The Lockdown
When the microscopic rider rode into town, scythe at the ready, all a trembling humanity could do was to retire to its safest refuge. In nation after nation, lights went out on public life. In the US, as if in a grim nod to history, the most popular exhortation of the day was waved from an aircraft not far remÂoved in vintage from 1918-20, when the Covid pandemic바카라™s true forebear scorched the world. In Mumbai, the Chhatrapati Shivaji train terminus presented a face never seen before: platforms destitute of travelers lay gleaming and silent. As Corona cases spiralled, hospitals dealing with the healing became hives of specialised care바카라”like this one in Calcutta, its tiered lumÂinescence holding out hope for the stricken within, amidst thickening darkness. 바카라˜PPE kits바카라™ and 바카라˜thermometer guns바카라™ were among many words that rudely impinged into our vocabulary.
Healthworkers hermetically sealed in take samples at a testing centre, while a passing boy stands in for the subject of a mural displaying the gun바카라™s finger-on-the-trigger, efficacious use. The lockdown presented the spectre of unemployment, dispossession and eviction to millions of migrant workers in India. With no social safety net, there began an exodus바카라”a straggling, unending stream began homeward journeys in the searing heat. Their right to survive, it seemed, had been revoked by an eyeless state.
A schoolteacher who lost her job바카라”like millions of people because of the pandemic-linked financial crisis바카라”pleads with an official at a demonstration seeking alternative employment in Agartala.
The toll so far...
Numbers are random, lifeless and boring, but for the context. Take, for instance, those records from sepia-tinted typewritten documents of the World Wars or from the Spanish Flu a century ago. Or, the real-time update of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, chronicling the ebb and flow of the coronavirus infection. The first case in India was reported on January 30, while the total count was 70 when a national lockdown was clamped down to stop Covid바카라™s spread on March 26. It peaked with 96,424 cases on September 17 and by December 26, the curve came down to 18,732 active infections. What about a panoptic view, the bigger picture? In nine months, India recorded 10.2 million cases, 9.81 million recovered and 148,000 people died of Covid. Across the world: 81.2 million got infected, 45.9 million got well, 1.77 million died. There would be more바카라”unaccounted, no mourner, no epitaph바카라¦.
Delhi Riots February 23-29
53 Deaths
200+ Wounded
Farmer Protest
The protest in Delhi against three new farm laws has gone beyond a month and the picketing farÂmers바카라”mostly from the food bowl states of Punjab and HarÂyana바카라”are in no mood to leave as negoÂtiatÂions with the goverÂnment have yet to break the deadlock after several rounds of talks. The protest is unlikely to wind down soon as more farmers have joined the picketers.
Shaheen Bagh
Us Ujle Pallu Ka Naam Shaheen Bagh Hai
Lakshmi-Bai Dekh, Razia Sultan Dekh
Hijab Se Ubharta Naya Hindustan Dekh
Andheera Cheerti Taqreraon Ki Awaaz Sun
Badalta Uthta Aurataon Ka Samaaj Sun
In Aurataon Ne Ab Diya Apna Ghar Tyaag Hai
Aur Inke Naye Ghar Ka Naam Shaheen Bagh Hai
The name of that cloth is Shaheen Bagh.
Come see Lakshmibai, see Razia Sultan,
See a new India emerge from the hijab,
Tearing the dark, hear the chorus of appeal.
Hear the nation of women, transform, rise
These women sacrificed their homes
Their new dwelling is Shaheen Bagh.
Excerpts from Naam Shaheen Bagh, a poem by Darab Farooqui and translated by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
2020 is also a year of protests바카라”against the citizenship amendment act (CAA) in Assam, in Delhi바카라™s Shaheen Bagh and across India, against the gang rape and murder of a teenager in Hathras, against racism in America (#BlackLivesMatter), against mainland China바카라™s anti-democracy policies in Hong Hong바카라¦or by US groups opposing gun control. The most heart-wrenching were demonstrations by frontline Covid warriors. It바카라™s not wrong to ask doctors and nurses to work hard, sacrifice, take care of their patients, but it바카라™s wrong to send them in without the protection they deserve.
