In search of his identity!

His beautiful girlfriend invited him to her sister's wedding. "I am inviting only you", said she. 'Only You',  Those words fell on his ears like a love song. Off he went. The first time of meeting her family.  Nervousness! Excitement! He imagined her in a saree.......

He was locked up in a room, beaten badly. Peed on! Before he realized what had hit him, his life was torn in front of his eyes. 

What happened in between? Why did that happen? 

This young boy was made to realize he is from a caste considered lower. Suddenly he is realizing that the world does not see him as an equal. He looks around to see, his world to be very different from the world his girlfriend lives. Who am I? He asks himself. Who am I? 

Why am I, getting beaten behind closed doors? 

Why even the gods do not let me near him? 

Why even the men who laugh with me hate me? 

Why do more of my people get killed in the railway tracks? 

Why do more of my men suicide? 

Why have I never got into the temple cars? 

Why am I given separate glasses in tea shops? 

Why is my house always in the peripheries of the village? 

Why only my men die under sanitation pits?
Why? Oh, Why? Why? 

As the news came of the six young children from the Musahar community eating grass as food in the prime ministers' own constituency, I went back to watch the movie 'Pariyerum Perumal', which is the story I had just narrated! 

I tried to put myself in his shoes, but I could not understand his question. "Who am I?" did not resonate with me since I was never repressed. So I change my question. "Why only them?" In a country as big and as poor and as chaotic as my country is, why only the Musahar, the mahadalit community children, had to eat grass to survive. Of course, they are the poorest of the poor; But why? Why do they end up the poorest always?

As he went in search of his identity, it is important, I and my country ask the question, Why only them? Or why more of them?

Corona and empathy!

Suddenly every Tom, Dick and Harry has become the doctor; including yours truly. In a family where the father, mother, wife, brother, sister, MIL, FIL, SIL are all medical doctors, I'm almost the loudest doctor at home. From telling what my dad has to do, to tell what my aunt's friends have to do, the fake doctor in me had been quite vocal.

It is so easy to speak out loud if you don't know anything about the virus you see. But then you have to read more to talk loud. At least louder than your coterie of docs to be heard and taken seriously. That makes it mandatory to read more than them. So I was reading and listening to Dr JP Mulliel, widely regarded as India's leading epidemiologist and Christian Medical College's former head of community medicine. He said something which came out of the blue and I want to discuss them here

He said,  "Treat the Corona patients with compassion, there is a good chance that you might be one too"; This hit me hard!

Yesterday a friend pinged me on how her society in Kolkata refused her entry after she had come home from Mumbai to work from home; There was another friend who had come back from Paris and was refused entry though he promised quarantine. There were reports of doctors not let into the flats fearing transmission; This, after we supposedly clapped our hands to appreciate them the day before! Do you remember the news of the suffering the Air India crew had to go through to enter their own homes? And the usual hatred against the North East brethren, Coz they look like the Chinese?

It is tough to be ostracised from your own society. Mentally disturbing to be sent off by your own people. Where will they go, if not to their own houses? The mental trauma of it all is real.

Dear India, Of course, the virus spreads. Truly we have to be careful about our proximity to our neighbours. But social distancing never meant social ostracising. Everyone in the country has to live; and can surely live at a safe distance from each other.

Empathise with the patient! For you might be the next. Empathise with your neighbour for you are human. 

Whatsapp and corona!

Five hundred unread messages showed my WhatsApp! I did what I usually do with my WhatsApp; Just open it and close it, to take off the unread numbers. Curiosity piqued, I opened a few of my groups to read. Corona and the prime minister's latest curfew announcement were the order of the day on the WhatsApp groups.

There were all sorts of messages. All sorts! 

"The virus will live only for 12 hours and that is why the prime minister has asked us to sit at home for 14 hours; To break the community transmission of the virus", said one. "If we clap on the 22nd of March all the viruses will be dead due to some astronomical energy", said another. There was even one message which said, "Corona was invented by the Illuminati to depopulate the earth"

Just to set some context, I will break the myth (ie) the first WhatsApp message here. Research by (Doremalen, et al, 2020), published by the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the new coronavirus (COVID - 19) can live in the air for 3 hours, up to 4 hours on copper surfaces, more than 24 hours on cardboards and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel surfaces. This research clearly shows that there is a gap between the perceived truth and the researched truth. 

Okay, I can hear you ask, how do I know whether the research is true or not; What if the research is wrong? To be honest, I don't know. That is why I have given the name of the author and the publication here; Lesson number one to learn here is, if possible to check the veracity of the message you forward, before forwarding it. If it is not possible to check the truthfulness of it, please forward it with the name of the author in it. If you are not able to find both, keep quiet and close your WhatsApp down.

So one friend asked me, I only forward the positive messages, what can go wrong even if it is a false message? The value of your truth will go down! For we all know the 'shepherd who cried wolf' story, don't we?

Also remember, every fake message has a beneficiary with a selfish intention, to begin with. Why abet a selfish intention, if you don't have a stake in it? 

The real India's fight against Corona!

So I started my first day of Work From Home (WFM)! An emergency meeting in the morning, then some work, then one in the afternoon, and the one where I had to present in the evening and then some more presentations made! Not a bad day, I told myself. Not a bad day! I not only managed to distance myself from the outside world but also did some useful work. Then I came out to see my buzzing city from the balcony. Chennai has not yet stopped! Ah, Chennai, you should stop! You cannot afford this, I murmured. Social distancing is a must I say; We should be more responsible, continued my monologue.

Bang, it hit me! As if somebody had thrown a stone on my mind, it hit hard. The privilege of the so-called social distancing. Basically, of work from home!

The other day my brother overheard the Uber driver telling another that he has not got one trip that day, and if he does not manage to get a trip, he will not have food on the table. So, social distancing is a joke for him; For he had to drive to live, sadly!

How do you tell the man I met in the Reang tribal village bordering Mizoram and Tripura about Corona? And the importance of work from home and staying away from people? For a start, his house had 15 people and they all lived together in that single shed they called home! What if one of them catches a virus? How do I tell him to transport the patient to the nearest hospital, 100 Kms from his place? what if he harps back, "if I go with the patient, who will pay me my daily wage for the day? " What if the patient is the sole breadwinner of the family?

A few days ago as I went walking along the Marina beach in the early morning, there were hundreds of people sleeping there! Thousands every day sleep on the beach sand. On the pavements!  Below the bridges, on railway platforms, on empty railroads, along the sewage canals, every damn place. Do I talk to them about social distancing? Society and its community is sadly their only solace!

Social distancing sadly is a privilege of the rich!

Of course, I am working from home till the corona is done away with! And try to protect me and my ilk from the dreaded virus. But with the realisation, that privilege is what is protecting me and not social distancing!