June 20, 2021, Commentary from my familiar hole

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 June 20, 2021, Commentary from my familiar hole: Today was a good day. The numbers seem to be going down in many different places and regulations are being loosened to the relief of many. But that is about Covid. Because I started writing in the backdrop sever conditions around Covid in Calcutta in April and May of 2021, my focus has been on Covid. Today was different. The World celebrated the “father” today. The posts on digital networks were replete with tributes to numerous fathers across the World, some in the World and some not. Telephone calls, like the one from my son, reverberated in the World. In the homes of some classes of people across the World there might have been special lunches and dinners. The restaurants forgot Covid, forgot that there are real threats, and the customers arrived in droves to celebrate the father. The Biriyani order took about an hour to be ready for pick up as I watched the first seating get over and the restaurant getting ready for the next wave of customers on this day of the father. Like every time I go through these days, it makes me think. In an old diary from when I was 17 years old, I discovered I had written a bit about the pointlessness of the December 31 and how it was an artificial demarcation. Even today I struggle with the demarcations. This tendency to demarcate a day for a relationship offers a sense of reminder of the relationship and its vital position in our lives. Yet, the irony lies in that reminder. Do we need to be reminded about our parents, or their place in our lives? While a day for exchanging gifts and cards, having a drink together and ordering Biryani is welcomed by the gift store, the card seller, the bar, and the restaurant, should the remembrance be more frequent than 1 in 365? Many make this argument and feel that these days are mere commercial conspiracies to make us spend money. But I wonder? Could it be that the crucial position of some relationships deserves the day of remembrance? Lest we forget. Is there a danger we will forget? Parents? Sweethearts? Children? Sons-in-law (my Bengali readers will understand the meaning of this)? I ponder what are the other things we could forget that need to be commemorated with an official day, a date written in stone on which day we must remember – we are compelled to remember – perhaps even through the special sales and offers in the stores. This is a conundrum – because we have a history of forgetfulness, we need commercial apparatuses that will make us remember – and yet we feel that these are merely commercial opportunities. The scary question is: Absent the reminder for the dinner booking, could we have forgotten? On the other hand, is it sometimes better to forget, however much it hurts, as a parent, and pay attention to what Madonna said, “But you should know by now I'm not a baby.” There is something to remember there as well when Madonna asked the father not to preach.

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