June 2, 2021 Commentary from a green place

June 2, 2021 Commentary from a green place: There are quite days. Not much happens and thus there is time to reflect. Time to consider how things were before and how things may be in the future. Isn’t that the stuff of life? Some reminiscing, some nostalgia and imagining how things could have been. All of us need to do that a bit. I spent some time talking to my son today. I should do that more often but somehow the busy ness of life comes in the way. The mundane kicks in and the important things get pushed back, or there is a redefinition of the important. Talking to one’s child is important even when they are grown up and have found their rightful place in life. Those conversations are important. A bondhu pointed out how the generational differences continue for every generation. Our parents must have found us to be doing things that was shocking as we find the generation next to us having concerns and tastes that may be baffling to us. Do you know of dark jokes? Things that would not make me laugh but some would be ROFL. Yes, things are different for distanced generations. This is stating the acutely obvious. But where is the moment of divergence from the obvious? Often because it seems to obvious that it is trivialized and when there is a moment of inflexion – a war or a pandemic – the obvious must be reconsidered. Is it obvious that the education that many children have received in the past year has denied them some things, but might have offered some other things? A child I know has to wear a school uniform, at least waist up, for every online class. The school also charges a bus fee for the children to be transported from their home to the school. But school is at home. The bus sits idle somewhere, but “obviously” the bus fee is built into the fees and charges and thus “obviously” it can continue. The obvious is just habit. Which die hard at times. What is the given, and the taken for granted, in confusing times? Another bondhu remarked that there was no time to do anything because all the time was taken up by house cleaning and cooking. Things that were relegated to the domestic help that is now no longer obvious. What if they bring the disease? Now it is ensuring personal security that is obvious. Thus the tasks that were not so obvious then now become the cause of our busy ness. The mundane changes. Parents carefully iron the top of the school uniform to allow the children to look clean and disciplined on the screen. Life on the screen. And we shall soon have to tear ourselves away from the comfort of the screen. Did some of us find a new home on the screen? Shall we have to shut down that safe home and venture out. Drive. Walk. Meet people. Shake hands. Will that be difficult. These points of interruption can be uncertain. A doctor told me today that things will be back to stability, may be, within a couple of weeks. Middle of June. Trains may ply again, the offices would be open, the autos will run, and perhaps, dangerously, the mask will be off. Devdas told me that the lockdown will go till end of June. The news told me millions of vaccines are on the way. We will be like America – where fear is gone, and the American World is “obviously” out of danger. A bondhu is planning a get away in the Appalachians. A week in the hills. Because we can now obviously go on Cliff Richard’s “summer holiday.” Or can we? Has the curve turned – the curve of life – is it an inverted U or is it the slithering serpentine?