June 18, 2021, Commentary with a movie on TV

-

June 18, 2021, Commentary with a movie on TV: Today is a new day of introspection. This is the first time that June 19th is being remembered. Officially. In fact, going forward it will be a national holiday. How we treat this day in the future will be a testament of who we are as people. It was a day that was unofficial so far. Now it has been made official. It is important to make things official. Maybe that makes it real and people would pay attention. We need more attention at times. This is true for many things. The more things seem to get out of whack, as it has for the several months, making things official sometimes offers a sense of stability. An official recognition, an official remembrance all seems to stabilize histories. The need for stability is essential for us. Be it the commemoration of a seminal moment in history or the declaration that we are getting over whatever is the current crisis. Because there is always a crisis. This is another reality that has become pandemic. It seems that too much of stability is also undesirable. Official declarations, specific decisions, all seem to offer a false sense of stability while we have learned to excel in chaos. It is like the EDF hospital in Jodhpur Park. The video showed people fishing on the ground floor as water and fish had come in and several kilos of fish just ended up on the ground floor of the hospital building. That actually makes sense. In no logical system this should make sense, but as I watched the video I realized that the laughter in the video is a reflection of the new reality – crisis and chaos. It is not a reality of the pandemic only, it was already there before the pandemic, the pandemic only normalized crisis. Nothing is official, but they are declared as so. The official holiday, the official announcement, the memorandums with multiple code letters and numbers all make if official but eventually meaningless. There is lockdown still on in but walking around Park Street would not make it apparent. Everything is normal but neighbors on Linbrook Drive are discussing the Delta variant. Many have argued that this is the post-modern condition – we know no stability. There is no meaning that is stable, there is no condition that is official. Everything is up for grabs – everything is provisional, the solutions do not come from the staid halls of the management schools of the World but from the process of “jugaad (jerry rig)” that remains in the people of Gobindapur as they keep out the flood as the rain pours down. This is the strange balancing act – how much stability and official declarations can we stomach when we know that chaos will ensue at any moment. You can never relax, you have to be thick as a brick since you say to yourself, “I'm a bad dream that I just had today.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are you an honorable person?

-
Are you an honorable person? Or do you cheat on tests? This conversation happened with my students recently. I have been a teacher for nearly three decades, and I have witnessed a lot. I remember the old days of blue books (my American readers will know what I mean), when I used to hand out a cyclostyle question paper (later a photocopy), and I would "invigilate" during the test time, as the students wrote out their answers in a book which had a blue cover, watching to see who the honorable student is and who peeps over the shoulder of the person nearby. I really never spotted anybody doing that. Because they were honorable people. They understood that there is a moral standard to be maintained. Many are not like that. They cheat. They are dishonorable men who cheat in everything they do - from their dishonesty to their bondhus, whose wives they take for the night, to the dishonesty to their professional ethics when they secretly make others do the work that is supposed to be
Read more

You are not welcome

-
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
Read more

End of Memories

-
End of Memories LIVE If today did not happen Then tomorrow would not matter The memories of today makes The stories for tomorrow The mystery of tomorrow Makes today complete In balance lies the memories As a bondhu said "Everyday is a new Day" The potential of tomorrow Needs no calendars All that matters is the  Anticipation Of the new memories That will come tomorrow Tomorrow is A new opportunity For memories No more and no less When the memories stop Life stops REMEMBER To make memories today So that you want to live Tomorrow To tell the stories
Read more