June 9, 2021, Commentary from a screened porch

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June 9, 2021, Commentary from a screened porch: Community is coming back. The Wednesday afternoon cocktail has been restarted. A few people came. We did not talk about Covid. We talked about many things, but we did not talk too much of Covid. One person complemented my video, there was talk of Sarees, there were conversations of aged relatives. There was some wine, chips and dips. After the trauma of April and May, this afternoon was strangely different. It is a claw back to the old days. In 2020 I was unable to host the summer cocktails on Wednesday. Today it seemed we are back to 2019. Earlier I was with the angels. We are reinventing our effort now that the disease is on the way out. Temporarily. We have entered a new phase – where we are going beyond Oxygen, we are becoming what is increasingly called the 360 approach. Looking at the whole gamut of needs. Flexibility. Devdas said the need for food continues, as does the need for medicines. My trusted medicine shop will have everything ready. We go out to the communities with need on Monday. Continue to offer support. The next distribution is on Monday. Get down to the ground and do what is needed. As one bondhu said, you have to get dirty. Academics revel in theory, but at times you have to get down to the ground, step out of the ivory tower, go to Muchibazaar when it is 38C outside. You have to feel the heat, the grime, the sun on your back. It is in the real that we do what we do. Theory goes only that far, after that it is doing it. Anticipating, preparing. At the cocktail today we did not talk of the future waves. Because it seems far away, perhaps might not even happen, even though the news says that the goal of vaccinations would not be met. July 4th will happen, but the political promise might not be kept. But we are tired, so we meet on the porch. How much longer? Yet I promised that the Friday zoom will continue. That is the new life I see. Some on the porch, some on the screen. Our reality has been stretched from the plastic wine cup to the rectangle on the screen. This perhaps is the new life – where the machine and the person coalesce into the “man machine” – this might be the new reality. We are no longer restricted to the real wine on the porch but we can hope to live in the new hybrid reality that is for us to embrace, as Styx said, “I've come to help you with your problems, so we can be free.”

Comments

Unknown said…
good reading;continous,topical and simple wordings...keep going !
June 9, 2021 at 8:08 PM
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