Musings of a White Haired Teenager

June 29, 2021 Commentary at 600 miles per hour: Sitting at airports make you contemplate. Think a bit. And realize that there have been many times I have been taken aback by the way the World around me has operated. These are not significant things, and mostly just mundane events that make you consider why they happen. Memory is fickle. Looking at the airport, with people falling off the seams, one realizes that dark memories are abhorred and quicker forgotten the better. Those days of horror. Those days of an extreme uneasiness, depending on the affliction. Those moments, those days, those weeks are blocked out. Because survival depends on those moments being deposited in some recess of the mind where it may be locked away forever. But what else will we forget about the months that, at least in Southern California, appears to be memories? Will we forget the people who were at your side when you may have been ill? Will you forget the frantic work you did to offer support for those in n

June 28, 2021 Commentary with my son: They call it “La La Land” for a reason. There is good amount of dreaming but there is also a good dose of reality. COVID-19 provided the reality check to an industry that has relied on people getting together in a packed space to consume entertainment. The Sunset Strip. The Comedy Store. Whiskey a’ go go. People have to gather at a place to be able to provide the patronage for this profession. And even though aquariums are open not all the venues are open in LA. COVID-19 might have disappeared from the LA Story, there are still pockets burning with the energy of frustration. But I spent the day with a few people who were able to take that energy and convert it to creative energy and strive to improve upon what was planned just before the pandemic. I had the opportunity to see the work of an artist whose hands can sculpt things from clay, and listen to the music that is made right there right then. Within that creative energy, it is easy to put COVI

June 27, 2021 Commentary from a place far away: From where I was born. The greetings and well wishes started early. When life is stretched over time zones and loved ones and well-wishers remember the calendar date it might not be exactly the calendar date that is true for you, where you are. But that is the nature of the new life, especially crystalized by COVID-19. The connections have been strengthened on Zoom. Traditions and memories were made over the last 52 weeks. My cousins, who all came to the zoom room with their kind words and their wishes would not have been collectively there to do the wishes had we not reconnected when the boredom of lockdowns drew us to the screen. We discovered connections, the ability to have a beverage “together” – time and place appropriate. On the screen. And that happened today. But even before that, the early wishes came from people who cared, a WA message – indeed the first wish – much anticipated and much welcomed. A phone call from across the Wo

June 26, 2021 Commentary from a hotel room: If you were anywhere in the LA area today you would have to believe we are over all our troubles. Pacific Highway was bumper to bumper. I-405 was taking about 45 minutes from Inglewood to Westwood. A restaurant in Malibu reprimanded me for not making a reservation and promised a table in two to three hours. And it is just a regular Saturday morning. No masks. The entire memory wiped away and an unknown new World is being welcome through the blaring rap on Santa Monica beach welcoming the Birders, the Boarders and the cyclists and the gentle refreshing aroma of ganja, legal in LA, whiffs through the air. California is comfortably numb. Sitting on the sand, by myself, surrounded by thousands frolicking on the beach. 600,000 deaths wiped from memory. Summer is back. As I got numbed by the experience of watching life going by me I realized that I am a pessimist in this context. I am trying to find a reason to be anxious. The zoom gathering in the

June 25, 2021 Commentary from the sofa: Perseverance. Patience. Hope. If the unprecedented COVID-19 experience has taught some of us something then it is awareness that things change radically with little warning. For the color festival of 2020 (Dol) I was with a close bondhu and others. That day, we had no idea how are lives will change. The next day, at Bangkok airport, I took a picture in which there was a Buddhist monk wearing a mask. I found that curious. In about two weeks everything changed. Without warning. Everything shut down. And soon all over the World. Salt Lake went into an unprecedented lock down along with the rest of the country. LA shut down its entertainment industry. Artists who were ready to launch their groundbreaking ideas simply had to apply the brakes. Today, carefully, the brake is being pulled back. But that period between the shutdown and the slow opening was an opportunity for those who could weather the storm of lost revenue. And there were the ones who ha

June 24, 2021, Commentary from the West: Moving through time zones poses an interesting challenge. I am not sure when I am writing. Usually, I write at night – wherever I am. And it is night now. A night after watching another part of the World handle the current crisis. Things are normalized here. There is a certain flirtation with masks. Some use, some don’t. The logic is unclear. It becomes confusing when you are in a new place. I have been in just two places since the pandemic started. Which is one more place than many people I know. And now I am in a third place. I have been here before during the pandemic, once in June 2020, when the city was shut down. Storefronts were boarded up, not only because of the pandemic but also because of the riots. It was a dead city. Then in November of 2020 it looked a little different. There was some more preparation, a little more sense of control. Today it was back to the twenty-seven minutes for a ten-mile drive. The brown haze clouded the moun

June 23, 2021 Commentary from a mile high: Travel. It is back. The airports are swelling with people. The security lines are taking time. The restaurants are full. There is no space for bags on the plane. Simultaneously there is a frantic call to vaccinate and find ways to get the vaccine out. I spent some time with a person who runs a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), and we developed the plans of a vaccine drive starting with Gobindapur. Vaccines are available. For a price, and there needs to be coordination to make sure they can be given out. There is a real price for this – nothing is free. There are many who may not be able to afford it and there the NGO and people like me, supported by bondhus in places such as Wake Forest U, will jump in and start to fill the gap. As I sit here, I wonder what the World looks like from the top of the Control Tower at an airport. They are perched so high, above us, they can see all. Is there anyone who can see all of the crisis that is ending.