It has been so long since I sat in front of a laptop to write. I might be a little rusty, dear Reader but I hope you will persevere. In times of such distress, we are sitting in front of our television screens, with immense panic and anxiety. It almost feels like the anticipation is of receiving good news, but we realize that people are mere statistics, identified by numbers. In times of such despair, we realize the real hue of humanity.
What are you choosing to do? Educate people around you with real facts or sending WhatsApp hoaxes claiming pseudoscience to be the real one? Panic stocking everything or leaving some on the shelves for the rest? Practising social isolation in the real sense of the term or treating this to be surprise vacation? The humankind runs on choices that us humans make. These choices lead us to where we stand. What are you choosing to be in times of such chaos is a question that I would leave you with, dear Reader.
I must tell you, that this is being written not to provide you with any information. In this confusing age of everything available in a mere touch, I can confidently assume that you, dear Reader, is familiar with information and the news and the pogroms and the Dadis and the deaths. This is me, placing some feelings on the table, hoping that you would like my serving and would scoop a spoonful to try. The fabric of this Nation has Secular written over it. Such fallacy! I have been shushed by my contemporaries because in times of such unrest, we are not supposed to talk about our politics. I could not help but wonder the ludicrousness of the comment.
Dear Reader, are you choosing to criticize your leader that you may or may not have voted for? Were you, like me, with immense hope, waiting to hear something hopeful other than receiving the instruction to blow horns at a designated time? Why are we so afraid that we need to maintain this secular facade even now? When our leaders carry out systematic and structural violence on religious minorities, it is to be called ethnic cleansing. It is to be called a pogrom and not a riot; but I do understand the helplessness of middle-class individuals, like me.
Calling a spade a spade is risky. Who knows? This might be our first and last encounter, but I digress. Aligning our politics with the welfare of the collective is essential. How else are we going to exercise the privilege that we have so taken for granted? By celebrating and hashtaging this quarantine of ours when there is a lack of infrastructure to combat this disaster? You already have the power with you. Dissent. Keep on voicing this dissent, dear Reader. Critique is what keeps any narrative alive. Otherwise, it would be bland, or autocratic in this context.
To conclude, I thank you if you have made this far, to read me out even when I have not followed any protocol of writing an article. I am rusty. Sitting in front of the laptop to write something after so long feels like I am back home and that home needs a renovation. Too much dust and spider webs all around , but it is home after all and it is exactly the way I had abandoned. I hope, dear Reader, you would keep dissenting while being socially isolated and with sanitised hands and that, you liked this serving on the table and would keep reminiscing the spoonful that you had.