Ira Pande: Forget, we won’t // Gurbachan Jagat: The emperor’s new clothes
Today, for the first time in my life, I feel I have run out of words. This last fortnight has been so full of deaths and bereavements, of news of children dying before their old parents, or of friends who one had grown up with falling to the virus, that I have lost my faith and my tongue. I do not know what will become of us after this long nightmare is over but of this I am sure that if we survive, I will never take our happiness for granted. Nor will I ever foolishly believe that if one has been good and law-abiding, one has the right to a happy life.
Over and over
again, I recall that famous Buddhist parable of a mother asking the Buddha why
her only child had been snatched away by death. He listened to her appeal to do
something and calmly replied, ‘Get me a handful of grain from a home that has
never experienced death, and I will bring your child back to life.’ This is one
lesson that we can never internalise simply because death, after all, happens
to other people. All of us know that we will die one day, but put off that day
from our minds and everyday life. Christianity and most other faiths speak of
how we can seek happiness, but it is only the Buddha and the Sufi saints who
say that life is an unending saga of suffering enlivened only occasionally by
joy.
Today I doubt if there is a single family that has not been
touched by corona. Whether it is someone related by blood or a close friend,
someone somewhere has left your life forever. Will we ever be able to celebrate
Eid or Diwali or Christmas without that absence haunting us?...
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/forget-we-wont-253513
Gurbachan Jagat: The emperor’s new clothes
When a State cannot provide justice in its most fundamental
form, it loses its right to rule. Where is justice when citizens have to
pay thousands to carry their dead and buy slots for funerals? When they are
turned away from basic care? What happened to the ESI hospitals to which
every business contributes? The dead do not seek reimbursement, but there
should be justice. The truth can no longer be clothed in lies — it’s out on
streets for all to see; the delusion of our leaders, illusion they seek to
cloak us with is laid bare…
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-emperors-new-clothes-253504
Gujarati Poet Parul Khakkar Blames
'Naked King' for Corpses Floating in the Ganga
A
Call for National Mourning and a Proposal for a National Government. By Anil
Nauriya
Society
of the Spectacle / 'इमेज' - 'Image': A Poem on Deaths in the Age of
Covid
Nandini
Sen Mehra: And night has come upon my land
The
Hindu priest struggling to cremate India’s Covid dead – video
Naxalites
should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the
Constitution
The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS
The
emperor's masks: 'apolitical' RSS calls the shots in Modi sarkar
The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: Inquiry Commission Report (1969)
