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