Pandemic Diary: Part II - Medical Looting!

Being socially distant, private, shut up indoors, and working from home had its perks during the lockdowns and afterward, as knocking out these dairy entries on my laptop was one such saving grace for me.

Nearly two years on, the war on the novel Coronavirus is not over yet. At the very least, the initial shock of being friendless and without biryani, irani chai, and Osmania biscuits, is slowly wearing off. A plague on their houses, who brought this virus into our midst.

The following are the diary scratchings of what otherwise might be mundane aspects of life as we lived through 2020/'21, most likely our worst annus horribilis.

Open Medical Looting!:

These are the days of looting. The name of the game is medical looting.

Many private hospitals (with medical shops in cahoots) collect up to Rs. 1 lakh as advance fees and Rs. 30,000 per day on the first day of a minimum 7- to 12-day period of hospital admission in the name of providing 'better' medical services, tests, and medicines.

This does not include the cost of overpriced critical medicines, oxygen services, ventilators, blood transfusions, and private doctor consultations throughout the hospital stay. According to various newspaper and television reports, such rogue hospitals and their affiliated doctors have shamelessly looted the helpless patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment at their facility. The GO (government order) prescribing nominal rates for treatment - was promptly tossed into the dustbin! Nobody gives a rat’s backside.

Imagine the plight of a person offered unconscionable billings to the tune of Rs. 15 to 20 lakhs! If two members of the same family get admitted to the hospital for treatment, the total bill will hit the roof! - upwards of Rs. 30 lakhs! If you, however, do survive Covid-19, you will almost certainly die of a heart attack while footing the bill!

Hospitals are merciless during this pandemic. People's savings and credit have been ruined by their rampant overcharging, costing them lakhs of rupees to get well! The entire family system is being thrown into a state of perpetual limbo, unsure when or if the situation will get resolved. Or whether they will regain the financial position they had before Covid dealt them a cruel blow remains uncertain. (Be prepared to fall into poverty due to catastrophic healthcare costs in our country.)

Hospitals never lower their outrageously high prices. God help you if you are uninsured. Aside from various fictitious medical expenses that add up substantially to a hefty Covid treatment bill, you will receive a lifelong mental health crisis and a permanently precarious financial situation for free! Patients are not given any logical reasoning (or justification) for the billing procedure for at least a 10-day treatment of Coronavirus infection at a local private hospital. You have no other choice but to pay whatever the bill states. (I'm running out of exclamation marks at the end of my sentences.)

It's difficult to understand how the medical fraternity: hospital administrators, owners, nurses, healthcare workers, and specialist doctors allow their conscience or moral feelings to win when they see their patients (and their attendants) forced to pay exorbitant bills through their noses. Pity isn't the right word, but the medical profession as a whole has lost my trust and respect.

Doctors have become profiteering businessmen, concerned with making a profit apart from being well compensated for their profession. Thanks to the corporatized medical-industrial complex, Big Pharma breathing down their necks all the time, doctors are not doctors anymore. It's a tragedy of human history. Considering what is happening with Coronavirus patients, it appears that doctors have lost control of their profession. They do not appear to be as compassionate, empathetic, or sensitive to patients' needs as they once were. Although not all doctors are morally bankrupt or lack ethical standards, a significant number of them are.

[While we are aware that some doctors and private hospitals are engaged in rampant looting, we still regard them and other healthcare professionals as our society’s strongest pillars. True to their noble profession, they put their lives in danger by working for up to 24 hours at a stretch, seven days a week, doing double and triple shifts or more. Doctors, as exceptional caregivers, have become synonymous with frontline soldiers, heroes stronger than Hulk or Iron Man, irrespective of all great difficulties, in the global battle against the Coronavirus Pandemic. These honours are very well-deserved by the doctors who have made significant sacrifices for their countrymen. I applaud them.]

COVID-19 medications such as Remdesivir injections, PPE kits, RT-PCR assay tests, and pulse oximeters have further inflated medical bills. These critical medicines, crucial to patients, were charged exorbitantly and were never sold only at MRP. Around May 2021, Covifor Remdesivir injection (100 mg/vial), with a revised MRP of Rs. 3,490 (before government taxpayer subsidies), was sold for Rs. 20,000 per vial without maintaining a record. (Typically, a Covid patient needs 6 vials in as many days, so you have to shell out rupees 1 Lakh and 20,000 thousand for it). Government authorities were majorly useless in bringing down the gap between demand and supply. Nothing could put a stop to the racket, which is still going on happily all over the country. People have been ripped off left, right, and centre in their desperate attempts to obtain essential drugs, hospital beds, and oxygen cylinders.

Local private hospitals are in unholy collusion with medical store salesperson(s) or black-marketing anti-socials, cheats, and fraudsters in this frenzy of looting desperate patients and their families. It's a travesty.

Some medical practitioners (Doctors, of all lifesavers) who we look up to as true heroes, not just as demi-Gods but also as next only to God, have broken their sacred Hippocratic Oath and engaged in unethical malpractices. They're the type that makes them loot (not earn) a lot of money from sick patients admitted to hospitals for viral infection treatment. It's a shame, a disgrace, that they’re able to accomplish this by striking deals with some equally culpable private hospitals. Easy money!

Some private corporate hospitals have no trouble swindling large sums of money from sick, ailing patients and their families in the name of providing good treatment. Post looting, these ‘specialty' medical looters call up property contractors and negotiate deals to add another floor to their (bhoot!) bunglas, add more utility (futility!) rooms to it, or completely remodel or renovate their flat. While that takes time, why not spend the loot on vehicles far more luxurious than the one that was already starting to resemble low-class crap? Or even better, open a new clinic using the tainted ill-fated money purloined from the patients who died or were miraculously saved by the grace of God but have lost everything.

- June to August 2021

[That said, Doctors will always be epitomes of medical expertise and excellence to patients and the communities. Given their stature as next only to God as life-givers and savers, the work of doctors, nurses, including all medical health co-workers, is held in high esteem. Doctors are still ‘a paragon of doctorly virtue,’ and their profession is the noblest in the world. A few bad apples may bring a bad name to their medical fraternity because of their misplaced greed, but we continue to look up to the good doctors with nothing but deep gratitude.]

- Saturday, 25 September 2021

A Dolo 650 Mg tablet, which is used to treat fever, pain, and aches, was charged at Rs. 30 to 40 apiece, despite the fact that a strip of 15 tablets costs only Rs. 30 in the market! Making hay while the sun shines, some private hospitals and medical shops have exposed an utterly ugly face!

Many hospitals, also known as health care institutions, providers, or 'caregivers,' have violated humanitarian values. Their ostensibly inherent values like patient-centeredness, timeliness, and efficiency have all gone to the dogs! Regrettably, all the good it could have brought to mind has gone from bad to worse, culminating in disgrace.

- Thursday, 30 September 2021

A Sense of Nostalgia:

Thank goodness my sense of nostalgia has taught me to appreciate silence and loneliness. I lend a sympathetic ear to friends, family, and acquaintances whenever the opportunity arises. I do, indeed. If some of them don’t respond thoughtfully in return when I ask, it’s just fine. Life is not the same for everyone.

I gave up on trying to be heard a long time ago. It isn’t worth it. So I take things as they come without overthinking them. Now that the coronavirus is crawling on its way out, I’ve started making plans to meet a friend for lunch, go for long walks to nowhere in particular, get a haircut on time, shave regularly, and do some such ordinarily routine stuff. And be content like a kid.

...and then I went and washed my hands for the third time with Dettol liquid hand wash.

- Thursday, 04 November 2021

I try to be productive in my daily life, take creative risks in my work, avoid burning on my own coals or stoking my own fires, and set myself free (I believe I was free the last time I checked, but I think I was mistaken). It makes no difference if my plans get cancelled outright or how productive I am. It’s enough for me to have them: something to look forward to day after day, week after week, year after year. That’s how I’ve been feeling lately.

Let us all give up our selfish and fast-paced ways of life in favour of slowing down and savouring each moment.

• Slow down and soak it up
• Appreciate life more
• Boost your sense of wonder in life
• Keep yourself safe
• Take the appropriate precautions
• Share Biryani

- Sunday, 28 November 2021

Deadly Omicron Virus:

We now have a new virus: OMICRON (coronavirus strain B.1.1.529), a Covid-19 “variant of concern” that is more virulent, highly infectious, six times more transmissible than its predecessor, DELTA, and vaccine-resistant! (The only saving grace is that the new virus doesn’t escape RT-PCR and RAT testing. It is easily detectable.) Ironically, the name Omicron sounds more like an ‘electrical power system’ or ‘electrical fittings’ rather than a deadly virus! Jokes aside, this is yet another make-or-break challenge for the survival of the human species. Already, I’m terrified. I understand that the new variant is a cause for concern but not a cause for alarm or panic. That’s being brave. But still …

- Tuesday, 30 November 2021

The End.

By Arindam Moulick

End of part 2 of 2

Pandemic Diary: Part I - Back to Friends, Biryani, and Chai!

Lockdown diaries are a dime a dozen, so I’ve scrawled up a bunch of post-lockdown diarological impulses as we move through this deadly nightmare. I hope we all make a smooth transition to life after the pandemic. It's time to rouse from this deleterious moment of our lives.

The diary entries are as follows:

No Friends, No Biryani:

W.H.O. (world health organization) has officially declared COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) viral disease a public health emergency of international concern. God bless us all.

The Pandemic brought many gifts in our lives: For the first time in decades, I cherished forlorn streets and desolate roads in my neighbourhood as I sauntered past, masked up and sanitised for protection, the familiar buildings and gullies, and shops to buy essential household groceries from a nearby supermarket. The streets were strangely quiet, peacefully bereft of traffic din. Even gully dogs and cats were unable to make their presence felt. Mosquitoes? They're up and busily about, as is their wont, raising bumps on the skin!

- Sunday, 29 March 2020

No friends and no bonding over biryani (or chai pe charcha) is unthinkable to people in this part of the subcontinent. Dum-cooked Hyderabadi chicken biryani is a global food craze. My US-, UK-returned friends pull my leg for being still a biryani-loving gent having a stereotypical taste palette who refuses to let the whiff of other good food entice me. That is absolutely correct. I never get bored or tired of the quintessential biryani fare. “Kaiku bhayi? Chicha hamare ku bolte biryani-itch khana, toh hum biryani-itch khate ji. Aur kuch nakko khao!” So there you are!

We cancelled our plans to visit Bangalore (now Bengaluru) during the early onset of the monsoon season. Gone for a toss.

Summer vacation in Kolkata isn’t going to happen either. Visiting Tirupati in the winter appears unlikely.

I become a difficult person to be around if I don't get my fix of a hot aromatic plate of handi biryani! That is a proven fact. Nothing compares to the great Hyderabadi dum biryani cuisine in terms of taste and smell or aroma. Eating anything else would seem... sacrilegious.

Eerie pin-drop silence! Now I know silence speaks louder than voice; it’s deafening! Oh my goodness…! Absolutely no sound anywhere on the road. No traffic! No humans! No street dogs! It’s all so quiet - a séance-like space setting. Post-apocalyptic. Welcome to the new 'not' normal.

I'm glad to report that while in COVID-19 lockdown-induced melancholia, I learned to go slow. As the weeks turned into months, and months into a year, I realised I got ample time on my hands to reflect on myself, and if I could re-acquaint with a friend whom I had lost contact with several years ago, it would be an experience beyond words. I also couldn't forego the idea of experimenting with personal productivity regimes while teaching myself the value of family and relationships. I ate insatiably and read voraciously, as I am an avid reader.

I went to the supermarket a couple of buildings away today to get some 'essential items.' Nobody panicked, and there was no evidence of panic buying. Everyone was patient and calm.

Cleaner air and bright blue skies...

Days seem to last forever, and nights slip away far too quickly. Sitting on the balcony, nodding at our neighbours, and calling close friends and relatives seems to reassure us that life will return to normalcy soon.

I washed my hands with Dettol liquid soap for the nth time.

Just finished kneading Maida dough for making Luchees (Puris). Had Luchee Aaloor Torkari (Potato Curry) for breakfast today. Umm… Nice.

Tonight’s dinner will be paneer curry!

Feeling trapped inside our flat. Just waiting for the day when we can see sunny days and peachy smiles again. Getting accustomed to Zoom meetings is hard enough a task: online meetings make me feel discouraged and a little numb - this must be the fear and concern caused by Covid-19’s alarming spread and severity.

Maybe, who knows, the outside world is overrated after all. And please, God, no Zoom parties! Go away, Coronavirus, just… fuck off.

- April to December 2020

Clever me for being born an Arian and not having the option to host a birthday party for the second year in a row! There were no picnics, movies, meet-ups, gatherings for Chicken Biryani. No outdoors, except for peeping out from balconies and generally lounging around the apartment steeped dunk in a self-pitying funk, all the time dreading my mobile phone buzz, which portended not good but mostly grim news. The nightmare that is this: CORONAVIRUS.

It’s been a pretty hard time that it is almost going stone insane. The Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection has massacred our lives and continues to haunt our dreams every moment. Thanks to the governmental incompetence, the boast of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas' has vanished into thin air, gone for a toss! Instead, we move hazardously close to obliteration. Not to mention the 'yeoman service' provided by unscrupulous private hospitals and clinics! It’s all so upsetting and shocking.

I washed my hands clean with Lifebuoy liquid soap for the third time in as many hours. Attention to hygiene, remember?

- Thursday, 28 October 2021

Insensitive Government:

The cost of inaction by the government, the present one which usually comes with a distinctly authoritarian bent, and whom we all voted to power, will result in more suffering and misery, and people are dying. Our motorists are terrified that petrol, diesel, and gasoline products are taxed steeply. The cost of a 14.2-kg cooking gas cylinder (Rs. 952.00/- as of Oct. 2021) had defeated the purpose of using it.

To shore up financial resources for the vaccination drive, the government of the day had to resort to such a thing! One of the dire effects of the ongoing global pandemic is being unable to find a moral justification for such a decision taken by the government. The "Emperor has no clothes" because he spent all his financial resources getting well dressed, and whatever he requires now can only be obtained by taxing the scapegoat aam janta!

Unfortunately, these days, the car, bike, and auto owners are feeling out of speed; there’s almost no fun left now in making sharp turns. The exhilaration of overtaking is achingly missing from the thrill of driving. Even the oh-so-familiar feeling of racing, going too fast, or misjudging when overtaking make these proud owners of dented vehicles nervous and even half regretful. Clocking hundreds of kilometres on those machines - manual or automatic, electronic or gas - seems such a drag! Poor fellas.

How can we forget those who died as a result of Covid-19 disease? Some wounds may never completely heal in this life.

- Friday, 29 October 2021

(…to be continued).

By Arindam Moulick

End of part 1 of 2

Modern Life: The Plague Upon Us!

Modern Life Smackdown, part 4 of 4, final part

One last and final tango in rubbishing modern life

The times are a-changing faster than ever before at a rate like none other witnessed in the history of humankind. And so, in our world of ever-quickening change, our identity and social status have come to depend on victories over others or holding power over others by physical, moral, or intellectual means. Comparisons and competition reign supreme, don't they?

Lack of mutual trust issues has set off unpredictable behavioural arrogances among people in our society. Politically, economically, technologically, and environmentally, our communities have created illusions of permanence, material gains, and an uber-expensive, showy lifestyle that assaults common sense and courtesy.

Making false promises and constantly offending each other has become very common among the general public. Snappish friends, ill-mannered and grumpy relatives, and crotchety strangers are a dime a dozen in this day and age. The worst of the lot found in the cities.

Manners maketh the man (and maketh the woman, naturally). But it seems to me that such things hold no meaning anymore. People are rude these days, and they are everywhere. As if it's trendy to take it out on the world, be uncivil, and feel annoyed and frustrated at the drop of a hat. Rude behaviour is nothing new, but it is spreading like a disease spiralling out of control. Am I overreacting? But isn’t it natural to ask why rude behaviour is on the rise? A fair question to ask; don’t you think?

Whatever we feel or understand today about our ideologies, beliefs, and convictions, take a complete U-turn tomorrow! That's human nature, I suppose. As to where humanity is going, I’m a little on the fence.

Modern Life and Other Derelictions

Faster time to market new products, efficient rollouts, competitiveness, hyperventilating managers constantly urge their workforce to work faster. Much used, reused, abused ad infinitum, especially in the information technology (IT) circles, terms such as ‘DISRUPTION’; ‘FLEXIBLE’; ‘AGILE’; ‘IMMERSIVE’; ‘INNOVATIVE’. These are the latest supply of buzzwords for the digitally transformative modern era of today.

Self-styled tech-driven Agents-of-Change have cropped up suddenly. They have fashioned themselves into business thinkers, digital nomads, technopreneurs, and whatnot. These so-called change agents constantly fetishize about getting ‘exponential’ or ‘massive transformative’ change in the transitional market economies of augmented reality and free-market gig economy built atop the riches of the IT revolution. Humans think high of themselves and how. Getting away with overpowering other people’s sense of mindfulness is nothing but hara-kiri.

These self-assumed reformers parley their opinions skilfully well, so well that they come across as the pre-eminent knowers of everything that information and technology stand for, for instance, on how to stay a step forward than other competitors. But very often, their actions do not reflect their true intent, which is to gain ‘competitive advantage’ either by hook or by crook. That’s human nature, I suppose. If they are so hell-bent upon wrecking profits over their perceived competitors, then nothing can stop these new-age change champions from claiming their pound of flesh.

One does not wish to be a weak point or a sceptic in the chain that holds our collective human culture or argue about which could be better: Modern Life or Traditional Life. Unarguably, Modern Life wins, hands down, and in the hubbub of contemporary life, Traditional Life has more or less vanished. But with modernity or post-modernity for that matter comes heavy reprisals, and that’s why I reason that if we could bring some of the finest tried and tested elements of Traditional Life into Modern Life, wouldn’t it be great for humanity? How about being traditionally modern? Arguably, this is a good point and one worth dwelling on. Maybe it is typically 'normal' of us human beings to want to have the best of both worlds, but the question is - Are we progressing/evolving in the true sense of the term? I hope the answer is positive, but the sceptic in me doubts it. If, however, we are progressing, then Modern and Traditional Life have to be taken into account for all human lives to live in peace. I may have a crap sense of direction as far as knowing what would be ultimately good for humanity, but I presume you know better than me. Also, one does have the right to discuss the difficulties we face today.

Lastly, I am no productivity sceptic, never been one. But sometimes, it helps to be one, to be on the safer side of things. Sustained long-term economic growth comes at a price, often at the cost of burning Earth’s resources and adding tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. I am not a scene-stealing, gritty, and dashing spy agent like James Bond 007 to raise the stakes higher and higher and have it all fixed at the end, just like magic. Though at one time, my ultimate fantasy was to go as far as I could go in life, now it seems less so.

Contemporary interpretations suggest that we live in a so-called ‘modern society’ that embraces a philosophy of what we can term meritocracy: the one that emphasizes job-oriented identity, career-centric ideals, what we do, how much salary we earn, hero-worshipping larger-than-life personalities, and … blah, blah, blah. And not to speak of the herd mentality trap that affects almost every one of us.

We humans indeed are at heart a peaceful species corrupted by the society in which we live. On a personal level, there is no such thing as an entirely modern society. Maybe, anatomically we may have evolved to be 'modern,' but culturally, are we yet? Some of us are not. We need an objective step back to view us as Homo Sapiens defined as modern. We assert many things: we are a highly adaptive tool-using species, the most intelligent, and all that brouhaha. For all that excited critical fuss and reaction to our greatness on this planet, I would say it is just the transcendental cosmic passing of the brief history of time we got lucky to be inhabiting and started calling ourselves modern.

Thanks to our common ancestor Homo Erectus from whom anatomically advanced Homo Sapiens have emerged, we are what we are today: modern or far less modern than we would like to think.

So can we truly believe we are slowly learning in the true spirit to be modern? Let us hope so. We still have much learning to do anyway about how to be 'truly modern' before we can pat our backs to be the distinguished species of the fast-degrading planet Earth. On an optimistic note, Godspeed on our journey.

The End.

By Arindam Moulick

End of Part 4 of 4

Modern Life: A Philosophical Approach

Modern Life Smackdown, part 3 of 4

Blame it on the current socio-economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak: our circle of family, friends, relations, and co-workers have started behaving awkwardly. Possibly, some of us folks have become prone to coronavirus-induced post-pandemic blues. But sarcasm aside, the future is not what we thought it would be.

I realize it’s a crude comment to suggest, but correct me if I am wrong if and when we confront the following statement: We are evolving as a society, then how do you possibly respond to that? As a society, are humans evolving or devolving? Biologically we may have evolved into the species we are today, but socio-culturally, have we? Have a good look around at what we are doing to ourselves, and you will find your answer.

While human life is gradually regaining a semblance of new normality, we are back to doing what we do best: judging people - no doubt, it’s the aftereffects of our ‘national hobby horse’ kicking in, I am sure. Post Covid-19 crisis, we all are getting back to the old ways! Now, is this normal?

Covid Still Feels Nervously, Sweatily Close

Life is tough enough. I mean, it is not that we were not prone to pass judgments or passing comments before the pandemic situation. But understandably, the surge in mental (and physical) health fallout such as anxiety, depression, trauma, isolation is something out of the ordinary, unexpected.

Globally, the virus outbreak has dealt a savage hit to our collective sense of humanity. So much so that it is getting murkier at this point when the lower socio-economic strata are going through elevated levels of mental distress, thanks to the fear of losing jobs, anxiety, sadness, and miserable social and emotional wellbeing. Coping with prolonged indoor restrictions due to sudden Covid lockdowns, living alone, feelings of distress, social tension, and irritability were the major stress factors they faced during lockdown and post-lockdown. While they endured these difficulties every day, there was, unfortunately, next to zero help from private agencies or government establishments.

It is all fine if the response of the human body's antibody levels and T-cell provides longer-term sterilizing immunity from the Wuhan-supplied novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection. But human nature almost always never changes. Why not formulate jabs or inoculants that can eradicate the disease of judging people that encourage them to make judgments about others in their community? If there is, why not jab me with one first?

We all judge, don't we? Most people do it, and hardly do we check whether it is good or bad, right or wrong - judge we will, as we all are predisposed to this natural tendency.

It is true that people – notwithstanding their best intentions - cannot help delighting in the ego gratification of judging others regularly incorrectly. It seems to me, the very idea of making passing judgments (or passing comments) about people around us is to be wrong or almost always be wrong. As it were, we are all guilty of making judgments, and the present circumstance has made it more self-evident. At the risk of sounding too presumptuous, 'good judgments' are few and far between. Whereas wrong judgments, suspicions, assumptions, negative affirmations make you run blindly or get you fixated on auto-pilot, meaning suffering from blinkered thinking, our binary world-view continues unconsciously of the context or the situation or the circumstances involved therein. (And misunderstanding? Obscurantism? Indoctrination? Dogma? Selective Perception? My gosh! I am not going there! Get Nietzsche!)

I smile to myself, knowing that I am only adding my two cents philosophy to this age-old reality that is still so predominant in the 21st century as it has always been so previously. Therefore, in truth, we have always known ourselves as a judgmental society. Our sense of worth and the evaluations we make every day get influenced with the aid of other peoples’ social interactions with us and the social comparisons we make with others. At a level, this depiction makes great intuitive sense to me in understanding what judgment is, even as Covid still feels nervously close.

Since human civilization began, as far as baser human emotions go, nothing has changed much, has it? We are still so hungover on that aspect of the human tendency to judge others unmindfully, as were our ancestors. Especially in this part of the world, the situation is far crueller than what we are usually used to feeling. We are frequently not on the same page. That’s squalid if you ask me.

While understanding it in the social context of our globalized modern life today, the 21st-century human society should consciously evolve from such lame and soulless realities. Such irritants/realities cannot stand in good stead for the long run even if we continue to choose to remain unmindful of its uncharitable impact that puts us into inconvenient situations for the most part. Since every cloud has a silver lining, it’s interesting to see how people’s expectations start to become self-fulfilling prophecies that come dangerously close to contributing to their mind-set getting stigmatized with unchecked bias. Regardless, we all have a story to tell.

We think we know ourselves well, but studies show otherwise.

Physical or psychological diagnosis aside, we know that the most perpetuated forms of discrimination, racism, intolerance, stereotypes, preferential treatment, etc., continue to remain pervasive in all areas of public and private life. And we live a so-called modern life!

But hardly can anything be done about it unless we think that they are difficult to rid of or overcome wholly. Still, nothing has changed at all, hardly anything worth writing home about. We weigh many issues internally before actually mingling with people: Is s/he good-looking or unattractive? Rich or poor? Smart or not? These things continue to determine our belief systems by this attendant “social reality” of 21st-century modern life. Like it or not, our world is full of problems and always will be. No institution, organization, or authority can put these problems out of your way, they can help you to a certain extent though, but the responsibility or blame lies squarely with the society as a whole, or better still with each one of us: the teenager, the young adult, the adult, and the old.

That is why discrimination and intolerance still reign supreme in our ever-changing (ever-evolving?) society. For example, issues like ethical, legal, birth, and social origin that many families face still upset the apple cart of social harmony and order in the modern age. Often it makes me wonder, are we living a life of modernity? Are we modern in the true sense of the term? One does end up having reservations on such a cockeyed inference.

All the same, modern societies continually stress the concept of exceptionalism, individualism, and perfectionism. No one can escape from the day-by-day drudgery of the market economy. Only a chosen few who are fortunate enough to take the road less travelled manage to do so. (Only I pray TikTok never finds you).

But there’s more.

Back to the point: Keeping your rhythm in focus, I think you need to carry on, paying little mind to what you could have done or could not: Whether you “start afresh” from the point you thought you had lost your ebb and flow of day to day living, or if nothing else, value the prospect of living how you want to live. Assuming, however, that you settle on the latter, then living by adaptation, creativity, and spontaneity competencies alone will be the best-appointed judge of your daily activities and routines, which essentially seems a good proposition if you were to ask me.

[An aside: When I have nothing to do at home, apart from the task of earning my livelihood or ascending… no, falling off the corporate ladder actually, I willingly pursue a particular art form and turn myself into a sort of ‘artistic’ nomad. While I am at it being fooled or taken for a ride all the time, one of my friends generously labels me as a ‘home-grown think tank’. Good friends tend to rub off on each other. I don't have the foggiest idea. I mean, I can’t quite believe I am what I am, just like the Popeye the Sailor Man keeps reiterating when provoked: “I yam what I yam, and that's all that I yam.” But for the time being, I sort of wind down, take a chill pill, talk to friends, take things as they come. Such lovely interludes (though brief in their wake) essentially smoothen my understanding of the world around me and my sense of home and hearth in it. Indulging in your artistry, whatever that may be, can keep you grounded, get you down to earth from your lofty sequestered world of self-beliefs and make-believes. It has that kind of power. And so, creating business empires… is not my thing. And running for the president: I know you are fucking joking.]

All The Frequent Troubles of Our Time

Come big change or perfect storm, finding ways to resist the world if it tries to steer you around could still be possible. Or whichever way it compels you to turn. Beware, you cannot complain later if you let it.

Exceptions abound the professional world, which (mostly) minds its own business if you do your own. That means if your poor graph does not curve up off the page, then it might be wiser to be led than lead. Additionally, the option to live to fight another day will still be there to take a shot. It doesn’t matter if the typical ball presently refuses to stay in your court. But with time, tide, and lady luck, you could gradually become capable of keeping up emotionally (and even spiritually) as you reap more opportunities, choices and also get to sense freedom anew going forward. As simple as ghee… err… pie!

That kind of predicament is called redundancy, which is essentially a nomadic presence between jobless growth and a growth-less job. Here’s some tomfoolery we would notice more often just about anywhere post-Covid-19:

• Socially distanced HR professionals will be back to offering plastic handshakes and smiling plastically;
• Managers will be back lugging freshly-cut bamboos to … (this is self-explanatory);
• Interns would turn into Lewinskys and Monicas into unsatisfied whistle-blowers!;
• MGNREGA’s tradition of uplifting poverty slightly above BPL (below poverty line) will interminably continue;
• Rich and wealthy would amuse themselves with characteristic gluttony, poor are dispensable and expendable;
• Full-blown consumption of OTTS: Netflix, Hotstar, Zee5, Amazon Prime, and what have you will go on digitally transforming our lives;
• Eating slowly to waste time;
• Generating tonnes and tonnes of One Time Passwords (OTPs) to access social media and tapping away to shop online with renewed vigour;
• Producing methane gas and garbage on an epic scale that is nothing short of unprecedented, staggering, and shocking beyond belief, nearing almost to the scale and level of a new national scandal;
• Analysis paralysis, and so on and so forth.

The list is pretty ugly…!! (Note the semantically contradictory terms: ‘Pretty’ and ‘Ugly’ in the same sentence, but it's only rhetorical).

Last word

Modern life has become highly routinized; its monotony is nothing short of heartlessness. Often realities of life hurt that no one expects to face.

Times have changed dramatically and drastically. Submerged in its quicksand of wrangling twists and turns on the road to salvation, I try to own the outcomes, admit my mistakes, and try to live free, realizing that the world does not owe me anything. So why feel like a hopeless victim.

Even being preventatively socially distanced, masked up, and vaccinated, I know I’m going to find it hard to take up the challenge of returning to normal, to pre-Covid-19 routine as it were. With the ghost of the zoonotic disease still around, human life continues to be fraught with uncertainties and pratfalls. That’s too horrifying a reality to come to terms with, as I see it. Still, on a cautious note, we shouldn’t be hard upon ourselves even as we struggle to deal with this heinous sprawl of the deadly outbreak.

Critics may scoff and scoff they will. What of it? Let them. The times are a-changing, with the Coronavirus on its way out. So, enjoy life non-stop for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year - without burning fossil fuels or expanding your carbon footprint, that is. In the interim, eating well and exercising enough should be the new areas of focus, and how about we keep the habit up. Okeydokey?

Life is a phenomenon, and even though I can’t shake the nagging feeling that I am yesterday’s man, I feel gratefully safe and sound being at home in the world.

The future, whatever that implies, belongs to polished frauds and Earth devourers. So bring it on: the experience of the good, the bad, and, morally speaking, the ugly.

By Arindam Moulick

End of part 3 of 4

Disclaimer: The above write-up is simply an attempt at parodying modern life as we know it, presented here sincerely as well as straightforwardly.

Click here to read Part 2

Modern Life: An Introspection

Modern Life Smackdown, part 2 of 4

I do not log onto the Internet first thing in the morning; I fetch the newspaper that the paperboy drops on our doorstep. Plugging into the Internet does not occur in two shakes of a lamb's tail right up in the morning. But if it has to, it happens as an afterthought, one that is clearly at odds in an era of likes and tweets.

It took many years of working my fingers to the bone and slow wavering realization before I could perceive what “start afresh” or “start again” dictum, commonplace though they are in usage, would mean.

Admittedly, to make a fresh start or get a chance to begin anew (howsoever major or minor a task), perhaps in a better or in a different way at least, offers no elevator to success. But success is individual-specific and perspective-driven, not an absolute if we think it is. Success is quite simply an uncomplicated feeling. There is no fooling around.

At the outset, I must specify that in this essay - a touch polemic as you will find - I tried to share my point of view that the modern world knows no Plan B. It cannot have. Assuming we want a sustainable future for wildlife, the planet, and ourselves, then it is time we talked specifics, the details, the small print, and not speak in sweeping generalities. The future is now and not in some distant future.

Along these lines, I attempt to portray the modern age in its naked silliness and condescending best, and unlike what some people have started telling, we are NOT all in this together. Rich cannot avoid being rich, the poor will be poor, and definitely, the twain won't ever meet! I provoke strong opinions. Still, Specifics (of our issues such as laws & legislation, education, learning/unlearning) and not vague Generalities will decide our existence on the planet besieged as it is with the damaging effects of one ecological disaster after another.

So, how is modern life treating you?

Do I look as if I care? But if you do, however, you may please note the following. I have wholeheartedly embraced facial hair - a pious obscurant beard at best - just like anybody (I mean male) so that it lets me feel quite empowered to soften punches that this Pandemic Life is prone to spring at me. A beard, a classy medium stubble as far as I am concerned, has its protective qualities, never mind its jaw-dropping tingles that sometimes really get my goat! My killer haircut? Well, these days, my hair manages to look as if someone overturned a bowl of Maggi noodles on my head or look like a scraggly crow’s nest (whichever comes first to your mind!). And I, on the whole, look nothing short of the furry men you see in the Fantastic Beats or the Game of Thrones fantasy flicks! Just desserts, I suppose!

Congratulations! Your modern life is about to stop being relevant.

Though I have enough things to feel happy about, I still tend to overthink, get nostalgic at the drop of a hat. Although this plight that I often find myself into can scramble Motivational Speakers or Agony Aunts, Akkas, Uncles to proffer expert advice, so I tend to demure feeling hesitant. (One should not get our Gurus, exalted their tribe ever be, worried without meaning to). I imagine we all might be feeling similarly, especially during these times of zoonosis (alleged) - the China-originated covid-19 pandemic disease that at one point seemed like the end of the world scenario, amounting to an E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event). Is this quarantine narcissism? Well, not really, not yet.

Pandemic or no pandemic, the experience of having to deal with a dead-ending, bamboozling “start from scratch” situation was insufferably agonizing in these extraordinary times. Thank God, I realized through anxious personal observation that implied that there could be no other way but to brave the current situation head-on and see what happens next. That was the only recourse available to position your things back into the boxing ring of life and comply with whatever it entailed. Perseverance pays to survive, day after day, this virulent moment that came from out of the blue to haunt the human race... to extinction? I tell you, modern life is a paradox wrapped in a riddle; you get pummelled one moment or get feted the next. By and large, we are all so fickle-minded, aren’t we?

Luckily, during these pandemic times, I did not stop feeling progressive, if not foolishly optimistic, about the way we are tackling this dreaded disease. Only that I began to look at my problems, most of my own making though, from a sort of different perspective, and once in a while, though, I could just shut them out by doing something that I liked and loved: staying close to people I’ve loved forever, calling up friends, and keeping in touch by phone, reading, writing, reminiscing, apart from praying to God. I found that it worked without being unnecessarily anxious the way things have come to exist amidst this highly infectious virulent feverishness. Therefore, nowadays, I am more than happy to blush that every day is a holiday - most of us are working remotely and all, telecommuting is the word for it - and every meal is a banquet: one of the great, shall I say, perks of modern life. And why not. Latest studies show that companies in the U.S. are saving more than $30 billion per day by permitting their employees to work from home (or telecommute) - no doubt, it is an economic benefit for both employer and employee. A win-win situation.

Sure Modern life has its inherent advantages, I accept. Understandably, in this horrifying contagion-like situation, and with a traditional setting, human life would have been unimaginably difficult. Whereas in the 21st-century modern life, and with prompt availability of new vaccines, immunizations, and critical medicines, people have an assurance that they have, after all, a chance to live. Remarkably, amid the pandemic, succumbing to the Covid (SARS-CoV-2) virus is to a great extent preventable. But, tragically, this pandemic bedlam has exposed the affected families to potentially ruinous medical debt, setting them back financially by several decades’ worth of their hard-earned incomes and clearing out their long-term investments. Post-hospitalization, life has changed forever, and thanks to mindless medical looting, the Covid tormented patients and their immediate families stare at a financially unsound or bankrupt future for life.

As the bloody Covid-19 ran riot, I've often struggled not to feel consumed by rage at what was happening around the world. We are still not safe yet; we haven't gone back to normal. I have no illusions on that score whether we will anytime soon.

Although modern life is not all that ding dong but in so many ways, thanks to the virtue of its experience and a better understanding of time and age, it trumps traditional life (and vice versa?). Needless to reiterate, traditional life has its supreme time-tested insight that modern life cannot mock at for all its techno-science know-how.

Fortunately, this much I knew: It’s my life; it is up to me how or what I make of it, and therefore, in that sense, living life as it comes is a better option in comparison to being uselessly pedantic or stressing about which one is worthier - modern life or traditional. Moreover, one cannot live life traditionally, whatever its advantages, anymore; it is simply not possible to do so as it will be too discomfiting to go on living unmindfully.

Privacy is falsehood

Whatever be the case, I try not to get pointlessly high-sounding or feel misguided with what I can or cannot expect from the modern-day world. Yet, I cannot help it. I mean, you either die trying hard or do not bother about it; you go on living. If Lady Luck is attendant on you, then you probably could get Googled out for the express purpose of someone’s leisurely distraction or some such thing.

What has happened now is that your happy digital tech-utopian life of convenience and entertainment just got commodified. To the online milieu of “surveillance capitalism," Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, targeted advertising, Internet of Things (IoT), Automation, we are all delivered. These new ‘movers and shakers’ of technology have birthed a whole ecosystem of exploitative commerce, enabling global tech companies to amass wealth at our expense. So if you (in your fast-perishing human flesh) think that you are leading a democratic human life, perish the thought. Do you think you live free? Not exactly. Not anymore. Let’s see if you can handle this: The ultra-rich tech companies have found a way to accumulate and profit from your data hugely, without your knowing it. Your data is not yours anymore; somebody else is making tonnes of money from it. No wonder then, we have now ended up existing as a market-driven blink-and-you-miss free plain-vanilla, plain-Jane byte/pixel dataset on the digital pages of the World Wide Network. In a new surveillance-based economic order, your privacy is no longer private for you, and your data is not a scrap; it is worth millions for those who exploit it with impunity. Kiss your freedom goodbye. Modern life as an empowering and emancipatory force, eh? Nice try!

Either this reality or nothing at all and mind you, everything is deemed official. Nothing remains personal or private anymore. There are obvious privacy implications with this, but who is listening. Privacy is a myth, falsehood; didn’t you know? Every walking, talking, moving thing exists between these two probabilities. The scale tilts more on the official part than personal because privacy no longer seems what it is. How much ever you try making yourself non-existent (even without purpose?). Or stand on the sidelines. Or try to stay put as an afterthought/post-script and watch the world cruise by you will always exist as an empirical evidence subject enslaved forever to someone’s controlled economic and psychological experimentation. Whether we are aware of it or not, we’ll always get treated as a guinea pig remote-controlled on the petri dish of some overarching and overreaching technological and military superpower! No kidding.

The world is in trauma. The geopolitical punditry involving bizarre terms like post-9/11, post-Iraq, post-financial crisis, and now post-truth has eroded people’s inalienable appetite for living a good (and safe) life. People simultaneously live in shock and sorrow even as the python gip of existential issues like open-market consumerism, “for us or against us” type of hideous bipartisan politics, humanity’s mistreatment of the planet leading to a sort of climate crisis bedlam, forever wars, eroded rights, frequent bouts of joblessness, racial and religious bigotry, peak inflation cum economic downturn, terrorist attacks, and multiplied hatreds, continue to dominate the narrative of our already weary lives every passing day. And so much else.

In a fast-changing world, our life has certainly moved forward, but only so much. Trade and market openness in free-market capitalism have spurred economic growth for the nations that have opened up their economies to global markets, ushering in the era of robust globalization. It was about time that they did. The free-market economy has indeed brought a lot of jobs and opportunities, benefitting job seekers where the economy has considerably grown. However, liberalized trade and market openness as such has led to not only a creation of a whole new generation of prosperous middle-class but has also created poverty among the masses, not to speak of environmental degradation. All nations should put their foot down to achieve a coordinated global action, or it might be past the point of no return. There will be no world left to avert the future catastrophes of global climate change, and that can only mean we have a bleak chance for survival. Humankind needs a fundamental mind shift and quick.

A cruel irony

Global human population explosion growth means that more and more people start looking to earn their living, which essentially means a damaging impact on the environment and exploitation of our planet’s finite resources to feed that burgeoning population. While this is not to spoil the new globalization party happening the world over, we need to get down to effectively save the Earth from the devastation of its natural flora and fauna. We were 7.9 billion in 2020. Every year 83 million souls get added to that massive horde.

Fuelled by climate change, every year a continuing spell of draught, greenhouse gases, heat waves, extreme weather conditions, glacial retreat, plastics, lightning-sparked wildfires and blazes, hotter and drier climate (global warming), ocean acidification from the burning of coal, oil, and gas (non-renewable fossil fuels) destroying our homes, health, and buildings. We are the culprits, the ultimate guilty party. We brought a crisis of this magnitude upon ourselves and are grinning shamelessly to take selfies on our smartphones. Will we ever be able to handle this human-caused crisis arising out of climate change? God only knows. From what we are up to now, forget the future looking bleak humankind will cease to have any. The signs of the climate crisis are everywhere. What with Mr. Bill Gates possessing a 66,000-square-foot property named Xanadu 2.0 and Mr. Al Gore owning an 11,070-square-foot mansion plus his carbon-emitting private luxury plane using which he campaigns around the world, hectoring everyone about carbon emissions and the environmental impact it's going to cause! Heights of hypocrisy. Is it already too late for us to reverse the "inconvenient truth" of global warming? Is this a bold prediction? Or is it being alarmist or something? Or a deliberate hoax? None of this. The climate crisis is for real, and it hurts us all badly. Please wake up, world. Or it would not be there anymore. Let us plant trees and more trees and still some more. At least, that is something we would all be good at doing, other than loving our pan pizzas, mountainous burgers, cavernous rolls, and burnt to a crisp fried chicken! Enough said.

A lack of political will or governmental action to put the planet first is the main problem in doing something immediate and tangible to help reverse severe climatic effects. If it does not get going, then we are all doomed to die. There is no turning back from this point on.

To use a cliché: Rich have become richer but the poor ever so poorer. Only a privileged handful are doing much better than the deprived others; a clear case of income inequality wherein the powers that be reward not work but wealth, rich, well-connected pompous asses, and superiority. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and it shows. Modern life, eh.

Mostly, the poor or badly off people do not wish to be rich or yearn for lots of money (that they can anyway never dare to dream about). All they want is a just income, a sufficient sum to go on in their lives day after day, month after month, with their basic needs met, and in return contribute to the economy. However, we see that in the game of rich and poor, it is always the poor, perennially weak, and powerless that get short-changed, whereas the rich and powerful get away with it.

Big companies have a cunning propensity towards putting profit before the public good. In a recent scandal involving the world’s rich and powerful people, including rock stars, celebrities, business leaders, tycoons, government ministers, political leaders, and even military generals, have offshore trusts and shell companies created to hold secret deals, assets in bank accounts, and expensive property deals stashed in tax havens such as Cayman Islands, Dubai, Panama, and that ever so popular, probably the world's leading tax haven, Switzerland. Leaked data from the Panama Papers (2016), Paradise Papers (2017), and now from the cache of Pandora Papers (2021) stand testimony to the great derangement ordinary people face. What do we call this kind of people? Call them what you will, but they are a blot on humanity. Quite frankly, it’s all hypocritical, dangerous, and disgraceful.

Tax evasion (by exploiting loopholes in the tax structures), systemic corruption, and the penchant for amassing unaccounted (untaxed) wealth are serious financial crimes that have cost governments billions in lost revenues. Are we ever going to see an end to it? It is hard to think whether it will. The rich pay little or less tax or evade it all, whereas the government keeps raising taxes on ordinary workers! It is deeply unfair.

The impact of the financial and income disparities continues to beleaguer their lives. No wonder India ranks 103rd on the Global Hunger Index, and its richest 1 percent holds 73% of our country’s wealth! Is it any wonder then why the poor continue to get poorer and the rich richer? Money attracts more money, whereas penury attracts more penury. Meanwhile, the billionaires are launching themselves into space. While half the world is on fire, running out of fresh water, rivers changing course, hunger, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) wiping out 50,00,000 lakhs (as of Oct. 2021) of human species from the face of the planet, and the clear and present danger of global warming, these filthy-rich VIPs love to spend their billions in the fond hope of shaking hands with aliens from other planets! Their power mantra? Eject out to outer intergalactic space, leave Earth to fend for itself. Meanwhile, the woes of ordinary denizens continue. All this tamasha begs for a question: Can we consider ourselves a human being superior to animals? Not all of us do! (Oh, I hope no one shows this to Trump...!).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an 18th-century French philosopher, once articulated: “When the people shall have no more to eat, they will eat the rich!” So it is evident that the rich (millionaires and billionaires) cannot do away with the poor or the perennially cash-strapped, for if they do, the poor will eat the rich! Eventually, however, the world will come to an unsexy end, with only the sexy rich remaining until they too will implode sexily! Our economic system seems to offer a petty little other than insecurity and crisis. So much for modern life!

It is a cruel irony that we keep getting back to square one, no matter humanity’s claims of supremacy over anything and everything that concerns us in this so-called modern world. The world is going to die with rich people, only rich people. You - SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic - can launch yourself to space, but no way can you colonize Mars or Jupiter or some other planet. Nope, not going to happen. (Narcissism of this kind repulses me. Their belief that human beings can conquer other planets is akin to having an inflated opinion of themselves. Indulging their flights of fancy, ultra-rich tycoons not knowing what to do with their cartloads of money can, I suppose, afford themselves to experience such delusions of grandeur, and fail). No matter what they tell or do, it’s all flashy trickery that comes aided with their relational position and reputation in the public sphere. That's about what it is. Humankind is a ‘single-planet species.' How can we be ‘multi-planet' when we scarcely know anything about other planets? Billionaire snobs tend to fashionably make-believe, as is their wont. (Consider it some amateur armchair thick-skinned psychoanalysis if you like.)

The world never really misses you. There is no love in modern life. There are routines, networking, and relationships based upon convenience. Even, there are no guarantees in life by the same token. Everybody a green blip on the world’s radar screen, that is all.

(To be continued…)

By Arindam Moulick

End of part 2 of 4

Post Script: The above essay is a satirical take on modern life or the modern-day world, so no hard feelings about its subject matter. A personal freewheeling thought experiment; that sort of thing.

Word count: 3,315

Click here to read Part 1

Modern Life and Other Nonsense

Modern Life Smackdown, part 1 of 4

These days I get repulsed by the fact that the modern world is increasingly becoming small and noisy.

Let’s face it: There are so many people (and their polluting vehicles!) everywhere, and post the Economic Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization, an explosion of more poor souls, has been adding up to the exhausting Rat Race of our proud collective called Human Civilization! The Lord God Almighty bless us all.

[Side note Warning: This essay (or lack thereof!) is, I’m afraid, not going to be a pleasant read... But being an incurable pessimistic optimist, I have to get a load off my mind, so reader discretion is encouraged.]

Modern life is awful; it irks me to no end. That is why I prefer the time-tested traditional or the simple life of older generations (against which modern life can be (or should be) tested). I don’t know; I feel a lot unhappier today than I remember I had ever been previously so much, say during the 1980s/90s when my life was simpler, leisurely, and homelier than it feels now. But of late, and not surprisingly, I encounter pithy emotions such as misery, envy, resentment, and even humiliation almost every waking hour of my life. Human life is full of such zombies. The good news is I try not to get emotionally upset or dramatic, hardly if ever. But I do get butterflies in my stomach from time to time!

If all this is supposed to be a normal reaction on my part, then I believe I am all right; doubtless, Pandemic blues are wreaking havoc on me. (Half the world is depressed now; please excuse my rant. We are not even out of the woods yet.) But if it isn’t the case, then what? Seeking out some bulleted-points self-help manual (by brain experts), claustrophobic N95/Surgical mask, and sanitizer solution, will help writhe me out of this delusional paranoia. Or hitting the bottle of choicest ‘poisons’ accessible at home or waiting it out (existing as I am as just another individual statistic in this allegedly modern world of Deep State and Dark Web) becomes a compelling necessity no one can afford to pass over if they want to live just as before. Humankind is doing badly now, what with the unending stress, lockdown, social distancing, and general uncertainty of this dreadful situation amidst us. The novel coronavirus isn’t novel anymore! I think I understand now why people take to the bottle. F**king modern life does that to you. Doesn’t it?

Speaking nicely, that’s my two cents worth viewpoint. Different people have different opinions about the modern-day world. Mine, I concede, might seem a little nit-picky - even yawn-inducing, not actually Noble-prize winning (good heavens!), much less hand-towel wringing - in contrast to their superior best. Every opinion - regardless of whether good or bad, positive or negative - counts as it carries a goodly chime of ‘freedom of expression’ with it, and opinions such as mine and yours and every other person’s, are a unique little thing… beautiful thing. Traditional life with a modern outlook, anyone?

I particularly loathe that we rush to fill our plates with lots and lots of goodies we do not appear to need. No wonder we get caught up in the instant self-gratification trap and all that. For example, being reliant on a zillion apps for the sake of conveniences and comfort; the outrageous, salacious, and inflammatory revile of online social (read anti-social) media platforms, and all the proliferating others; and the Coronavirus (Covid) pandemic that nearly killed humankind. I am no fan of the daily lethal assault of exaggerating and a largely hyping scroll of breaking news. What we see today is that a bellwether of noxious trends gets peddled day in day out. Besides, loot and scoot scammers, male gaze, feminism fuss, techno twattery, the selfie syndrome, and all that information/advertising bombardment that never ceases to pop up no matter wherever you go and whatever you do in life. Our mantra: An App Can Change Your Life! We drive recklessly and too fast, we smile rarely, we grin sarcastically, laugh too little, get angry on a whim, read nearly nothing, and hate too often. No big surprise, our social morality is on a terminal decay; and talking about true spiritual awakening in the glittery glare of the double-edged sword of cutting-edge technology... indeed, the less said, the better. Modern life sucks more than the new Star Wars picture.

All this extraordinary tamasha of the world impinges upon one's feeling of appreciation and gratefulness about being alive in the world. And when one looks back on those innocent, free days of the 1980s/90s always filled with the joys of playing marbles, impromptu cricket, I Spy, jump rope, carroms, watching Doordarshan TV channel (Oh! those 9'0 clock serials), touch-me-not games, watching movies on VCR, hop-scotch, playing card games, one feels helpless and lost in the present time.

With so many of us humans jostling for space in the world, life has turned out to be too mechanical and routinized that always-connected/hooked “on the go” habit-forming technology-addictive laptops, smartphones, tablets, and more, have stealthily kissed our days of happiness and leisure goodbye forever. We are angry, cheerless, and sarcastic - and all of these socially unhealthy blunders continually occur all the time, tragically.

I feel overcome with empty forlorn feelings - and scarcely would I able to explain this by using appropriate words, but I'll try - all the time thinking that things are not in good stead after all. In a world that causes instant unhappiness and the despondency levels are reaching sky high, it certainly has an uncanny tact for unleashing wuthering heights of negative emotions. Oh! Take me back to the aura of the retro era. I want to relive my earlier life, escape. I miss my childhood days so much. Would anybody be able to grant me a boon to fulfil my one solitary craving?

Looking at the rubbishy consequences of the modern world around me, I find myself in a nonstop hateful mood. Being positive help but all this relying on mass media/apps that meet your urban modern life’s conveniences and infotainment needs are making us function well in isolation only; Pandemic: the new rotting normal or not normal, a nightmarish shitshow, general negativity everywhere (TikTok included), and above all what is currently going on in the world - all these seem like a dark and dangerous world eroding our happiness and well-being. In this so-called Age of Communication, feelings of exclusion and alienation will never help you achieve the outlier success that you so desire but get you an outlandish failure.

In today’s world, there’s so much noise, yet so little intimacy.

Think about contemporary events such as Pandemic, Terrorism, Earthquakes, Rogue nations, Floods, Climate Change, and so on. Are these going to go away as time passes? A big NO is the shortest answer to that question. Get this: Our world, as we know it, is damaged beyond redemption! It has fallen apart. The World Has Fallen: is the new normal. So admit it, mask up, and move on.

Finally, our life in the present time is so different from all the previous ones. Sounds hypocritical a statement to make? I am sure it does. It is simple, my dear, to pass judgments and act holier than thou. To rephrase Charles Darwin’s saying: Survival instincts count for the one who is the fittest, and to that, I add: And who has once been the fastest coming into the world!

Modern life is more painful than stepping on a...on a...Lego!

By Arindam Moulick

End of part 1 of 4

Post Script: The above essay is a satirical take on modern life or the modern-day world, so no hard feelings about its subject matter. A personal freewheeling thought experiment; that sort of thing.

Discarded titles for the essay:
Modern Life and The New Age Mulch; Modern Life Is in Eclipse; Why Is Modern Life So Awful?; I Am Not Kidding When I Say Modern Life Is So Awful; The Ugly Truth About Modern Life; Modern life: Do You Really Need It? This Will Help You Decide!
and,
Why Modern Life Is Hotter Than Jennifer Lawrence!