44TH DAY OF MY SOCIAL
ISOLATION
26,496 POSITIVE, 824 DEAD, 5804
RECOVERED
General Feeling: “We are
tucked away comfortably in our homes while millions fight disease, hunger and
depression. Food, security of life and basic life necessities like clean water,
shelter, sanitation and personal hygiene are luxuries that we can write about
in our blog posts and speeches. However there are some among us who are
tirelessly working towards doing their bit. They are pushing their capacities
to do the right thing. Putting themselves on the line to save many others. This
display of courage and humanity can save us from being a total failure of a
society. If you can, with whatever you can, please help. And like I’ve been
iterating, donate to smaller organizations who you can audit for yourselves.”
I have so much to say but so
little time. However today is a Sunday and I have prioritized this over all
other tasks I have for today. I am going to divide this blog into three parts
which are distinct, yet connected with the thread of COVID and myself.
Hope & Prepare
(Alert: Nerd paragraphs ahead)
The entire world has pinned its
hope on a safe & effective vaccine to fight the Corona virus. Across the
world, there are about 70 contenders for such a vaccine which are undergoing tests
& trials at various stages. Almost all of them are re-worked versions of
existing vaccines for different viruses – MERS, SARS, EBOLA, BCG etc. It’s
easier to develop a vaccine from existing ones rather than starting all from
scratch – that may take a mighty long time which we may not have at our
disposal.
Among them, the front runners
are 3 vaccines – Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ – it’s the same one Trump made such a
deal about without knowing much about science and coerced India to export
millions of it to the US), Remdesivir – an anti-viral drug used to treat HIV
positive patients (just two days back in a Chinese study, this failed to
produce effective results but the company that produces it, Gilead and some
analysts disagree), BCG – a long trusted friend of humanity which has saved
millions from Tuberculosis, is a safe, strong and effective vaccine – and is
being tested to see whether it can really help the Corona situation.
However apart from these three is
a fourth and a very interesting candidate – ChAdOx1. Already under ‘human
trials’ in Germany and UK, it’s being developed by University of Oxford with
claims that if found effective, it would be ready for mass production and
consumption by September. As per experts this vaccine candidate has 80% chance
of success. What separates it from other
contenders is that is the only possible vaccine that can hope to see the light
of the day this year while all others if at all found effective, will be ready
for mass consumption only sometime next year.
If this works out, it would mean
that we would have saved not just a lot of lives, but stopped further economic
gloom by ease of lock-downs. Spur in economic activity is bound to improve employment
rates and in turn will reduce hunger, distress and death.
Having said that we must
remember that we may NEVER find a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19. It’s
a possibility that we must be aware of and prepare for. This will mean a very
different world and a very different ‘normal’. The sooner we prepare our minds
for it, the easier will we be prepared for a new world order.
Education - Tool for Social Change
I connected with a friend I had
met 8 years ago on Jagriti Yatra. I remembered him as a friendly guy from
Madhya Pradesh who ran a school for tribal children. We used to jam quite a bit in our journey and
he had deep voice that sang ‘Baawra Mann’ perfectly. Shweta, he and I were good
friends. However he saw me off at Ahmedabad station in January 2012 and we
never spoke after that. We continued being Facebook friends and shared just
about a couple of hellos until this Friday when we found the time to speak over
a phone call.
He has been doing some amazing
work at his organization called Argini (
http://agrini.org/)
– which has taken upon the task of imparting education to the tribal and
marginalized children of the MP – Maharashtra border at Teoni. F
or ten years this man has dedicated his
life to using education as a tool for social change. He is an engineer who gave
up lofty dreams of MBA or the Corporate or stable love and family life to
dedicate himself to a larger cause of society and country. He travelled across
the world to understand educational systems of rich and poor countries alike
and bring back his learnings to India.
He
and his team are now completely dedicated to proving relief to migrant workers,
children and women during the COVID crisis as the border town of Teoni sees
huge migration across the state borders.
 |
| The public school run by Agrini at Teoni, Madhya Pradesh |
He is also someone who
understands that hatred breeds hatred
and fear only has negative outcomes. Today
the narrative around lock-down is of fear. Actually, corona or not, today the
narrative around the country is of fear.
Fear of speaking against the
government and being witch-hunted as an ‘anti-national’.
Fear of fundamentalism.
Fear of lynching.
Fear of practicing one’s faith.
Fear of all those things that we
were not supposed to be fearful of.
The spirit of our country is embedded
in our constitution. And while most of us won’t have the time to study the
whole text of it, at-least refer to the Preamble of our constitution which is
the key to understanding and deciphering it.
My friend, Gourav Jaiswal, is
also thinking on lines of how education can be a tool for political change. At
the same time he’s aware that political change alone will not serve anything.
An ideological change in the country (and the world) is required. How does one
fuel such a change? Especially commoners like us who have no power or money to
tilt anything. The answer is complicated but perhaps lies in basic simple
understanding of human psychology. He
says we need the right communication strategy to bring about a lasting
ideological change – a change which breeds love, freedom, empathy and
creativity.
 |
| This is Gourav. |
We also spoke of our personal
lives. A lot has happened for both of us in these 8 years and 2 hours of
conversation were not enough to even touch the tip of the ice-berg. However, we
were happy to connect and I am glad that this lock-down has gotten me in touch
with so many of those, who I’d been too busy for. Life is made beautiful by people we meet. Remembering them and learning
from them often feeds into our spiritual needs. This conversation was that
fulfilling for me.
I am now going to try and help
him raise funds for his organization which is committed to help the voiceless
and the helpless during these cruel times.
Dreams and the Subconscious
Anyone who knows me closely,
knows that I’ve had an almost consistent history of extremely vivid dreams. I
have spent hours narrating details of so many of my dreams to family &
friends. One such dream is a blog post (and chapter 1 of my unfinished book) as
well!!
In the last three days, I’ve had two extremely vivid dreams.
On Friday morning, I woke up
feeling stressed. I had dreamt of having a miscarriage. With only my parents by
my side, helpless and trying to call for help at a hospital guest-house with no
doctor attending to their child. We were somewhere close to Indore (I don’t know
why Indore). However given the COVID crisis, there was no help. The staff was
less and very busy. The doctors were few. And even though we belong to a rather
privileged class, no amount of money could get us help. The dream ended with
all of us desperately trying and praying for help while there was none.
I woke up wondering what that
dream meant. Was it an outcome of work stress? Was it an outcome of news
stories I read about non-COVID patients dying due to lack of medical attention?
Was it an outcome of a specific incident that took place in Bharatpur
(Rajasthan) a week back where a Muslim woman who was about to deliver was
denied entry in a government hospital due to her religion?
(Irresponsible media sensationalism and fake news has built an image
of Muslims as perpetrators of Covid infection after the whole Tablighi Jamaat
incident blew up across the country.)
She had a miscarriage at the
entry of the hospital. She was beaten and made to clean her own blood. This is
the state of affairs. How can one beat a woman who had miscarriaged? How do you
look at someone’s faith in a situation like this?
Why do we forget that a woman who’s bringing a life to this world is
transcending something between the material and mortal universes?
As if this dream was not intense
enough, last night I dream of being in his arms.
I have been to his home town once
for real. We were supposed to drive there sometime during the monsoons. I could
never really happen. (Like so many of our trips could never really happen). I
was at his place with a few other friends. I had never been to his house
before. It was a small but a very neat place. He had wrapped up everything from
elsewhere and moved back home. In his luggage I saw some of my dresses. I was
happy to find those pieces which were missing from my wardrobe. They had
accidentally made way to his luggage. How I didn’t know. But I was happy to find
my clothes and find myself at his place.
The dream felt unreal for I felt
so safe and relaxed after such a long time.
A dream like this after so many
years rattles you and leaves you wondering whether you’ve indeed been able to
pick up all your pieces. It also leaves
you wondering whether you do really want to dust off everything.
I have tried to do the wrong
things. The risky things our heart motivates us towards. I have tried to do the
right things. The ones that the world preaches. I have lived by my instincts as
well by the rules. Neither of the attempts has been truly successful.
Therefore, perhaps I should look
within and search for my answers. In my sub-conscious.
Until the next post, only think love & peace.
