The title and picture inspired by my friend Muralidharan Sridharan. These musings are about the way in which Covid-19 has changed my life, and what may be yet to come
You are not welcome. Because you really do not matter. Imagine the moment of hurt when you are told "I am NOT here" when you desperately ask, "Where Art Thou?" And after hearing that, over and over again, you stop asking. It becomes a moment of reckoning specially for people who have spent their lifetime saying, "Here I Am" and suddenly realize that there was no reciprocity; I was with a bondhu recently and I saw the pain. As the person often has said, "there are bruises and there has been blood on the ground." Sitting with a glass of wine we realized that this psychic blood and the bruises leave us strangely stronger rather than weaker. The hours of being there when there was a need, when the call came, unabashedly without any ambiguity you rise up to the challenge. That is when you say, "it doesn’t matter, it needs to be done." And in the same breath you say, "of course I am here and will be right next to you." Most do not w
Are you an honorable person? Or do you cheat on tests? This conversation happened with my students recently. I have been a teacher for nearly three decades, and I have witnessed a lot. I remember the old days of blue books (my American readers will know what I mean), when I used to hand out a cyclostyle question paper (later a photocopy), and I would "invigilate" during the test time, as the students wrote out their answers in a book which had a blue cover, watching to see who the honorable student is and who peeps over the shoulder of the person nearby. I really never spotted anybody doing that. Because they were honorable people. They understood that there is a moral standard to be maintained. Many are not like that. They cheat. They are dishonorable men who cheat in everything they do - from their dishonesty to their bondhus, whose wives they take for the night, to the dishonesty to their professional ethics when they secretly make others do the work that is supposed to be
May 31, 2021 Commentary from a car seat: It rained all day. They are calling for some more thunderstorms. It is a holiday for some – those who are connected with the USA. Today we remember those laid their lives down for the myriad of wars the young country has seen from its violent birth. It is as if my city weeps for the fallen. The rain came in spurts, it cooled the air, sometimes a chilly wind seemed to blow through the soul. Remembering the fallen. Those who served in the American military. The militaries across the World remember their fallen on various memorial days and on those days rains across the World act as reminder of the tears. Today, in the slow and painful birthing of a post-COVID-19 World there are other fighters, those who remain true to no single color – be the tiranga or the thirteen stripes. This military swore to defend the oath written by Hippocrates. The oath to “primum non nocere” – do no harm – first and foremost. But in doing no harm, much harm has come to t
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