Spit on you

Disclaimer: I have not gone through the how-many-ever-paged NEP 2020.

However, here’s what I have to say about it.

When a policy comes out, one must goes through it and understand it to present a well-balanced critique of it. However, for that, the first condition is that one must trust the intent of the policy makers. Then hours can be spent on discussing how the policy can be implemented, or how it will pan out in the future, etc, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not mistrust the present dispensation’s intent at all. It is just that I am all too painfully well aware of what its intent is.

And it is the intent I have a problem with.

I, a citizen of India, disagree and reject this government’s intent. You may impose a hundred policies, and a hundred other new administrative bodies on me. I refuse to doubt for one second that your intent is something other than what I know it to be. 

I may not step out of my home and I may not even write, but I protest, with every fibre of my being -- your intent. 

Coronavirus

The virus' life-cycle shows us one thing -- anything in life has to reach the peak before it can start going down.
Often, we forsake the climb mid-way and begin our journey downward as we are tired of the climb.
This leaves in a person a feeling of wretchedness for not having been able to manage the climb, which ruins the person's downward walk for good.
  

Not even a moment

The rain is gentle,
It's touch slight

I am looking at it,
Wanting to write a poem

No, the rain won't be a
muse today,

Stop these efforts
Even the rain has stopped now.

lockdown

I sometimes feel they have put all of us in lockdown so that they can do whatever they want with the world. It is not because they want to stop the spread of this disease. About the disease they really dont care at all. It is the resources that they have their eyes on.
Like terror was also used as such a code word that will instill fear in the minds of the public, but it could not instill fear in every one, with this virus they have got a sure shot thing that will instill fear in every single one.
Why should the idea be to instill fear? Because a fearful human is good for nothing, except to do as he/she is told.
However, there are many things that have come out during the course of this exercise.
No 1, from what the migrant workers showed us, no amount of fear of catching one's death or disease, can stop you from wanting to go home. If you have money and property tied up at the place you are in, you might not want to go home, but if none of that is there then the truth is naked and your desire to go back to where you came from shines through.
This the ones in power had not anticipated at all. They were like the poor labourer will be so scared to die that he/she will not venture out from where he/she is. Those in power have no idea that the labourers are wearing their lives on their sleeves, even when they work as there is no net anywhere that can break their fall.
They are being punished now for wanting to leave before they were permitted to. One by dilution of the laws and two by trying to push for employment of locals. The former one is of course a terrible punishment indeed, but it cannot hurt the ones who anyway did not know about the laws or could not demand their rights. The latter one is just a hollow threat.

About our time

I do not know if "May you live in interesting times" is actually a Chinese curse, or if it is something slick you can say, but we are living in interesting times now.
We have always lived in interesting times I believe, because interest is something human beings need to carry on with the whole thing.
If one finds something interesting, one puts in the effort to carry it out and that holds for life too.
I do believe social media makes people lose interest in everything. Even the most hardened social media warrior finds it necessary to take a break at times, because it is just not a natural way of conversing, creating or being.
You may argue that nothing about modern life is natural, but if we assume modernity has been with us for say well over two hundred years, then slowly we are getting comfortable with it and it becomes natural to our being. Modern life also affords you some time for introspection, thinking and understanding. So even if many things seem like they are unnatural, you (as a species) are given the time to deal with that.
Social media and its disruptive, loud, noisy, annoying discourse snatches that away from humans. And what is more insulting is the fact that it allows even the most non-modern human to wear the garb of modernity without having to go through the initiation process.
I do wish the virus had got social media instead of humans.