Category: Musings

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Musings

Amphan Stories: Uprooted Trees & Broken Nests

By Devraj Singh Kalsi

The giant tree was pulled away from the bosom of the Earth after an intense struggle that lasted for several hours in the dark. It was razed to the ground much like the vandalized bust of a dictator overthrown in a coup.  

The birds in all their wisdom had chosen to build their nests in the sturdy tree that came with the implicit assurance of a safe haven. The tree that listed several encounters of surviving severe cyclones in its resume had caved in this time after four decades of brawny existence.

Birds asleep quite like passengers in long-distance trains that collide in the middle of the night – a big jolt wakes them up to discover their world turned upside down. Something similar must have rattled the birds when they found themselves closer to the ground through the thick foliage of leaves that cushioned their unceremonious fall. 

Imagine those moments of confusion and hopelessness when they extricated themselves from the wreckage to fly off to nearby safety. The swaying electric wires clutched their nervous feet as they tried to make sense of the world during the incessant downpour, vigorously shaking their rattled heads to puff up resilience in their wings, waiting patiently and calling out other members of the family to unite. 

In the wee hours of the morning, I woke up to hear fresh new voices in the garden. As I opened the window of my study, the reality outside and my imagination matched like the blood group of two strangers. The guava tree was the makeshift home where the homeless birds had now gathered and perhaps united with their loved ones. Their chirping was probably their excited conversation to chalk out the future plan of rehabilitation. More birds flew in and sat beside their families, sharing updates of empty spaces available in the mango and jackfruit trees where they could build new nests. Agile and faster than human beings in rebuilding homes, some were already flying around carrying pieces of straw and wires in their beaks as the new foundation for cosy, durable nests to cuddle in.  

Quite a few of their flock sat still and gazed at the uprooted tree, perhaps fondly recollecting the good times they enjoyed up there. Like us, they were probably fond of living in grandeur. Maybe they were also proud of having an opulent residence in a giant tree that looked like a mansion. With no other tree of such magnificence around, they would now have to settle down with some modest options.   

I joined the birds in observing the uprooted tree. The vacant space was brimming with strange, unfamiliar brightness. What stood hidden behind the tree all these years was now clearly visible. The balcony of the neighbour was in full view. The death of the tree had brought us visually closer. I was not too happy with the new reality and I do not think he would be happy either to reveal the colours of his innerwear left to dry on the balcony railing every day.

I was habituated to look in that direction because of the giant tree. I looked at it whenever I was thinking of ideas. The circle of leafy delight energised my mornings. The sight of the tree stirred and stimulated creativity. Now the neighbour would think I was gazing at him or waiting for the beautiful women of his household to stage an appearance there. He would go further to call it an invasion of privacy – the arousal of voyeuristic tendencies.

I suspect my repeated gaze would make him erect a glass window to cover up the balcony area, to stay safe from my ogling. I would still be looking at the giant tree because it is planted in my mind forever. I would still look at it through my inner eye and seek inspiration. Difficult to make people understand that creative folks often fix their gaze at something but they think of something completely different.    

The relief team arrived with a truck – hearse to ferry the mortal remains of the tree. They were more brutal than the cyclone as the dead tree was axed further, chopped into small logs to be sold as timber. Only the tree trunk was left behind and people gathered to click its photos for their social media feeds. Some strangers passing by stood silent to mourn its demise more sincerely than the residents around. The uprooted tree created no signs of emotional distress in the people who lived in its vicinity. Perhaps it is true that the death of a family member does not necessarily cause much agony to the survivors in the family – people who have no blood relationship are also likely to shed more tears.  

A fleeting thought of grafting its small branch in my garden – with a concrete slab to perpetuate its memory – did cross my mind. And the epitaph recording the cause of its death: Amphan. Does a tree deserve to be immortalised? Does a tree become evergreen in history? Or it remains just like us ordinary mortals who come and go? Enlightenment makes all the difference. We are all uprooted from time to time, in so many different ways. The uprooted tree left behind a lot for me to dig up within.  

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Devraj Singh Kalsi works as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short fiction and essays have been published in Kitaab, The Bombay Review, Deccan Herald, The Assam Tribune, The Sunday Statesman, Earthen Lamp Journal, and Readomania. Pal Motors is his first novel.

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Musings

Lockdown musings: Cleo & Me

By Santanu Das

Chandannagar Strand

The lockdown has, in various aspects, limited me to circumscribing through the daily routine, inside my house. It might sound odd but for the last few days, my timetable has been rudimentary and timed, something that has never happened before.

I have returned to my old home at Chandannagar where I hardly stayed as an adult. There are the same old forces at work, ordinary things like burning the incense sticks, drying the towel out, filling the water bottles — not quite voluntary but somewhat of a meditational retreat, almost like a recreational conformity. Amid these circumstances, I re-watched Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (2018).

Revolving around an indigenous domestic worker in 1970s Mexico called Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), this film plays out, with novelistic depth, inside the confines of a middle-class family where she serves. Upon revisiting it even now, I did not find myself being attached to Cleo’s domestic work, but ended up feeling part of that parallel universe, so embedded within the domestic borders. I understood how I was substituting myself as a silent member within the house where Cuarón set his wonderful film, in a way that I did not anticipate when I watched it earlier. I realise that this association occurred this time because of my position in this lockdown, at this particular point of time. Roma, then, felt not just a reminder of the cinematic power of connection but also of the universal quality of compassion which is able to erase political and economic concepts of border.

Roma takes place within the household of Cleo’s patron, Sofia (Marina de Tavira). She follows Cleo as she performs her daily chores with an effortless sense of rhythm and precision. She cleans up the yard, picks up the clothing from the bedrooms to do the laundry, and collects the youngest child, Pepe, from the kindergarten. The camera revolves around the breath of the house with abundance of tracking shots that serve to catch Cleo’s movement around the house as she carries out her endless duties whilst the family’s privacy takes place in the background.

There were so many layers to just this single sequence. Like Cleo, I find myself detached from the discourses that form the chaotic energy of my house. Even though my mother knows how much I prefer a sense of privacy, she is unable to ascertain it within the household. Someone or the other is always talking to someone else or to himself only, in a way that the other members of the house stand witness to every single incident. The only difference is that I am a member of my own home, unlike Cleo who is still a mute outsider, a perennial reminder of class divide.

In Roma, the viewer is led to identify with Cleo — since the film allows one just to see and hear what she does — it is in this way that Cleo’s relation with the domestic space and the exclusion that she suffers are experienced by the audience. When Sofía and her husband are arguing, for example, the camera does not enter into the couple’s room. Instead it tracks Cleo’s descent as she makes her way down to the ground floor and then it makes a 360-degree pan to register her last working round of the day. Whereas, it is me in my daily lockdown reality who shuts the door and moves out to a different room. I do not, for once, identify with Cleo’s subjectivity, but do so with her muteness and tightened repetition, finding myself incapable of ignoring the emotional reflexes and patterns of the domestic household.

The microcosm of my quarantined life has achieved a macrocosm– identifying traits in minor variations of routines — even in the clicking of the kitchen door that signifies lunch is almost ready. Within the perimeters of my house confinement, I have found a radical sense of individuality.

It is a realisation that betrays the very essence of togetherness — my silence to the constant bickering between my parents, insensitive political concerns, and negligence to the privacy of an individual within the space of the private. Quarantined with a dysfunctional family has its own set of demands, that aforemost erases the possibility of peaceful negotiation. Memory becomes a weapon, bluntly rummaging through unwanted topics that inadvertently creates a trigger.

Where do I begin with the subtle jabs at the past, the utter substitution of trauma with grief, that erodes any possibility of calm? It is in the simple habits that I find myself traversing the past — unable to discard the remnants in the present disposition. In this way, I remain so absorbed with my own personal inclinations, that it covers up matters of the world outside. In the heavy noise of my everyday existence, the immediate world outside slowly ceases to matter– although the ruptures of public life determine the private life inevitably.

In Roma, Cuaron deftly stitches the personal with the political, the private with the public in the staging of the Corpus Christi massacre that took place in 1971. These riots are portrayed in the narrative of Roma when Cleo and the grandmother Teresa are buying a cot for Cleo’s baby. Cleo’s miscarriage occurs while they are in the store, when some wounded students enter the store to take shelter and the paramilitaries follow them there and threaten the clients (it is actually Fermín — who impregnated Cleo in the past and left her, who now points a gun at Cleo, causing her waters to break). This sets up for the devastating sequence that is to follow in the birth of Cleo’s stillborn child.

The entire sequence is masterfully choreographed in one shot, with the audience beside Cleo on the operation table, as if permitted inside in order to comfort her. I knew what was to come — this being my third watch– and yet I found myself emotionally wrung. It was uncomfortable, and most certainly surprising to feel this deeply empathetic towards Cleo at that moment.

I never had a nanny while growing up, and stayed mostly outdoors, all by myself. Home, as it was, remained an idea, replenished with each hostel room. I never had my father looking after me, just like the patriarch of the household in Roma. I understood the soft power of domestic work, having seen my mother in my own home, and being on the receiving end of their love for years. Now, quarantined inside home, more than ever before.

Furthermore, through Roma, I saw what looked like a man’s attempt at revisiting the past, through a lens of atonement. The film serves for Cuarón a way to process how much his own childhood maid, Libo, might have had to put up with on his behalf, an effort to see the politics and loaded gestures he missed as a young child. This singular take on revisiting the past also resonated with me, of how I am more akin to the shifts in the power structures within my family now.

Today, I am aware of my presence in the room, strong and silent, completely able to exercise my opinion. Cleo is never given that agency to exercise the discourse, and even if she was, that would have never been realistic. Her silence was a necessity, not a choice.

This realisation of my control over the unnoticed, mundane noise of daily existence with such a consumptive focus makes me more anxious with each passing day. The deserted streets which I observe from the verandah of my house are haunting and haunted, a daily reminder of how I wake up to this gradual unfolding of the coronavirus catastrophe. Like Cleo, I face each day with rhythmic deterrence, but unlike her — monitor a new found vision of control. It is weird, this contrasting force of Roma that binds, and somewhat wonderful in the way it still manages to free me from its cinematic constraints. It feels just like a revelation, more certain than anything else at this moment.

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Santanu Das is currently pursuing his Masters in English from Jadavpur University, India. He writes for CinemaCatharsis and Highonfilms. He lives in Chandannagar, Hooghly.

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Grace in the Times of COVID 19

By Promila Chitkara

The roads were clear of people and machines, covered with fallen leaves on both sides, leaving the centre untouched. The contrast of yellow leaves and black tar was striking, soft and fragile leaves against tough and durable tar. After decades one could delight in bird song, crystal clear, not buried under the noise of incessant traffic. Feast for eyes, feast for ears, heart’s delight. My feet walked me to the first grocery store.

“Stay outside, we will bring what you need.”

“Black chickpeas,” I requested. But of course, the stocks had been emptied weeks ago; I’d woken up late to the emergency.

“Sorry, ma’am. No chickpeas.”

***

Eating chickpeas soaked overnight has proved a healthy diet for my chronically troubled stomach. And how easy it is to prepare. Black chickpeas, the pebble-like ugly ducklings of the world of lentils and pulses, are high in dietary fiber, rich in vitamins and minerals, good for digestive disorders, diabetes, and cardiovascular health. And I was left with a few grams at home. I didn’t want to break this new diet regime – the latest and healthiest start to my day.

The before-noon sun on the last Saturday of March in Delhi was lovely and lukewarm. It brightened the outside world and removed the darkness within me, so what if it were only temporarily. I walked to another store, only to get the same response. I checked out a few more grocery shops in the vicinity but none had the black diamond! One has to try her best…

Before I set out, my father had asked me to go to another small store, but it was in the opposite direction from all the others. He had sounded sure that I would find a few packets there. I was neutral, leaning toward ‘no luck.’ I knew I wouldn’t find them but I went and checked anyway. My Organic India jute thaila (bag) was heavy with other things I’d found (four bars of soap, one hand wash, five or six packets of cookies, etc). My right shoulder hurt, but I couldn’t dare shift the thaila to my left arm – no physiotherapy has persuaded my tenacious tennis elbow to go gently into the good night.  

“Lord, it’s not something I should ask you for. So, if I find chickpeas, it will be your wish/prasad. If I don’t, it would still be your will.”

 The store was only a few yards away now. I wondered how my father, who has been confined to the house for several years, knew about it when I did not. Had a neighbour told him about it?

“Uncle, do you have black chickpeas?”

“Yes, beti (daughter),” he replied warmly.

“Give me two kilos if you can, please.”

“I only opened my store to collect my own rations. I was going to close the shutter in a few minutes. My wife has asked me to stay home for the next couple of weeks. Why should one risk one’s life and health for money?”

“Oh, so the store will remain closed for weeks! Please give me one more kilo if you have the stock.”

“Yes, I do, beti.” And I also found matchboxes that other stores had run out of.

A man wearing the uniform of a security guard arrived and asked the shopkeeper for a bar of Lifebuoy soup. “No stock!” he was told. I had four bars of another brand of soap. Soap is soap. In the times of lockdown one can’t be choosy.

We are bereft of essentials and have things of little use in abundance. During wars, natural disasters, pandemics, humanity is reminded of what we really need to survive: food, water, shelter. All other accumulations, to collect which we waste away our lives, become a source of misery in these times. Recently, someone posted a status on WhatsApp: ‘Ghar utna hi bada hona chahiye jitni jhado lagane ke aukaat ho. (The house should be only be as big enough to meet one’s needs)’. I have known my needs for decades, and that’s why I have been wanting to downsize my home to a one-bedroom studio apartment.       

I offered the security guard a bar of soap. He took it. But he didn’t pull back the hand in which he held a tenner. A tenner was not what I needed. I had received chickpeas prasadam (blessings) from the lord. The security guard needed a bar of soap, by His grace he found it. These small blessings are what make life a beautiful journey.

What happened on the last Saturday of March has stayed in my consciousness. It has brought me a sublime joy that no big things have brought. One has to experience something like this to be able to understand that what we need is little things at the right time, not luxuries in a future perfect never-never land.

Promila Chitkara is a technical writer by profession but a seeker of the Truth at heart. Working with an MNC, she lives in New Delhi. Her inner search has led her to allied interests such as astrology, tarot, past life regression, Pranic and crystal healings. She knows she has a long journey ahead.

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The Key to Wonderland

By Suvasree Karanjai

I am not a prolific writer at all. A lazy academic, I procrastinate at the very idea of sitting on my laptop or tablet to pen down a few lines every day as most writers do religiously. But, lockdown has eventually left me with little option but to find a way of filling twenty-four long hours over twenty-one days, which has now extended much beyond. And hence, I am here on my table.

This seems to me the ultimate gift of this quarantine and the pandemic which many of us are facing for the first time in our lifetime.

Before I write at length, I must give this disclaimer that the write up is entirely based on what and how I see the pandemic and the consequent lockdown sitting in a small town by the foothills of Himalayas, called Siliguri (West Bengal, India). The beautiful place is fondly called the Chicken’s Neck as it connects India’s north-eastern states to the rest of the nation.

Initially, the lockdown shook us with not only the dread of the contagious virus afflicting lives across the globe, but also with the eerie news of suspension of all domestic help and our jobs. Taking a break from workplaces and the rigorous routine life was a great relief indeed. But the very thought that there would be no domestic help gave most Indians a cold shiver, I am pretty sure. And, therefore, immediately from the status of glossy working women, we were donning the shoes of pale, feeble and incompetent housewives. Yes, incompetent because, in most cases, neither could we imagine nor did we have the scope of doing housework for such a long stretch. This felt like was an imposition. We were left with no choice at all. In other words, it was a drastic flip of life.

I must add, the men were more alarmed. They could feel the shudder at the anticipation of their spouses’ mood swings over the coming weeks. Oh! How scary!

For the first few days, being a working woman, I really felt great to have leave and stay at home as a gharwali (a homemaker). I was longing for such a break, seriously. However, it really felt bad to have such holidays at the cost of innumerable lives. First two days most of us spent hours sleeping, working out routines and planning self care and personal growth.

Many portals extended help to all sorts of working people to deal with this frightening lockdown and to prevent a tragic breakdown. While for some the declaration was creepy from day one, others took the less-travelled and optimistic road.

As an academic, I felt I had won an unimagined prize. One always complains of dearth of time to read and write, or even rest, after loads of professional-academic work. Now, that I was ‘gifted’ (for others it might have been an imposition though)  with all this time to explore beyond all boundaries, the depressing fact of escalating fear of the virus found no room for minimal shelter. The nights were long and vibrant, and the days aglow with brainstorming feed from diverse sources.

A creative and intellectual person always has his unique way to deal with any kind of crisis. The lockdown meant, for the academics, the best time for self-education. A thinker is never on leave anywhere and anytime. Self-isolation and self-confinement, which can be equalled with solitary living to a certain extent, is undeniably an essential criterion for any creative venture. For, if one is alone, one is completely with oneself with one’s strengths and weaknesses. Without knowing oneself well, an artist (in all fields, from literary to music and painting) can never create his/her original piece.

Quarantine is the occasion to give oneself to time and time to oneself. The outer world is suddenly shut off. There is no rush to office and no visitors drop in without notice; no horns blow on roads and no wedding drums turn one stone deaf. Though quarantine is not complete solitariness, as one might have to live with one’s partner or family, it does give ample time to pursue new and greater horizons of research and study. Time in quarantine is actually a boon for a bibliophile or academic.

When the lockdown began, the terror of death had not yet gripped the soul.  But the gradual explosion in the number of premature deaths all over the globe suddenly gave way to anxiety. What if I die tomorrow? Will I be able to finish my dream work? I felt a threat standing before my bookshelves and the study table. And then, I heard an inner voice mewing, “I have so much to read and write.” I cannot quit before I reach that serene height of growth without giving this world the best of me.

Time is limited. The death-fear triggered my long withdrawn passion to spur on. Who knows who would fail to escape the gamble of this life-threatening virus?

While this might have been the case with few, the intellectual populace in general took the occasion to enlighten themselves and the world on diverse issues. A thinker always sees with a difference, and hence, makes a difference to the world too. The pandemic has created space for thought, introspection and retrospection. Across the globe, there is input of best intellectual ideas and perceptions which the world history demands now.

The pandemic is not an isolated event. It has deep roots in widespread world politics, history, economy and culture. It’s a major global accident in recent times that has created an unexpected opportunity to study the dynamics of human civilization and psyche. The Slovenian Marxist Slavoj Žižek has already come up with his new short book, Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World. He gives a groundbreaking comprehension of capitalism in the face of this global epidemic. And hence, the cult of pandemic literature is on. It is the peak moment for philosophy to accelerate and unfold a new venture.

The virtual book lovers’ clubs and meetings are now all the more replete with shares of bibliophilic impulses to read different genres. A large literary populace is reading those pandemic literatures which they somehow missed reading in regular busy life. Many have taken this opportunity to get engaged in online courses which are again proliferating in this lockdown. This is not just self-education but a manifestation of a vast community feeling among the academics and bookworms in the times of strict self-isolation. Various portals are now in roll with eye-opening articles to nourish our grey-matter. That itself says that intellectuals are on their feet. Alices are now enjoying their respective wonderlands.

As I had posted on my Facebook news feed: I am finally getting the opportunity to read the unread books , ones that Amazon and Flipkart push bibliophiles like me to buy and stow on overburdened bookshelves. In response to my post, a friend of mine commented that he could still not resist his impulses. Under the cloak of helping the small bookstores survive, he had indulged in buying new books. So there is actually no trick to stop thinkers, academics and bibliophiles. They always see the tunnel aglow, no matter how dark it might seem to the world around.

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Suvasree Karanjai is a PhD candidate at Department of English, University of North Bengal, India. She has reviewed books in Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing and Kitaab a couple of times. She has also interviewed eminent creative writers like Saikat Majumdar and Rajat Chaudhuri in Caesurae: Poetics of Cultural Translation.

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Cyclone Amphan & Lockdown

As cyclone Amphan fireballed and ripped through Kolkata, Nishi Pulugurtha gives a first hand account of how she survived the fear and the terror of the situation

Forecasts and news did not prepare us for the actuality of it all till it actually happened.  We had taken all necessary precautions but what happened on the evening of the 20th of May 2020 rattled and disturbed a lot. Cyclone Amphan was moving slowly over the Bay of Bengal and was expected to make a landfall in the southern parts of Bengal and lash the city of Kolkata as well.

News of this nature is troubling and more so in times of the pandemic. As it is we are all at a loss, stuck at home, worried about how things would turn out. As news kept pouring in about the cyclone which turned in to a super cyclone, the common refrain was why now. Things seem to be getting worse. At a time when we needed to maintain social distancing, people were being evacuated into cyclone shelters. This had to be done, the cyclone would wreak havoc and arrangements had to be made for lives to be saved.

At home, I heard my mother’s carer, Kajal, talking constantly about it over the telephone. She was calling up home and talking to her family members about it. Her home is in Namkhana, South 24 Parganas which would bear the brunt of the cyclone very strongly. Her sister who lives in Bakkhali by the coast, had been evacuated well in advance before the cyclone made a landfall. 

Kajal kept telling me that this was worse than the cyclone Alia as there had been announcements in Namkhana and Bakkhali about how high the waves of the Bay of Bengal would lash out as well. As it began to rain she spoke to her folks, they were all at home, and expecting the river waters to rise had moved everything at home to higher places. Her home is just beside a river. The last time she spoke to her family members was when it was lashing the place. The asbestos sheet that was their roof had been blown away and they were unable to move out of the house as three trees had fallen on the house and one was blocking the door. There were tears in her eyes as she said there was no way anyone could come to rescue her folks.

At about four o’clock I decided to venture out a bit just to have a look at what was happening outside and that is the first time I heard the sound of the wind. It was loud, real loud, of the kind I do not recall hearing in recent times.

It began raining heavily in Kolkata and at home we began securing the glass windows. The intensity of the wind began increasing and we readied candles and match boxes. I even made dinner early as I was sure the electricity supply would go off. I made arrangements for water, both for drinking and use too. Living with someone who is in an advanced state of Azheimer’s, I needed to be prepared with how to deal with things. Living in the moment is something that dementia instills into us.

Friends and cousins started enquiring about how we were holding on. Holding on is something that Amma and I have been doing since her diagnosis had come in. And it is something that every one of us is doing in times of Covid-19. As the storm raged on, the sound and intensity kept increasing.

The tumult of it all was frightening and scary. I opened a window to look out to see how things were outside and that is when I could hear even more loud noises. Many houses in the neighbourhood had fibre sheds on the terraces and as the wind raged, the tins intensified the roars. The sound was fiery and nightmarish. Within our compound was a two storied house that had such a shed on its terrace. As I looked out from the window, I saw a fibre sheet rip off and fly. It frightened me out of my wits.

What if it should hit someone outside. It would lash against electric poles and wires too. It was getting dark too. It was a scary scenario. I closed the window and rushed to be with Amma. She does not speak at all now for some years, the ravages wrought by Alzheimer’s, but it was clear that she was very perturbed. We were enclosed in darkness. I started speaking to her and sat beside her, comforting her. We sat huddled up together not knowing what would happen.

At about 7.30 pm, it seemed that the noises were less. I opened a window again to look out. The wind was no longer raging though it was still raining. My neighbours were out in their verandahs, torches and mobile flashlights on, trying to make some sense of the damage that had been done.

It was too dark to make sense of how things were but we did see our whole compound was waterlogged.  It was important be indoors, to try and be calm. I asked Kajal for news about her family and the state of her village. The last she heard of them was when they had been evacuated and were lodged in a neighbour’s house, all safe. That was at about six in the evening. She said she was unable to get in touch with anyone after that. She tried calling all those whose numbers she had, not just of her family members but also of local villagers, but to no avail.

We had dinner in silence, the electric supply was restored. Amma was taken to bed but she was awake for most part of the night, making noises once in a while. She usually sleeps till twelve, is awake for some time and then falls asleep again. She slept in the wee hours of the morning. I went out to have a look at things in the morning, water all around, my small garden in a mess, the plants mostly bent, fibre sheds strewn around in the compound, glass pieces on my car parked outside.

Thoughts of the pandemic were pushed back, all of us in Kolkata and all over Bengal and Orissa were more concerned about the cyclone and all the devastation it has brought.

I got a call from the local grocer at 6.30 in the morning, I had ordered a few things yesterday before it started. He called up to say that they were on the way. I told him that he could wait. He replied that things were all ready for delivery, moreover I might be in need. The young boy who delivered them told me that there was knee deep water in places.

I asked Kajal if she had any news of her family. She said she had been trying throughout the night but to no avail. There was no news at all. She was with Amma as she usually is. They were holding each other’s hands.

Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha is Associate Professor in the department of English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College and has taught postgraduate courses at West Bengal State University, Rabindra Bharati University and the University of Calcutta. She is the Secretary of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata (IPPL). She writes on travel, film, short stories, poetry and on Alzheimer’s Disease. Her work has been published in The Statesman, Kolkata, in Prosopisia, in the anthology Tranquil Muse and online – Kitaab, Café Dissensus, Coldnoon, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The World Literature Blog and Setu. She guest edited the June 2018 Issue of Café Dissensus on Travel. She has a monograph on Derozio (2010) and a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019). She is now working on her first volume of poems and is editing a collection of essays on travel.

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God Survives Corona

By Devraj Singh Kalsi

Non-believers have no God to thank when the virus dies. Believers have too many replicas to genuflect before once the pandemic gets over. This virus came with the huge potential to ensure the mass conversion of believers into non-believers across the world, across multiple faiths. But the virus is most unlikely to destroy the cells of faith. God has survived many such catastrophes and epidemics in the past. He is going to survive Covid as well.    

After every pandemic, faith becomes stronger. Survivors do not know why they survived but they know God alone deserves gratitude for their survival. It is a big relief the virus did not attack them because God kept them safe. This strain of thought never mutates. Social distancing, wearing masks, and washing of hands are not considered stronger than the will of God.

Once the pandemic ends, expect people to donate wealth to the favourite places of worship. This time, God appears embarrassed to take undue credit. He knows doctors are the real gods who fought against death and saved lives.  

God-fearing people spin a mastermind narrative: If the virus had nothing to do with God, then it should not have resulted in deaths. Believers attribute death to God — the Supreme power. God isn’t happy to hear this. Finally, He musters the courage to clarify that death is not in His hands alone. Parallel chambers of authority have emerged in recent times. He is not the ultimate authority to decide who dies when. Man can kill man. Nations can devastate nations. The powerful heads of states do not seek His consent before declaring wars and planning genocides, before developing nuclear bombs and bio-weapons. God has a valid argument in his defence.

Despite these dark, stark realities, all religions of the world dump death on His shoulders. He is made the scapegoat. Unwilling to shoulder further blame, God denies his alleged role and makes it clear that this virus is not his despatch to punish mankind. It is the remorse within that makes people think God is punishing them in this terrible manner for their mistakes, because the virus is mysterious and inscrutable like the ways of God.

People cannot imagine death without the consent of God. If there is another authority who can decide it, He does not remain supreme. One good reason why people are ready to consider the virus to be God’s representative. Else, the tiny virus cannot wield such power to take them to their graves. People are hell-bent to establish some kind of relationship or tacit understanding between the virus and God.   

Many hold the view that the virus cannot be hailed as the New God because it kills and destroys. But it is also true that God has been doing the same thing in a brazen manner for centuries and people still repose absolute faith in Him. Isn’t that strange? There is a fundamental difference in their modus operandi.

God brings death at a much slower pace and targets specific areas at a time. But the virus is killing people everywhere without any discrimination, at a much rapid pace. The virus is sure to make us think we are all equal. Something God never managed to do.   

The virus is unpredictable just like God. Do you know what He will do next? Who will get rewarded or thrashed? We pray to stay safe all the time, all our lives, in constant mortal danger. Our life is nothing but His will.

Why do we pray to Him when we have a new super power in our midst? Can He really save us if the pandemic returns again in a much deadlier form? We have already seen this storm and it does not inspire positive thinking about His special powers.  

Do not question God or suspect His motives. Be blind in your faith. As the entire world fears for life and medical experts rush to get the vaccine, God alone can deliver a miracle and make the virus lose its potency. Get the drift now. Even if the virus goes away on its own, God gets the credit for its disappearance. This is surely going to make God survive Covid and win Him new believers by converting non-believers to the list.   

                                                    

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Devraj Singh Kalsi works as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short fiction and essays have been published in Kitaab, The Bombay Review, Deccan Herald, The Assam Tribune, The Sunday Statesman, Earthen Lamp Journal, and Readomania. Pal Motors is his first novel.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Categories
Musings

Where have all the stories gone?

by Suchismita Ghoshal

I close my eyes in isolation and wake up from an abrupt slumber. I wake up to brew my favourite cup of green tea flipping the pages of my diary. The unfinished stories now embrace me more, their dormant urge has suddenly caught pace, and now they crawl up to me looking for fulfillment. I set my floating brain up for a moment, concentrate on a point and dip my heart straight to the blank paper to pen down my stories one by one.

But these days are quite different. Every morning, a tune of ambiguous chants pester me. Now, I can clearly hear the transparent music of Gayatri  Mantra. My maa, busy in doing household work, silently joins her hands for an unheard prayer to Lord Shiva. Her worries increase a little more every time she checks the headlines of death tolls and new cases. She always mentions that prayers clear all doubts, all sufferings, and all hurdles at once. I never cared to pay heed to such talk. I thought the mantras were merely an amalgamation of some Sanskrit scriptures.

I heave a long sigh now. My head unknowingly rises up and I can see my hands come together to share a prayer. Have I turned into a believer? Has Corona turned me into a theist?

I always curse myself for living in this reckless twenty-first century world that has no remote to pause. Everything in this world moves without any hint as to where we are headed but makes sure, we join the race. If I were born in the  60’s or 70’s where pausing was valued, where people patronised art, where old civilisations were valued, where cellphones did not interrupt one’s Muse, when the air was fresh and  there was no COVID 19, how fantastic would that be!

Maa serves hot parathas on my plate and I start blabbering in front of her. I say, “Please go back to the 60’s, I can’t live in between the dust and darkness.” In between our cold silent gestures, Corona silently enters and giggles with its dusky intent.

My unfinished stories these days loiter in every nook and corner and refuse to let me pour all my heart into my art. They loiter from the streets of daily wagers, to the homes of starving poor, then the vacant paths where stray dogs cry out for hunger; then the hospitals of the assiduous health workers and bounce back touching the sinful desire of those who sneakily break quarantine rules. Everything creates a whirlwind of emotions inside my head and I stop my writing. What happened to me? Corona might have blessed us with the recess for art but this art cuts my heart!

I am not a web series person But the drastic change in atmosphere penetrates through my skin lighting up my heart. I am hypnotized by the mellow tone of arresting sunsets, chirping birds, clear azure skies, green leaves and letting them etch stories in my heart so that even after lockdown I can cherish them forever.

I pass nights with the thought that if everything settles down again, the world must return the pleasures of nirvana, the world must sing sufi songs and ghazals, the world must unfurl the doors of open minds, the world must stop comparing the weight of money. This world must turn into a lover — not an angry rebellious one but one that heals with love, tolerance and gentleness.

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Suchismita Ghoshal is a professional writer, poet, published author and storyteller from Malda, West Bengal. She has co-authorized for more than 140 anthologies, journals and magazines both nationally and internationally. Her debit poetry book “Fields of Sonnet” has launched on last September.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Categories
Musings

The Bookshelf And The Lockdown

By K. R. Guruprasad

I have always wondered, when I am not at home, do the inhabitants of my bookshelf come alive like those children’s playthings in Toy Story? Apart from what their titles bind them to narrate, do my books have other stories to tell? Is my bookshelf some sort of a universe in itself with each compartment and the contents – an entity of its own? Are there dimensions to a bookshelf that we, humans, are not aware of – something that is beyond our realm?

For a while now (for me, a year since my last job as a journalist), Monday mornings do not come with blues attached. Moreover, since the lockdown, it hardly registers. However, this time I woke up to a message from a friend. She sent me a picture of her bookshelf. Pristine. Clean. I kept looking at the picture and zoomed in to see if I could read the titles of the books. The low-resolution nature of the photograph offered me a little chance to do so. Some I could read, some covers I was familiar with, and a lot many I could not figure out. 

However, the shelf stood proud. The big brown square with sixteen shelves held its own against a lighter coloured background. The books despite not being arranged in perfect rows -‑ some standing, some lying flat — presented a scenic contrast and appeared orderly on the whole. 

I shifted my gaze to my bookshelf and a quote, I had read a long time ago, came to my mind — “If you do not keep on sorting your books, your books unsort themselves”.

My bookshelf is chaotic. It’s like the city I live in — Mumbai. Each book jostling for space and complaining and, yet, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

But I like it the way it is. I have heard that people who keep pets end up looking like each other after a while,  and behave similarly too. Many dog owners have told me this. I don’t know much about it but I have seen it happen with one of my friends. But that is not the point. Drawing an analogy, there is a thought germinating and it asks, after a while, does a bookshelf reflect the mind of its owner? I look at my bookshelf and I seem to know the answer. I am just not sure if I should put it out here.

Going back to that quote — do the books really want to “… unsort themselves?”  I’m thinking of a counter narrative here.

What if my books want to be sorted. Will they secretly, when I am not home, rearrange themselves in an order that would make a librarian proud? Or, will they rise in rebellion against me to drive home the point? 

Will a book ‘accidentally’ fall on my head and ensure that it drills some sense into me and goad me to impart some sanity to my bookshelf as well. I am relieved that I have kept all the heavy hard cover books on the lowest shelves. Of course, back then I had no inkling of any rebellion by the books. I had done that just to add solidity to the shelf. It is supposed to be a strong foundation.

If the books were to sort themselves, then they must be interacting. I hope they are. For all the disorder that my shelf displays, it aptly houses James Gleick’s Chaos. Does this book try to make sense and explain to others the lack of planning and logic in the way I have maintained the bookshelf? 

Does Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace talk to others about why I am oblivious of their realm? Does Milan Kundera’s Joker still sit sulking in a corner because I have only read about seventy to eighty pages and have kept it back with a bookmark sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb? And does Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations complain, “Why on earth have I been placed next to Charles Bukowski’s The Pleasures Of The Damned and what on earth am I supposed to do here?”

I’m quite sure my PG Wodehouse’s Carry On Jeeves treats its neighbour Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence like its own butler and comments on its sartorial sense or rather the lack of it. Despite the crowding, there is, however, one hollow space that makes me well up. The emptiness of the space where I had kept my copy of One Hundred Years Of Solitude. I gave away Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece to a friend —  a young writer and a book lover himself. I hope to buy another copy soon. I will.

There is no thought behind the way the books are arranged on my bookshelf. Bill Bryson’s The Road To Little Dribbling is shoulder-to shoulder with Peter Carey’s True History of The Kelly Gang. My Kannada books are strewn all over with a couple of them holding their own against Howard Jacobson and John Steinbeck on either side. 

There is Rushdie with Hemmingway, Coetzee and Murakami are neighbours filled with warmth. There is my collection of National Geographic Magazine somewhere deep down there and on top of this stack is a potpourri of books including my sketch book.

That’s not all. There are layers I cannot reach. And I don’t know when I will unravel them. Behind the proud frontline are rows of books I bought but never read. It makes me shudder to even guess what they must be thinking. Would they consult J Krishnamurthy’s The Awakening Of Intelligence to understand and counsel themselves as to why they are the neglected children?

And then there is a book Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. It knows it doesn’t belong here but has somehow been at home among my books for more than a decade. I had borrowed it from a colleague in 2008 and have not returned it so far. I promised him that I would, and I intend to keep that promise. So, this copy knows it is not permanent here. Must be a miserable feeling to be somewhere for that long and yet not belong. 

I have often felt like that in between shifting residences in Mumbai. Most of my contracts have ended in eleven months and sometimes maybe twenty two months. But the current place has been my residence for six years now. Do I feel like this copy of Douglas Adams’s work here? Sometimes, I do. 

It is a studio apartment. And it doesn’t offer me space for another bookshelf. In fact the top left square of my bookshelf is where I have kept all the photos of Gods and holy books, including Shrimad Bhagavad Gita. In the lower squares I have made space for my watches and bottles of cologne. And now in the lockdown, there are bottles of hand sanitisers too. The shelves are so stacked that there is no place for The Shadow Of The Wind, which interestingly (ironically?) is the part one of The Cemetery Of Forgotten Books series, and it finds itself on top of the bookshelf gupshupping with a straw hat. 

It appears that my jostling for space in the apartment is a concurrent and a similar theme to the way my books are stacked. Whenever I am vexed with all this struggle, a walk by the sea rejuvenates me. But what about my books?

It maybe fantastical to think that whenever I step outside, they crib about me. But being privy to the way I live, it wouldn’t take too much imagination to believe that they do. There is an unread copy of Hilary Mantel’s A Place Of Greater Safety and a partially read The Second World War by Antony Beevor. And I wonder if these books would put the idea of a revolution and war in the minds of the other books. Maybe I should keep these books in good humour. A transparent polythene cover and proper dusting should do the trick. 

I do not want to return to my flat one day and find my books in regimental rows and columns with their guns trained on me. It would break my heart to see my favourite A Farewell To Arms pick up a gun again. 

Perhaps before the lockdown ends, I will dust all the books, the bookshelf and rearrange them in a way they might prefer. Perhaps Hemingway wants to be with Alistair McLean. Maybe all my Kannada books want to be together and even share some space with a few Hindi books. I should also make it a point to read all those books sulking behind the front rows. 

All this was in my top five things-to-do-in-the-lockdown list and I haven’t come around to doing any of them so far. Despite my counter narrative to the quote, I believe in what Georges Perec wrote in his Thoughts Of Sorts.

Deep down at a subconscious level, I’m happy with the way my bookshelf is. I’m beginning to understand as I write this piece that the state of the bookshelf does indeed reflect my state of mind.

My bookshelf, along with its inhabitants, is a thriving ecosystem. A being of its own with its blood lines and nerve centres. Despite its constant state of ‘unsort’, I gravitate to it whenever I’m in need of a friend or solace. Sometimes I wonder if it owns me instead of the other way round. Perhaps in some dimension, of which I’m unaware, my bookshelf and I are a single entity. I sure do hope so.

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K.R. Guruprasad has been associated with the sports pages of several newspapers over the last 16 years, as Sports Editor of DNA and previously the Indian Express and Hindustan Times. Guru has developed a finesse at zooming out of the myopic view of any sport, instead looking at sports as a coming together of the players’ lives and struggles, skills and technique and much more. His book ‘Going Places. India’s Small-Town Cricket Heroes’ by Penguin is a great testament to this approach. While his professional career has been focused on writing about sports, he is an avid reader and writer of varied subjects.  An alumnus of Asian College of Journalism, was born in Bellary, Karnataka and later pursued his education in Mumbai.

Categories
Musings

Write in the way you love to write…

By Devraj Singh Kalsi

I had never felt the need to move out of the city. Let me correct myself here. I had never felt the urge to move out of the city. All my friends were determined to leave the city after completing their studies. They had convinced themselves that there were no opportunities here. A better future, a dream career was only possible elsewhere. I did not buy this sentiment. I was not swept by the tide of majoritarian thinking. I was a loner marooned on the tiny island of my hardcore beliefs that withstood the winds of change.  

I had always felt that a writer does not necessarily need to move out except for commercial compulsions. If he moves out, it does take him away from his roots and the intimate world he belongs to. He writes wistfully of the lost world and tries to draw a connection.

If I wish to write well, I have to read well. This can happen in the small town as well. Why should I leave the city I had grown up in? This was the kind of idealism that restrained me. I was convinced to hear this reassuring voice urging me to lock myself down where I was and just read and write. I listened to it and stayed back. For almost two decades.  

While they moved at a frenzied pace made more furious by their ambition within, I was the one who remained out of this race, to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, finding bliss in buying vegetables from farmers, plucking guavas and mangoes, having long walks to breathe in the fresh air, and listening to birds and their different voices. Something must be terribly lacking in such a person who opts for things nobody cares about. Must be a nervous chap afraid of failing who refuses to participate.

Relatives and family members came down heavily, suspecting the lack of the seeds of ambition. Inspirational stories of success abroad were narrated. When these did not push me hard to go out and compete, they realised the futility of it and dismissed my cowardice and lethargy as a tell-tale sign of impending doom. A person who lives to commit professional blunder. Such abuse came my way. I brushed it all aside. Nothing went deep inside to stir me, to jolt me, to make me feel insulted, to feel challenged, to come out and fight the usual survival wars of middle-class existence.   

Most of the friends became journalists and editors and rose to the eminence of the kind they had visualised. I was still reading and writing and undergoing the angst of creative puberty, waiting for the first novel to burst out of me. When they heard of my long, endless struggle, they advised me to become flexible and practical, move to a cosmopolitan city and build contacts.

I knew from my college days I had chosen a path less travelled. Okay, I was late in meeting them at the thoroughfare of success. But does it mean I have to change my chosen path now? Their words did not persuade me. I still believed in what I had chosen long ago. I was ready to face the consequences. My experiences of failure kept me grounded. I never thought I was desperate to meet success, never pleading for the gates of success to let me in.    

The hectic pace of life never made me change my languid pace. I followed my speed, never rushing into anything. I had the time to stand and absorb the beauty of flowers blooming all around, I had the time to sit by the riverside and watch its languid flow. I had the time to sit under the shady tree and distance myself from the world around me. I had the time to observe hordes of people in the market.

While I did work in advertising as a copywriter for my bread and butter, I stayed away from the stressful world and chose to work from home. It gave me a flexible routine, offered extra time to think and write for myself. I felt I was going to lose this fine balance if I went elsewhere. The ideal state of composure would be lost forever.

A compromise would scuttle my romance with nature. I was convinced even if I had to write for any other medium, I would still do it from my hometown. If the creative output was impressive, the terms and conditions would be made flexible. I was not going to relocate for career gains.  

The world is full of stories of people leaving homes for jobs. In the creative world, such stories of migration and struggle are also common. I was perhaps the uncommon kind who was convinced of the lack of the need to go anywhere else. Perhaps, it was true that the urge to make pots of money was not there. Or maybe I always believed big money was going to come if I wrote big stuff. Location was immaterial. Nobody really cares to know where the writer wrote the story so long as his work was good. When I read about respected authors who were grocers, postal clerks, and ration-shop owners, the entire perspective changed.

If I make it, I will be proved right. Perhaps I am wrong to think so. Sometimes, I wonder why I have this stubborn streak.

Is it because I love the city? Or I am afraid of finding myself fighting the same predictable battles as others do? Is it that I hate to come out of my comfort zone? Hurl any such reasoning. I am unruffled.   

This makes me think hard again. Is it the love of people and places? Why don’t I try once to leave and see how it pans out? As I tell myself to change, something tells me not to get distracted. Stay on the path I have been following. Do not think like others, say no to herd mentality. But when others question my present life, they do not think I chose it. They think I could not secure a better one. It is a defeat when I have nothing to tell them, to show them, to silence them.

The world I live in is relatively small, but it is nurturing my system well. While the city-based people have also suffered a lot, their success hides everything else. My failures strip me of the barest cover to defend myself.  

Take the counterpoint now. If life is so good here, why is your creativity not blooming and booming in the small town? Those city-based ones are writing best-sellers and you make tall claims of being a good writer. When it does not show in terms of success, isn’t it a wasted life?  

More important to find out is whether the writer in me feels exhausted or wasted. I have a word with the writer within every morning. He says he is still connected and happy to be here, not regretting the choice I made long ago.  

Agreed, creativity did not blossom here for me, but what is the guarantee it would have flourished elsewhere? They argue the chaos of survival, the urge to prove would have brought out my creativity. This slow life did not let it happen. They mean creativity comes out under stress. Well, it is an opinion and a possibility. But for me, I never like to write a single sentence under pressure.  

At this stage in life, with nothing worth to showcase as a fancy badge of success, I have no regret for not moving out, of being content with whatever creativity I could muster to tell a few stories. Did I wait too long for creativity to bloom instead of trying to force it? So long as I can create something decent even if it is not conventionally successful, I am happy for myself. Nothing else matters – not even the harshest criticism of my choices.   

The creativity I see around is non-competitive and complete in itself. Only humans want their creativity to become competitive, get acknowledged and recognised. I am happy to blossom the way my world wants me to bloom. Even if I do not, absolutely no regrets. Many creative folks have already gone down this path. I am not the first one to disappear without leaving behind a substantial body of work.

But the belief that brilliant stuff does not always have to come out of a metro-centric environment remains firm. All creative folks are not bound to create great art during their lifetime. Much of their existence is dedicated to the admiration of creative beauty in various forms. Forget the charm and trappings of success. Write in the way you love to write. This harmony is more important for the seeker within.      

                                                  

Devraj Singh Kalsi works as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short fiction and essays have been published in Kitaab, The Bombay Review, Deccan Herald, The Assam Tribune, The Sunday Statesman, Earthen Lamp Journal, and Readomania. Pal Motors is his first novel.

Categories
Musings

People matter more than Money

By Keith Lyons

Some of my best friends on Facebook aren’t my friends anymore

It was the post on Facebook, in the early days, before, you know, before it got really serious. “Does anyone know of anyone actually getting this virus?” The question behind the question was something like ‘this is all fake news, all made up, this is not real’. In the comments section, her FB friends and followers were quick to respond. No. No. Don’t know. No. No. Don’t know anyone. As if to confirm suspicions. So, the poster followed up. Wasn’t it interesting that no one of her hundreds, perhaps thousands of friends, had themselves or knew of anyone with the virus?

When I checked later that week, the denial and dismissal hit some bumps. People, from around the globe, added comments to the list. Yes, they knew of someone who had it. Yes, one of their friends got COVID. Yes, I have it.

So that conspiracy theory in the making was quashed. I selected first unfollow, then unfriend. And thought about blocking or reporting.

But like the arcade game Whac-A-Mole, more so-called Friends were re-posting ‘alternative news’, or penning their own takes on the virus. Sure, we are in a democracy. Sure, information is distributed. Sure, we can be critical of official sources. But when a friend posts, all in upper case, “THIS IS ALL CRAP” I am tempted to turn off the shouting. Because this is a sign that someone has been contaminated, just like in the horror-comedy Shaun of the Dead. Ironically, it is their shouting about all the unnecessary fear and overblown panic that suggests that they themselves are afraid and panicking and have chosen to find comfort in the thin veneer of insight that comes with conspiracy theories. Just that you can’t call them conspiracy theories. Non-mainstream views sounds nicer. Alternative news perhaps.

I’m told not to believe public health officials, political leaders, epidemiologists or scientists. Because, somehow, without educational qualifications, just with a little time using Google and YouTube, my friend is now privy to the real truth, and I am just a mere witless sheep, so naive, so unable to see that this virus hoax is actually a black swan event being used by the powerful elites and clandestine organisations to bring about compulsory micro-chipping, GPS tracking and vaccinations. Or is it really a white swan event, and we could have seen it coming?

So, who will achieve world domination through the pandemic and the recession to follow? The coronavirus itself, isn’t that its goal, aided and abetted by human carriers? All of this is a tad confusing. There’s an invisible virus which is wreaking havoc, it has almost closed down many nations and brought a halt to human activity. We can hear the birds singing, the water is clearer, the air is breathable again, and filled with smells and fragrances. It is an unexpected benefit of lockdown. In such a short amount of time, the Earth has started to heal. We’ve seen how a new world might look, with the kindness of neighbours, a sense of community, time to pause, linger, reflect.

There’s a psychological test, where you imagine yourself in a white room, with no way out. What do you do? Your answer is supposed to indicate your attitude towards death, specifically your own death. In a way, the lockdown has been like a mini-psychology test, to see how we do behave. Are we productive and organised, with full routines and self-care and connecting with others? Or instead, do we mope around, eat too much, binge on Netflix or entertainment as a means of escape, rather than use this time to sort out some things in our lives? Funny how a few months ago many of us were complaining we don’t have enough time with our families or that we are putting off doing things because we are too busy. Yet when the opportunity to spend quality time together or the freedom to do that home decorating task finally arrives, instead we find ourselves wanting to kill those we live with, lamenting over our lack of progress on those rainy day errands, or getting into a cycle of avoidance, regret, and guilt.

In these turbulent times, many things have been put on hold. Not just haircuts, or holidays. But many things have carried on too, though in ways that are not so familiar to us.

The first of my friends to get COVID-19 was in Canada, though she wasn’t able to be tested to confirm her case. One of my best friend’s mother died at the start of the lockdown, not from the virus, but from the kind of natural causes that sees you go out in your late nineties. Travel restrictions and prohibitions on gatherings meant a small service was held via video link.

A comedian and actor from my childhood, Tim Brooke-Taylor, died from COVID-19, on the other side of the world, but because he’d been in the living room when I was young, it seemed like it was close. Then, just a few days ago, a friend calls from China, bearing sad news. One of my friends, a Tibetan in her sixties who founded orphanages and schools across Tibet, had died in Switzerland. The cause of death, I check and re-check the translation on the article in the newspaper: the virus. Tendol was the kindest, big-hearted, loving person I have ever met. She was literally mother to over 300, having welcomed street children, abandoned waifs and orphans into her homes.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, it seems to have separated out those countries that have acted quickly from those who haven’t, or those lacking resources. The daily updates of confirmed cases, patients in hospital, and deaths seems to be too much like the Olympic medal table. We check on how we are doing, how others are doing, how we are doing in relation to our rivals. Self-proclaimed experts ponder exponential curves and possible projections, politicians casually dismiss that it might hurt tens of thousands of people, but they are standing in the way of economic growth.

I would like to go on Facebook and tell others about my friend Tendol, who more than once told me she was ‘the happiest person on Earth’. I would like to let others know that this pandemic is human, not mathematical. I would like others to know people matter more than money, that you can re-start an economy but you can’t bring someone back to life, that if you let go of selfishness and greed you may find your love extends beyond yourself, your family, even your country.

I would like to say this to all my Facebook friends, though the ones I’d really like to reach are now quarantined, unfollowed, unfriended.

Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer, author and creative writing mentor, with a background in psychology and social sciences. He has been published in newspapers, magazines, websites and journals around the world, and his work was nominated for the Pushcart prize. Keith was featured as one of the top 10 travel journalists in Roy Stevenson’s ‘Rock Star Travel Writers’ (2018). He has undertaken writer residencies in Antarctica and on an isolated Australian island, and in 2020 plans to finally work out how to add posts to his site Wandering in the World (http://wanderingintheworld.com).