meals is the ‘other’ reality. We just happen to be too close to ourselves to count our blessings, or our ancestral unjust conquest, our bourgeoise nature of work or just a matter of luck – but that is rare, trust me.
I was newly introduced to Diogenes as a thinker and I would like to introduce him and more importantly to his minimalistic living. So much so, that people used to call him a dog. Diogenes actually took this as a compliment.
Fawn at who give me anything
Yelp who don’t
Bite with teeth at rascals
Living a life of a Nomad, he had only few belongings. He once saw a boy drinking water from the river through his hands. Watching this, he threw his mug and said, I don’t need the mug anymore as I have learnt today to live without that and quench my thirst.
And that is perhaps a subtle but strong mantra of knowing where we have gone all wrong. Unless we contain our boundaries, our wants – material and aspirational, we will only be extractive and least in sync with our fellows citizens and the planetary boundaries. The hope doesn’t lie in saving the world, or saving the migrants; the hope lies if we as humans can explore morals and justice that we abide to.
And no science can help you here. If they give you a tech advancement, it will come with its own baggage of viruses and social apathy.
And no economics has never helped, it just tried to justify your pleasures and their miseries.
History, well if you learn from it.
Polity, if we could make better human being, we will have better leaders. Our leaders are just a reflection of our society.
And Philosophy, to survive.
Can the earth take one more chance with us?
Corona Cage Survey #1
So here comes the result guys. I had sent you all a bunch of questions, and I received an overwhelming 39 responses!!! And this is magical, given that all of you are my known ones. And I wasn’t looking for such a big sample or any sample at all!
Plus I am exhausted. Dealing with two qualitative answers of 39 people was not something I was prepared with. So have fun going through some of the collective responses! I could only do, as much, no great insights, just some raw reactions to absorb.
For everyone pinging me for sharing the play list, I have a youtube link where I have added all the songs I received, except the generic ones – all songs, romantic songs, songs of despair, blah, blah!
- Click on the link below to get the entire playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2RTApxMASfbxU9zEihWN2iYugrEtrQmE
Lets be a little more #confused in these #Corona times
I write to you,
to tell you of not a story
But some realities I witnessed as I live through them:
Realities much scarier than the Stories of Saturn or Vampires,
Realities much sadder that the painful death of a loved one,
And Realities where many like us, just felt more confused than we already are
I write to you,
Generations far beyond time.
I write to you,
Not to defend myself
But to let you know
That there were moments in our times, where
The loudest voice was not the most compassionate one.
That there were decisions in our times, where
Both the swords and pens picked struggles of only some.
That there was such a time
Where the poor mattered lesser than they any way do
In our middle-class realities.
And I want to tell you
That whatever they tell you,
In books and documented history
I do not know.
But I want you to know
That there were people around,
Who weren’t quite sure
Of what decisions are we taking, as a country
Of what actions are we allowing, as responsible citizens
Of what consequences are we going to face, as humans
If they tell you that
Our leaders were doing their best-
Choosing the lesser of the two evils.
Which is
Hunger, Death without Dignity
Over letting people die of Coronavirus.
Ask them –
Your country was the fifth largest economy in the world
With a 100+ odd billionaires
The largest of the democracies
You also ran the largest Employment Guarantee programme
Food for all Programme
around the world.
You don’t take a breath
While telling laurels of the fast-paced development,
With IT hubs, and flyovers and metros
You know, when someone said
Where there is will,
One finds a way.
That someone wasn’t wrong.
And if you ask, why there was not enough will?
Or why do I doubt their will?
Maybe they were well intentioned
Good Able Visionary Leaders.
Well, they might just be.
But What I know of Good Leaders is
They care that NO ONE is left behind
They know that the stronger ones can bear pain
But the weakest will perish
Good leaders fail, but they try
They take big risks,
Calculated for least pain for the weakest,
And highest gain for the situation.
They reject anything
That harms the spirit of solidarity and brotherhood.
They build on power of love
Over politics of hate
And not see an opportunity
in this crisis
of furthering their reign,
to states and territories untouched.
But what did our leaders do?
They tell me they are doing their best.
And they ask me to do my best too.
So far so good.
But they don’t tell me
Why they can’t find a better way
Of fulfilling some basic desires of the poorest
Why they can’t plan transport to their homes?
Why they can’t provide them better shelter and food?
Why they allow people to die of hunger on roads?
And my friend, I don’t even know
How long does it take to die of hunger?
2 days, 4 or 14?
I don’t know.
And perhaps will never know.
They tell me they are doing their best
But they were silent
On why this pandemic
Not united us as humans
But only divided us as Muslims and Non-Muslims
Nowhere else.
It happened only in India.
That people of this country believed
that a part of society
is deliberately, on purpose
Spreading the Virus.
And have found a way
to destroy the country
By Spreading the Virus.
They call them ill intentioned
Enemies of Humanity.
Till yesterday
They were only people
Far from our worlds
Praying differently than us
And how were they otherwise?
We don’t know
We never knew.
We never tried knowing them.
Today, they are enemies.
Not difficult to imagine.
Only in India
People believe,
Stories of Muslims
Conspiring in their own Spit
And Only in India
The media feels like a conspiracy
Against the democracy
Because they let people know
what they want them to know
But not let people question
what they have been told
It is a special power
What ancestors used to call
Black Magic
Only in India.
And if these stories of the commoners that you read
Tell you that they sympathized
Or Empathized
With the struggles of the weak
And that I am over-reacting
Because pain comes differently
To different classes.
Always.
That’s the rule of society.
Tell them.
That I don’t want to know
The logic of how we suffer differently.
What I am worried about
Is that people around me,
are convinced.
That the suffering
to our fellows, the weaker ones
cannot be prevented,
cannot be resolved.
And that they suffer,
Like we suffer.
Just different proportions.
There isn’t anything extraordinary
In their sufferings.
Remind them
To not kill the emotional being in them
Because logic has its own ways
To convince you
Of what it wants
It is by killing emotions
That a Murderer is born
A Rapist is born
And A Terrorist is born.
Tell them
I was not romanticizing
That India can pull all out of poverty
May be not
May be never.
I was only hoping
That people don’t kill
The emotional being in them.
And if they did get a chance
to define the new normal
Which I think they did.
Let that not be
Being okay with a sight of
Even more gruesome poverty
and Helplessness.
Let that be
In saluting and acknowledging
The big sacrifices the weak make
To let you be the Strong one.
To let you be the privileged.
And they don’t make this choice.
You do.
And I can’t even tell you
what you can do to pay back
Because you can’t
What you can do is
to respect them, respect the dignity of labour
give them their due share of compensation for work
and build a bridge.
Lastly,
I must tell you,
That there were always
Some voices
Some confused voices,
Not ready to swallow
Every pain killer
that the Leaders offer.
Every sleeping pill
that the Media gave.
And you can find them
In old
And in Present
Because I believe
They shall survive
And they shall be living
Just to tell you
And to confuse you.
Love
Cheers to the Spirits of living together, Long Live the Spirit! Photo Credit: Hindu Business Line
#Corona Newsletter #2 – BUILD A BRIDGE
There isn’t a lack of inspiration around us. If you look at what art is to the world, people have called it freedom of expression, a therapy for others, a way to live in fantasy world with unrealistic expectations. A well-established rule of art is that everything you can imagine is for real!
But what is important is timing of all the ingredients to nurture the artist in You.
To feel something, to have the time to put that down, and then to have the motivation, like an audience for what you did.
So while the earth is facing unprecedented unpredictable Corona times, I don’t know what will it be like to have an Earth without Corona, as the time lapses. What I do know is that EARTH without ART is EH.
And that I felt is preventable, and this piece is just a glimpse of how true my feelings were. Let me take you through some exemplary writings of my friends in these lockdown times.
The theme that everyone reflected strings around Building a Bridge. Someone has said,
“So many people
Become Songs and Poetry
But will never know.
Our World is full of the Ghosts
Of Unspoken words and memories”
I felt helpless with social media exposing contradictions everyday:
- How does one deal with visuals of tired and hungry people, helplessly walking miles on the land where no one welcomes them, cares for them; and rather blame them? Hunger deaths are just a collateral in the war against Corona Virus
- In Contrast, we have “celebratory” images of personal victories… of taking care of one’s “self”; images of food, workouts, yoga, flowers, songs.
But like Frida Kahlo has said,
“Nothing is absolute,
Everything changes
Everything moves
Everything revolutionise
All flies and goes”
So this post is only about Building a Bridge. These are a collection of writings about
- Times of contractions
- Times of Tests and Personal Struggles
- Times of being lost, Sink in reflections
It is an attempt to Sail and Sink together,
Happy Reading! 😀
A friend had once said, that we should do the most important thing first. So I should first thank you all!!! Thank you Apurva, Garima, Harsha, Ipshita, Isha, Rinikee, Ruhi, Stella, Suhani, Tuman, Vaibhav and Vinay. This is precious!!!
And thank you everyone who wished to send and still hope for more time, I shall see what I can do! 😀
We have Song of Despair, highlighting the beauty that is nature, and tragedy that is human!
The next entry is a special one. It tries to express a feeling of someone who is suffering from Corona Virus. Someone who is perhaps facing a sense of seclusion, a sense of solitude and a sense of helplessness to be left to die alone. I think this one deserves a very special warmth.
Now we have an entry that doesn’t tell you anything, but perhaps confuses you. That is its soul purpose. To just ask questions and let you reflect whether you agree, disagree, ever though about it, want to think about it now? Have fun!
And here is a beautiful sketch of the Two very different worlds in which we co-exist. Not harmoniously but rather, one being a conscious parasite to the other.
And here comes a beautiful poem, remembering our them and now times. It goes on to look at why Humans and the earth is facing this? And what shall we make out of it? Will this time ever pass? I get amazed at how much talent I have around me, unknowingly!
Now comes a story of a storyteller. There isn’t much of a story, you have to just manage with whatever we could get, some cynicism is now on the plate! (:
And ofcourse, we have people who picked sorrow, who picked reflections and then some who picked confusion. But like in the world, so did I have people around me giving us message of hope. Here is a small and sweet one to begin with:
There is also a poet, who decided to put through her hope to everyone, to let the world know, that she expects the world to move beyond, do better that it is doing. She said, this is her first ever attempt to poetry. Can you believe it? I can’t.
And then we have a heartfelt submission that goes into deeper questions of you outer and inner self. I don’t think I can attempt to summarise a poet’s expression. Try yourself!
And here is a submission with all the love for the medical and care giving staff, working bravely, tirelessly across the world. It also has anger towards those misbehaving with them. I feel both emotions are genuine given the way our media reports them. We are nothing but puppets in the hands of information givers! Forgive her, Oh Lord, for she knows not all that she says!
We also had an entry from a young artist, who with her story, shared the love and friendship a child shares with a tree. It is odd that such stories are forgotten and unrelatable as we get older. What is really the force getting us away from being us? Do you know?
And here is last but precious entry that worked tireless to dig into different realms of the world and find the best expression to his emotions!
I have to tell you all, that I enjoyed immensely in working on this. It just doesn’t give me art goals but it help me feel you all, so much better.
My love for all the ones who could send me and all the ones who will now be reminded with these posts and get inspired for the next round! 😀
Art and Not Media – might help in curing #Communal #Coronavirus
Credits: @satishacharya
I don’t know whether this will drive home the message of empathy for many that I wish, but here is my attempt. And I will keep this more categorical than usual.
So three quick points:
-
Art is critical for learning.
And when I say art, you can broadly and vaguely relate to literature, social sciences, culture, music, poetry and others forms of artistic expressions. Like a friend of mine said it once, “Art is not just for entertainment. It is a challenge to understand what we really are, rather than what we wish to be. The challenge is to observe our behavior rather than glorify our intentions. The challenge is to declare ‘I don’t know’, because without the realization of ignorance, there can be no knowledge. And then comes the second challenge – to go beyond knowledge itself and to recognize experience as it is in its raw state and not in interpretation.”
2. We perhaps are desperate to feel something.
And we need some degree of emotional reassurance and predictability in our life and life events. We are addicted to emotional formulas that we need to fix our fake feelings periodically. If you want to feel emotions, go to a hospital emergency room. Simply feeling an emotion about an over-dramatic news reporting proves absolutely nothing. (Adapted, thanks to some amazing writings by Ray Carney)
3. Newspaper/Media is a disease.
And you can be cured of it if you spend a year reading the previous week newspaper, says Taleb. An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist is the opposite. And he tells, that there is an agency problem with Journalist. There is no difference between a journalist at Times of India and the restaurant owner in Delhi, who, when you ask for a taxi, calls his cousin who does a tour of the city to inflate the meter before showing up. Or the doctor who willfully misdiagnoses you to sell you a drug in which he has a vested interest.
Further quoting him, journalists have dual options. You can criticize either what a person said or what the person meant. The former is more sensational, hence lends itself more readily to dissemination. The mark of a charlatan –say the journalist Arnam Goswami, promoteur of pseudo-rationality –is to defend his position or attack a critic by focusing on some of his/her specific statement (“look at what he said”) rather than blasting his exact position (“look at what he means” or, more broadly, “look at what he stands for”), the latter of which requires an extensive grasp of the proposed idea. (adapted from some great writings of Nicholas Taleb)
Now let’s look at some important aspects to consider while you react to the recent happenings with coronavirus breakdown in India:
-
I am not sadistic and neither nihilist. And So aren’t you. Are you?
And lets assume that most people, effectively perhaps more than 99% of the people WANT to survive this pandemic. Be it men or women. Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs. Consultants, Doctors, Policemen or Farmers. Everyone wants to survive this, we are in this together. Yes even Muslims too, if this surprised you.
-
Tabliqi Jamaat is one missionary Islamic society. aka RSS?
It could be like the RSS of Muslims or it could be the Sanatan Dharm or Arya Samaj of the Hindus. I don’t know and I think many of us don’t know. You may spend some time knowing it but if you don’t want to, like I don’t, be aware that it could be like any of the above types of societies or something else. So just be aware, that is all I am saying. I am sure many of you are hindus but still don’t associate with RSS or Arya Samaj or alike. So if you are expecting all muslims to be responsible for this, then buy the same logic, all Hindus should be responsible for the demolishing of Babri Masjid.
-
The virus could have hit any of the mass gatherings.
It happened to be here, of course because of foreign participants. So everyone else who attended are VICTIMS and not CULPRITS of spreading coronavirus. Remember, this could have been any other gathering, you can just say, others were lucky enough.
-
Now why are these people spitting or hitting the care givers?
Now this is critical. Its really bad and unaccepted. It is putting the entire country at risk but WHY are they doing? Are they really masked terrorists who want to kill themselves and people around them? Or are they lead by their religious teacher who is guiding them to hide? Or are they scared of how will they be quarantined or treated, if at all, the conditions they will be put into once they are taken by government care givers?
Because the media isn’t exploring this aspect of Behavior economics, I give an attempt. It is definitely not the former (I hope you see that too. For the lack of any other sohpisticated argument, So many terrorists cannot be born out of nowhere.) but it could be mix of the latter two. Now why don’t they trust the Government? Now that is a million-dollar question.
I don’t know and haven’t met any of those but from the sparingly little I know, this Government has done so much to gain faith of the muslims in the recent past that this fact comes as a total surprise to me.
And here is where Arts can help the Scientific logical community that I am surrounded with to understand that you can’t code humans. They behave from their past experiences, their accumulated feelings and thoughts and the possible peer faith they can pull.
And beware, I know you will say, why to dig into history for this one incident of non-compliance! But oh my dear, who has ever been able to disassociate a child from her childhood traumas or the royalties from their kingship. It is close to biological.
-
Media is telling us they are criminals – because that’s the emotional formula that works on you!
You don’t want to know why a person is acting in a certain way; but you want to find who to blame on.
- Blame China, but for how long? They give you products and your economy depends on it.
- Blame the NRIs? Oh they give you political wealth to win the election.
- Then Blame the Poor migrants? That is tricky, it can make you loose an election – because they are not a small number.
- Then Blame the Government? That is blasphemy!
Who should be blame? God has never been more generous to Modi and Modi has never been so lucky. One spread and Muslims can be blamed – the safest escape.
NOW NOW NOW
Now haters gonna hate and I know many of you would take me as a typical critique to our well-respected Prime Minister and the Government. So here is just a quick snap of my take:
-
I respect the government
- For calling a lockdown – it was important!
- For stopping international travelers to come to India. This was late perhaps but in situations like this, one can never be sure, what was the best time. Panic comes only when the symptoms go out of control. So well taken.
- For respecting the care givers and recognizing the lament of the poor and the vulnerable; and telling the citizens to deal with empathy in these difficult times.
-
And I respect the COVID Warriors –
Doctors, Policemen, Daily delivery guys, vegetable vendors, Housewives, and the CSOs coming together to feed the migrants and many I might I have missed.
-
What I still can’t ignore is
- The Mass Exodus is completely out of the news and we don’t even know enough how many could really reach their homes safe. The social media is full of stories of love from CSOs and general public; stories of ignorance or atrocities by the State; or stories of hopelessness from the vulnerable. Like always, it is the poor who makes the most silent of the sacrifices, and even if they scream, media is experienced enough to silence them.
- Medical infrastructure and the testing speed in our country. Many reports tell it is not enough. If people ask questions, and if people demand that to be central to media debates, things might be so much more sensible.
- Twitter trends over the last two days went from #NizammuddinTerrorist #Muslim_matlab_aatankwadi, #Jihadi_Islam. These are IT cell-based accounts, spreading the venom, I could be getting emotional here in the end and saying something without much reference but I have seen through many chronologies to come to such a clean conclusion.
From Pinterest
So the bottom line is – Use Art ways – learning, exploring, feeling – than Media – spreading venom – to make a judgement.
And if you aren’t really keen about making judgements, that is perhaps much better off. You then have to just feel what you are feeling and learn to learn more about yourself, and if possible explore others.
And just by the way, this stands alright if you are an individual. If you are in the Government or Media, Please be responsible. Please ensure you manage the people who are in need (migrants) with sensitivity. Please ensure that you prevent hate messages for a community, and rather deal it with appropriate peaceful mechanisms, and gain the lost faith.
#Corona #Daak Aayi Hai…
Daak
Some of you might have got my letter (daak) in these extraordinary times when we are uncertain of what will we able to do, and when and for how long? This was mostly a social experiment (of course with hardly any scale!) to learn of how we are feeling and how do our feelings change as we witness some of the rare conditions in upcoming weeks. And here goes a shout out to all my lovely ladies and a few good men who sent back their love, the Daak.
Before I begin, I must also say that my letter was sent a week and a half back, somewhere around the 18th of March; when the Government had not yet announced the lock down and when I had not seen some of the heart breaking videos of atrocities and struggles of the migrant labour from across the country. A part of the conscious dies every time you witness this, and you feel helpless for not being able to do anything about it and you live in the same world where another life just doesn’t matter, will never matter. There cannot be enough words and there cannot be a smaller heart for the ones suffering for our safety. If as a society, we have been successful in anything, it is of eroding empathy and eroding sensitivity. Everything else doesn’t matter, will not matter.
So here is the attempt to sum up all that I heard over the last one and half week from you!
So almost every second daak I received, where nature is telling us that she has been here 22,500 times longer than you, petty humans! Telling us, the she doesn’t need people, people need her. When she falters, we falter, or worse. (Check Julia Roberts Mother Nature) This is not a surprise but perhaps a way that nature made so that she can BREATHE! Just as many people were also worried about loosing their loved ones. Feeling a sense of unpredictability and wondering whether we will ever return to old times, for good or worse. A couple of you predicted, what is now true, the ill impacts this virus prevention will have on the poor, something that we all are witnessing from our comfortable couches.
Are we feeling SAFE or STUCK or SERENE at home? It goes to a complete stretch. And I can easily say, the grass is seen to be greener on the other side. People at home, are feeling the extra brunt of their mothers telling them what a useless adult they have grown into! And the ones who are not can only hope that they could get some of the home sarcasm and the feeling of safety? Some of you are trying meditating – I wish them all the very best. The world needs it! (:
Everyone just wanted to be out, merely for anything. A lot of us wanted to be closer to our loved ones. Typical coffee spots, street food to something as tiny but significant – dressing up for the day! The strange times are making us miss Rajeev Chawk and the sweaty metro travels – are you kidding with me? Nostalgia is one thing, but another is to be human. It is not just the Delhi Metro which is not the same. Much has changed. Like someone has put it, “We slept in one world and woke up in another. Suddenly, Disney has no more magic, Paris is no longer romantic, and in New York everyone sleeps, and the Chinese Wall is not a fortress anymore. Suddenly hugs and kisses become weapons and the not visiting parents and grandparents becomes an act of love. Suddenly we realized power is not that valuable and money is not that powerful.”
And these times will be over, but as one of my friends put it, the Corona Goddess has opened a tremendous window for humanity to re-think many things. What is going to be the new normal? Will Corona make us value our household labour and other tasks that we would be doing on our own – more? Will we increase their wages when things get back? Will the migrant labour be able to forgive us and get back to the cities that left them isolated in the centre of a catastrophe that they couldn’t even see? Will we become care giving economies that prioritise health over arms and weaponry for mass destruction? Or will we just get back to the same old normal – the one at thee micro level – we all are craving for!
And as my friend Ruhi, reminded me of Khushwant Singh quote in his book Delhi which is worth the context here,
“Once through this ruined city did I pass
I espied a lonely bird on a bough and asked
What knowest thou of this wilderness?
It replied: I can sum it up in two wonder:
Alas, Alas”
PS: Here is now a time for some shout outs!
Shout out to all of you who wrote Daaks to me! Yes You – Isha, Ruhi, Nitya, Kavya, Farhan, Jyoti, Vandana, Sanyukta, Medha, Suhani, Harshini, Nitya Chibber, Shymalima, Krishna, Neha, Ankit, Srishti and Saubhagya!
Here are some dedicated season awards!
For the colorful positives:
For the most sadistic of all
For the Freak in You!
For the balanced one 😉
For the most elaborate run though – Artist Doings (:
The Neat and Crisp One
And to kudos to few more sketches:
That’s all that I am toiling to upload this time. And also to give you a reason to put down your artistic heads around as we go to the next round!
Love! (:
