Navigating the stormy waters

Against the backdrop of thousands of high-level experts spouting wisdom and advice on the unfolding Covid scenario, the only reason I dare to open my mouth now and then is the fact that since they are saying so many contradictory things, all of them cannot be simultaneously right, whereas many, or even most, can be simultaneously wrong. In any case, these days I open my mouth (or rather, scribble on my blog) more to raise honest questions than to offer opinions or knowledge of any kind. Maybe they are questions only a simple-minded commoner would ask. For instance:

The Covid numbers (both new infections and deaths) remained very high all through December to early March, in just one state, Maharashtra, when those numbers were low and declining everywhere else – why did nobody notice, and why wasn’t it decided to isolate that one state almost completely from the rest of the country for a while, the way they did with Wuhan province in China, knowing that otherwise the contagion was bound to spread out like wildfire sooner or later across the rest of the country and make it virtually unmanageable?

Another question: The number of new infections has been surging in Kerala throughout this last month, but the (reported-) death rate has been very, very low (yesterday’s figures were new infections 37290 and 79 deaths, which works out to less than a fourth of one per cent, while they are respectively just around half a per cent in West Bengal and around three per cent in Delhi). How have they managed to keep the mortality rate so low, or have they just been very lucky?

Third question: why are they not building safe houses/quarantine centres in all hotspots on a war footing (literally, with army help if need be) to take off the pressure on hospitals? And why are the central and state governments still shamelessly bickering over the urgency and procedurality of rapid expansion of vaccine production facilities when so many lives are so obviously at stake? Indeed, why isn’t there rapidly mounting public anger over this issue?

To turn my mind to less morbid things – since I cannot move about at will, I am enjoying vicarious travelling via the internet as much as possible. One series on Amazon Prime, called Highway on my plate, took me around many beautiful familiar places in Uttarakhand and Himachal. It’s a series that focuses on eateries on the way, from tucked away resorts serving exotic delicacies to roadside dhabas dishing up tried and tested, plain but cheap and mouth-watering fare, something sure to gladden a foodie’s heart. I am no trencherman myself, but I love watching people eating to their heart’s content.

Locked up at home, my daughter, who has been coaching youngsters since she was a child herself, has started teaching online in a small way and enjoying it. Who knows but a career is in the making? I didn’t know in the early eighties that this would become a lifetime’s work! Another way we are trying to make the ongoing nightmare bearable is dreaming dreams of doing things we like together someday, one of which is, if we can, setting up one of those little resorts in unspoilt remote locations in the mountains, places that would attract only the sort of committed traveler who is gladly willing to forgo sundry urban conveniences, from electricity to piped hot water to internet connection in the rooms for the sake of communing with nature far from the madding crowds… a subsidized dispensary, a primary school and a local women’s self-help group perhaps tagged along. If we can find a generous sponsor with deep pockets, maybe.

After the six-month dry spell, we have been getting a lot of rain, even heavy rain, over the last ten days or so, and I am really, really thrilled, because this is very out of season. The garden looks very lush again, at least for now, and for a brief spell it is comfortable to go for walks. I hope we get a little more of this good thing before the monsoon arrives. The heavy spell is of course more than a month and a half away.

My dear old boy Swarnava Mitra the budding physicist-cum-mystery story writer, bored to tears with enforced idleness just like old Sir, has taken it upon himself to brush up my trigonometry and coordinate geometry preliminary to taking on the calculus, which I loved and handled with ease once upon a time long ago. It is all coming back very quickly, but how soon before I get tired of working out problems and throw in the towel, I don’t know. It will be a test of my teacher’s patience, cunning and skill, too, so wish him luck. And I have decided to get my grasp of French back. There too I am making swift progress – I covered nineteen lessons in two days, which I hear is longer than the beginner’s course that Alliance Française is offering these days, and it has been child’s play, but it makes me sad that I am not living among native Frenchmen, because in that ambience I’d have been fluently swearing and joking and singing and philosophizing in French again within three months at the most.

So that’s an update, just to reassure my best readers that I am neither dead nor brain-dead, yet. Fingers crossed till we can see light at the end of this long tunnel again.