By Don Aguiar
Mumbai, May 22, 2020: Lockdown is all a bit of a shock being enforced in just four hours from the time PM Modi made this announcement, and honestly, even if you followed the build up from the start like some sort of Bollywood film there really wasn’t any way to predict how this pandemic would have impacted modern life.
In the PM’s previous national address, the government hinted at triumphalism against the virus. Honestly declaring victory now is a fatuous claim.
While in his latest national address he made ridiculous claims of India becoming a superpower due to Covid-19 crisis, tall promises about 20 LCr package (not even 10 percent of earlier 1.7 LCr package has reached people), but not a word for the migrant labor whom the cruel lockdown has destituted and forced to walk back! He insisted that the country should view the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to achieve economic self-reliance, and stressed on the importance of promoting “local” products.
Life will move on beyond 2020. But we must make sure that our argumentative democracy is still chattering away. Or else coronavirus would still have won.
I have to take a little step back when people say it heralds the return to a simpler way of life. Well yes it does, apart from we have the internet, home shopping and deliveries, endless things to binge out on with the television, and some people even have the ability to ignore basic pieces of advice.
Also when would that simpler life have been? Any time in the 20th century you have, well erm, two massive world wars that impacted our way of life pretty radically, in both the pre- and post-war years. Before that, anything that hit on such a wide level, was probably plague or such. So yes. I agree, things are a little simpler at the moment, work from home, teach from home, and just stay at home. But there are wider implications.
Within days of the lockdown been declared, frantic migrants went on a massive exodus. India had inflicted an avoidable catastrophe on itself by creating a humanitarian crises. Without their daily income, hungry and homeless the migrants took to the national highways. The scorching sun didn’t bother them, neither did the fact that their homes could be over 300 Km away.
Even those who survive death will live in abject poverty. The government of the day seems oblivious of that reality and got flummoxed by the human lives versus livelihood binary and appeared as dumbstruck as a deer caught in the headlights. They could handle neither.
For anyone in the entertainment, hospitality and freelance worlds the impact has been devastating. While governments have moved to ensure jobs are saved, (virtual) unemployment lines are getting longer and the world of the self-employed, small businesses and family firms will come out of this crisis a much changed place.
But chin up, come on! Where is your optimism and perseverance? In fact they are alive and well. This simple age has come with some extraordinary technological advantages and surprises. While we may moan about the lack of human contact, days and evenings can be filled with virtual tastings, with close friends where conversations can take place in a more intimate environment.
Some of this was available, to a certain extent, pre-Covid-19, but, like the mobilization of home delivery service, it has gathered a tremendous pace.
It’s not just if you are looking to fancy a little culture? There is a wealth of talent out there that normally would be kept busy treading the boards or buried in orchestra pits in the evenings. Institutions like the NCPA, the Royal Opera House and Netflix / Amazon are all hosting a heap of events online. So if you fancy getting dressed up and catching a show in your own home, you can.
Top class musicians are taking to the web and playing intimate gigs. I say intimate, because when was the last time you watched someone like Herbie Hancock or Pink Floyd play as if you were sitting next to them?
Also if you are off work, or facing this horrible phrase ‘furloughing’ and you have time on your hands, perhaps it’s the moment to take up a new hobby, improve that old hobby you always meant to, or just give back to the community. Here in the tiny village, in the city, I live in, the notes have gone round for volunteers to help with the elderly and infirm. Simple tasks can help someone out, like picking up prescriptions, bits of shopping, even a quick chat through the open window, or posting letters. While there might be some interesting campaigns about paying kindness forwards on the net, this sort of local love is invaluable.
If you live in a city, plenty can be done to help your fellow humans. Your local restaurant and bar might be offering take-away food and drinks or cocktails, while some may be doing vouchers for when they reopen, putting money in their tills; all this helps look after those folk behind the stick. Local convenience shops, family-run corner shops that can stay open, shop there rather than the supermarkets.
As a quick aside, despite all this technology connecting us together like never before, try writing a letter or card to someone. I guess in all this I am really asking you, good reader, to have a think about where you are, what you would normally do and the people you normally interact with, are they okay? If in need, can you help them? There has never been a better time for us to overrun with the spirit of human kindness.