Lockdown memoirs, part two

Yes, I know I haven’t written for some time, and people have been asking why. My excuse is laziness, but also a little bit of something else: I am terrified of repeating myself, especially seeing that some people have dropped not too subtle hints that I am becoming boring… my frequent readers, you can do me a great favour by giving me the same warning if you too feel that that is indeed becoming the case. Old people become garrulous, and ramble and repeat themselves unselfconsciously. They need to be (mildly-) reprimanded.

My children are complaining that they are desperately sick of staying at home (ha ha: even Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, agrees that permanent work from home would be sick!), and would love to come over for regular classes; that they are even missing the scoldings! I can only say God bless. And I know today how kind Providence has been to me, how much beyond making a living I depend on my pupils year after year to live a good life, how badly I’d miss my work if I were forced to quit even if I didn’t need the money at all. In later years, if I am still at it, I shall only have to find ways of making it less of a routine drudgery…

While it has caused too much (partly avoidable) misery worldwide, I cannot deny that the pandemic scare has also done us some good by forcing a global pause in the pursuit of the ‘ordinary business of life’, to use an expression coined by the great 19th century economist Alfred Marshall. As I noted in an earlier post, crime is down, road accidents are down, pollution is down, but that is just the beginning of the story. The Bengali writer Bani Basu has pointed out that, because of being under house arrest for a very long stretch, many of us have rediscovered how little of material things we can actually make do with: which cannot be but a salutary lesson for all of us, or at least a powerful reminder, which I hope will not be too quickly forgotten. And while we have discovered how many parties we need never attend and how many meetings we need not sit on, we have, I hope, also found how much we need one another’s physical, face to face company, though we do get on one another’s nerves from time to time too, even in very loving relationships. I wonder whether Aristotle actually said (in Greek) that man is a political animal, or was it really ‘social’ animal, as I read when I was a small boy? I hope that a lot of people have found out how much they travel unnecessarily, simply to run away from home or to feel important! It is good that so many people have been forced to discover, or rediscover, how to be fruitfully, enjoyably alone both with a few dearly loved ones, and with themselves, whether it is by meditating or reading or indulging all sorts of hobbies that can be pursued at home. I, for one, have been spending much more time than usual chatting with old boys, whether they live nearby and drop in occasionally, or whether they live half a world away, and can talk only over Whatsapp. It is a genuine pleasure to know that they relish these interactions as much as I do.

What has amazed me, personally, is not the disease and its effects, but how it spread panic worldwide – in our country far more than in many others – because it is so uncharacteristic of human nature, unless human nature itself has changed within the last few decades. We humans did not survive and thrive over hundreds of millennia, nor did we bring so much suffering and destruction upon ourselves through horrors like war, by being so afraid to die! I shall keep writing again and again on this subject, because it touches upon so many things, metaphysical, existential, ethical, etc etc. It takes my breath away. But let that wait for later. However, interested readers might meanwhile review my two old blogposts titled Meditations on death and dying.

Subhasis wrote in his comment on the last post that this once in several lifetimes incident has helped us greatly to know what people are really like. I have been pondering upon that remark for days together. Someone else, a doctor, told me last night he is truly glad to see that the sight of so much human suffering all around has aroused the kind of sympathy and desire to help our fellow man that we had been on the verge of losing. I hope he is right, and even more that it will not be quickly forgotten. Also that a few good habits that people have been forced to cultivate out of sheer terror will not be given up, especially in overcrowded countries like ours, like not crowding and jostling where that sort of thing is not absolutely necessary, not spitting on the street or using the roadside as a toilet – frankly speaking, I am not too optimistic, though I shall be very happy to be proved wrong.

The recent cyclone that blew over Bengal (Amphan, May 20), and wreaked havoc especially over the southern districts and the metropolis of Kolkata has briefly taken people’s minds off the obsession with the spreading virus. I do hope, heartless as it sounds, that more such traumatic things happen and soon, so that millions of foolish folk eventually realize that we have to live with a lot of unpleasant things all the time, because that has always been the human condition, and so start behaving a little more normally again. ‘New normal’ is a historically valid idea, but it takes ages to happen, like manuscripts being replaced by printed books, home tutors for children of the rich by sausage-factory schools for the masses, and horse-drawn carriages by railway trains. They don’t happen virtually overnight, as many people seem to be expecting. Thirty years after the internet began to spread worldwide, there are still millions of people around who are like babes in the wood when it comes to something like online banking.

Among other things, during the lockdown I have discovered Russian child piano prodigy Elisey Mysin. He brought back memories of the wonderful movie August Rush. I can almost agree with one of the comment writers on YouTube that Mysin is Mozart reincarnated. May he have a long life and wonderful career ahead.  Also, I am breathlessly into the just-released Thomas Cromwell trilogy by Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light. My daughter introduced me to the first book, Wolf Hall, a couple of years ago, and now she has bought me the third. I haven’t read fictionalized biographies of this calibre since Irving Stone stopped writing.

By the way, here's the link to a little something I read out from Jim Corbett on Instagram at my daughter's behest.

Well, so much for now. I am writing these memoirs rather like a diary, to make interesting reading for myself and perchance some others many years later, when it will all sound like a fairy tale. Imagining my grandchildren going through it, to think of one example!

Lockdown memoirs

I belong neither to the category of the very poor who are having to cope with extreme privations, nor to that small fortunate section of well-heeled businessmen, politicians and assorted types who have found in the lockdown an unexpected opportunity to further their careers vigorously, so I happen to be one of those whose biggest problem is to cope day in day and day out with boredom, frustration and incipient depression. This is what has been happening to me and immediately around me.

Of the few people who come out on the streets, the vast majority are males again. Without comment.

Beggars are knocking daily at my door after a gap of more than two decades.

Some people – old boys, as well as parents of current pupils, are beginning to say that the lockdown is slowly driving them mad. On the other hand, a lot of people are so scared of being infected and killed that they have virtually stopped even coming out on their balconies. Mostly retired people on pensions and those with assured salaries being deposited in their bank accounts, I am sure. They remind me of Dwijendralal Ray’s poem Nandalal: amazing indeed to think it was written more than a century ago! Who says the world has changed?

This has been a very wet and mild summer: it has rained heavily again and again ever since the middle of April. There are sudden chills; this evening itself there was a thundershower, and I had to wrap myself briefly in a shawl. So my surroundings are lush green, ablaze with flowers of many hues, and actually rather too noisy with bird calls at all hours of the day. I have seen snakes slithering on the roads and large scorpions – not very common sights at all.

The dogs prowling around in packs for scarce food are becoming feral, and a menace to pedestrians after evenfall: I am usually fond of them and they respond with wagging tails, but lately I have taken to carrying a big stick.

‘Learning online’, from my experience, is rather like what we Bengalis call kanthaaler aaamshottwo, or, as one dad put it, learning how to drive by reading a book. But a lot of us are having to make do, pupils and teachers alike. I have not gone for video conferencing, because they are not worth the bother: besides the networks being weak and people’s equipment often not up to the mark, there is more noise, distraction, idle chatter and pointless repetition than real learning of any sort whenever large numbers of youngsters get together. I have restricted myself to posting written lessons and exercises as well as audio lectures in class-wise Whatsapp groups, with an occasional pre-recorded video thrown in (which, to my surprise, have been much appreciated), answering questions via Whatsapp and phone, and correcting homework via email. That is a lot, actually.

And while this is deeply unsatisfactory as a solution over any significant length of time, one very heartening spin-off is that I know now that I don’t have to stay put in my house here for months at a time in future (as I have had to do for more than thirty years) to keep my career going any more. Given that logistics will keep improving – better phones and connections for most people, more robust apps, large screen TV and high quality webcam for me when I feel the investment to be justified, most of my study material stored in the Cloud and accessible from anywhere, I can buzz off for short, suddenly-planned holidays far more frequently, telling my pupils (maybe notifying them minutes before catching a flight!) ‘The next week’s classes will be held over the Net!’ That’s a happy thought.

On the flip side, I have sadly gotten very used to long post-lunch siestas. While I can cheerfully forgive myself given my age and the very long years of toil behind me, it will be quite a wrench – at least for the first few weeks – when daily afternoon and evening classes begin again, as they will sooner or later. Also, I have not been able to get a haircut in more than two months, and it's getting to be a nuisance.

The local markets are quite adequately stocked with essentials like rice, dal, salt, sugar, cooking oil, meat, fish and vegetables (especially vegetables: a great many people, from rickshawpullers to autodrivers, have been forced to turn into roadside vegetable vendors), but there are incipient shortages of processed foods, like Maggi and coffee and Nutella.

It puzzles me why only one hospital in the town has been designated as a CoViD diagnostic cum treatment centre, and that too a private hospital many miles away from the town proper.

A lot of people have told me stories about crowds being beaten up here and there by the police. Yet I have gone around the town several times in the last six weeks, and though I have seen crowds in some places, not once have I seen a police posse roughing them up. I have never been personally accosted either, though the local police patrol sees me taking a walk along deserted streets every evening.

Some people who think they are very wise and prescient are saying that this pandemic scare will change the world forever; others that, given how soon the whole world forgot the Great Pandemic of 1918-1919, everything will be business as usual by this time in 2021. Which side would you lay bets on?

The Decameron was written during the Black Death in Europe. I wonder who is working on some such epoch-making art or science right now, and where, if at all?

So much for now. I’ll be glad to hear from readers who are stuck at home like me.

P.S., May 17: For the record, this was one of the serious irritants I anticipated as reasons for not going in for live classes online by video. I can smirk and tell all those miffed teachers 'I told you so!'