Musings of a White Haired Teenager

Many years ago, there was a movie made about people being haunted by ghosts, and with no one else left to help them, they called a company called the Ghostbusters (the name of the movie as well) to get rid of the evil that surrounded them. While the film was comedic, it made the phrase, "who you gonna call?" a common parlance. In its humor the movie pointed to a malaise that seems to have become a new pandemic. Since there was no one dependable or trustworthy to deal with an infestation of ghosts, the ghostbusters needed to be brought in. Today, it seems, in the absence of having no one reliable or trustworthy to call to deal with the evil that surrounds us, we have no one to call either. It seems there are no ghostbusters for real life. The progressive erosion of trust is like a new pandemic. And it has permeated every aspect of life. The list is enormous: the woman who has been wronged by the one she loved has no one left to call; a child ignored by the parents is hapless i

I started this blog some years ago sitting at home during the dark days of COVID-19 when the city of Kolkata had come together in its unique way to voluntarily respond to the return of the menace amongst us. The lock down was not even announced in the March of 2021, but we responded on our own, we shut our shops, we stopped going out, we hunkered down, and we said to the disease, "we will not be beaten." That is what makes the city so unique - we do things because we know what the right thing is - most of the time, the people know. And the people respond. Today, we fight a different disease. Today when we are now trapped in a web of self-interests, greed and the desire for power, I am witnessing the city respond again. The people matter. In this city. Self-interest is now the disease. And it is not new. Even at a personal level, the entitled people abandon others for selfish reasons, and I have seen many such people, for whom we say in Bangla, " যে যার নিজের টা গুছিয়