June 3, 2021 Commentary from a steel back chair

June 3, 2021 Commentary from a steel back chair: Restaurants will be open from 5 to 8 in the evening. The bazaars have an extra hour of shopping time. And, maybe, maybe, the shopping malls will have limited openings from June 16. The power of the exponent. The numbers are going down because this wave might have run out of energy and now there will be the critical need to vaccinate as exponentially as possible so that the next wave is not as deadly. Other people are confident that they are over the deadly. A bondhu is planning a month-long research trip to Portugal. Netherlands just started to allow flights from India. Bombay is going into phased unlock. In America, summer is here, and people are starting to gather in their screened porches over bad wine. Life is exponentially going back to a state that many sorely missed. The dying days are perhaps coming to an end, the numbers are falling and the soon the cleansing monsoon will engulf the city as the rains hopefully wash away the last vestiges of this wave. Life-giving monsoon, already in the Western state of Kerala, will march across and bring the rain, perhaps at the same time that the lockdown is over. This is the time to re-discover life, as the rains come, not as a storm like Yaas, or the electric storms of Winston, but the steady downpour that goes on for days. For many years I had missed the monsoon in Calcutta. But over the past twelve years, starting in 2010, have enjoyed the rains with my students. This year it will be different, the rains are perhaps of hope that we have overcome the 2^nd wave and if we are careful we may avoid the 3^rd wave. In the same way that there is hope 8,500 miles away that this year on July 4^th we will be free to mix and mingle as it was meant to be, as the leader has promised. Promises. Important element of life, especially in the days ahead. Promise to vaccinate, promise to open up the economies, promise to congregate, promise to go back to the classroom. Some promises will be kept, and others will fall by the wayside and yet other promises may be called into question. Why did we promise that everyone will be back in their offices when working from home seemed to working well for some? Now some will have to return to the pressure of meaningless presence when indeed there might have been peace in the screen. Some promises may turn out to be “you get what you wished for.” I wonder if we should have taken some time to think of what we wish for as the exponential curve accelerates us towards the “normal.” What we wished for. Will we completely forget the war that we have lived through for nearly two years? Will there be no trauma? No lessons? No PTSD? When children have to go back to school. Interact without the protection of the screen. Is anyone looking at what might happen when place again becomes prominent and authenticity is connected to place and not to motive. Do I want to be there? Or do I want to do what is needed? Do I have to ask the question: Why am I here? Or would I always be confident in saying “I am here because…” There was a time when this was important and place was authentic, and places had promises. Remember “if you are going to San Francisco” you would know what to expect. Does that have to be true in the future.