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
Next week there will be a test of loyalty here. A strange thing - this idea of loyalty; where a person says that "I will never abandon you." No matter what happens, loyalty demands that commitment. It is a promise that says that you can count on me. It is similar to the theme I have developed in other posts, the essential answer to "Where Art Thou?" and being always able to say "Here I Am." Never failing and never wavering in the act of supporting what you claim to be loyal to. Judgment, and even reason, may be suspended in that support. It is the moment where self-interest disappears in the face of being with the person, institution, or the idea. In my life this principle has been particularly important. Few people can claim to be the quintessential "company man” and worked for the same employer for nearly thirty years or lived in the same town for nearly forty years (albeit with a temporary departure for professional development). It makes me wonder...
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...
Not many amongst my readers may recall a book by Arthur Hailey called Airport , which was made into a movie in the 1970s. At that time, it was a fascinating read, and to watch the movie sitting in Kolkata was a treat; to be able to imagine what the USA would be like, and not even fathoming what snow was or could do to a fictional airport in Chicago. Later in my life, I had the opportunity to experience weather like that in that city in its very non-fictional gigantic airport. There is a character in the narrative that appeared merely amusing when I had read the book and watched the movie in my youth. But today, this character becomes central in my thinking of what I experience. The person is the stowaway - a quaint near-70-year-old lady by the name of Ada Quonsett. She is a metaphor for those who live life on the edge. In the story she is a person who has mastered the art of deceit and can do things that allow her to utilize her apparent innocence to achieve what she wants - most ...
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