The title and picture inspired by my friend Muralidharan Sridharan. These musings are about the way in which Covid-19 has changed my life, and what may be yet to come
May 20 and before, 2021 Commentary from Different Places
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There are many more to read if you are interested. All available here in an article
You are not welcome. Because you really do not matter. Imagine the moment of hurt when you are told "I am NOT here" when you desperately ask, "Where Art Thou?" And after hearing that, over and over again, you stop asking. It becomes a moment of reckoning specially for people who have spent their lifetime saying, "Here I Am" and suddenly realize that there was no reciprocity; I was with a bondhu recently and I saw the pain. As the person often has said, "there are bruises and there has been blood on the ground." Sitting with a glass of wine we realized that this psychic blood and the bruises leave us strangely stronger rather than weaker. The hours of being there when there was a need, when the call came, unabashedly without any ambiguity you rise up to the challenge. That is when you say, "it doesn’t matter, it needs to be done." And in the same breath you say, "of course I am here and will be right next to you." Most do not w...
Next week there will be a test of loyalty here. A strange thing - this idea of loyalty; where a person says that "I will never abandon you." No matter what happens, loyalty demands that commitment. It is a promise that says that you can count on me. It is similar to the theme I have developed in other posts, the essential answer to "Where Art Thou?" and being always able to say "Here I Am." Never failing and never wavering in the act of supporting what you claim to be loyal to. Judgment, and even reason, may be suspended in that support. It is the moment where self-interest disappears in the face of being with the person, institution, or the idea. In my life this principle has been particularly important. Few people can claim to be the quintessential "company man” and worked for the same employer for nearly thirty years or lived in the same town for nearly forty years (albeit with a temporary departure for professional development). It makes me wonder...
I started this blog some years ago sitting at home during the dark days of COVID-19 when the city of Kolkata had come together in its unique way to voluntarily respond to the return of the menace amongst us. The lock down was not even announced in the March of 2021, but we responded on our own, we shut our shops, we stopped going out, we hunkered down, and we said to the disease, "we will not be beaten." That is what makes the city so unique - we do things because we know what the right thing is - most of the time, the people know. And the people respond. Today, we fight a different disease. Today when we are now trapped in a web of self-interests, greed and the desire for power, I am witnessing the city respond again. The people matter. In this city. Self-interest is now the disease. And it is not new. Even at a personal level, the entitled people abandon others for selfish reasons, and I have seen many such people, for whom we say in Bangla, " যে যার নিজের টা গুছিয়...
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