June 21, 2021, Commentary from the lawn

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June 21, 2021, Commentary from the lawn: It is that magical time. The warm humidity draws the fireflies out of the ground. Like natural drones they flicker and light up the night. The lawn becomes luminescent as the aroma of corn roasting on the fire circulates in the air-conditioned interior. Elsewhere, my bondhus are stirring out of bed, and even elsewhere someone I care for is getting ready for the evening as it sets down on the metropolis and the city lights up next to the ocean. My life is spread over places. Loved ones everywhere. Some are roasting corn, some are stirring out of bed, and some are getting ready for a busy evening. The flirtation. The anticipation. Being here, there, and also there. Phone calls and WhatsApp messages, a hard cider with some, or a “Good Morning” from another, a video call with one, and watching Fawlty Towers with another. Today I was in Calcutta, Winston, Los Angeles, and Bhubaneshwar. Place has disappeared from life. I wait for the messages from one place, I watch the fireflies in another. This is the promise of the new World. Sitting in my hole while in Bhubaneshwar in India I realized that this is a rhizomatic existence that was always possible but accelerated by COVID-19. The airports and the planes are just another set of places that offer the opportunity to beam one’s body from one place to another, but the mind never moves. The actions never change. Students. Bondhus. Family. They all come together on the screen and where I am makes no difference. This is so antithetical to the human experience. As long as I get the “Good morning” at night or the “Good night” in the morning, the sense of time and place just seems to evaporate on the screen. This seems to have accelerated pain and anticipation. Whet if the “Good morning” does not come when my eyes are shutting down after a long hot day. What if I forget to say “Good night” because it is in the morning and I am waiting for my fish person to bring in the parshe maach (a kind of fish). The anxieties of keeping multiple watches on my phone. Is he awake now? Is she at work now? Can I call him now or would I be disturbing her as she busies herself with life? It is as if my time is stretched. I sleep in bursts nowadays. The myth of eight hours of sleep seems comical when the Webinar starts at 5 am or the faculty meeting at 1:30 at night. This is a different World of flirtation with the fireflies, who seem exactly the same in the park as in my lawn. Miles apart but glowing in the dark. Today’s Webinar was about a post-pandemic World. If we are bold enough to embrace a post-pandemic World without slinking back, tails between our legs, to the “safety” of a pre-pandemic World. Beaten. Defeated by the virus. In a moment of heresy I had heard someone say in a lecture, “thanks to COVID-19.” The audience was aghast. Thousands dead. And we have temerity to say “thanks to COVID-19.” But therein lies the future, out the ashes of thousands of funeral pyres of the unaccounted deaths in Bihar, we must let the phoenix rise and welcome a new World, a World without the constraints of time and space where personal and professional relationships will evolve without the powers that be forcing us back to the “pre-pandemic.” Let’s imagine a post-pandemic that is liberated from the “pre-pandemic”. The future is never clear, it is not for ours to see. Que Sera sera. “Will we have rainbows day after day.” All we can do is wait for the “Good Morning” message on WhatsApp.

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