Prophet of Doom

May 29, 2020

I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good. I would fill a page with this sentence if I was writing in my paper journal. In the spirit of disclosure – the saboteur won again last night. I stayed up Netflix binging. Woke tired and crabby with a mind unable to focus. Not a good state to try to work in.

I don’t feel good. Sigh. Something inside feels itchy and angry. Like I want to claw out things – people’s eyes, their hearts – when I read FB posts of cheer. Also, stories of people doing good work on the migrant crisis in India. Ya, mostly that I think.

This week, the Supreme Court of India finally turned its gaze towards the migrant problems – after two months of suffering and chaos – after repeatedly dismissing petitions brought before it since March 29. The behavior of the Solicitor General has been particularly despicable. It seems so be without integrity, truth or morality. Besides calling people, drawing attention to the continuing plight of the migrants, Vultures and Prophets of Doom, he asked the Court to have the petitioners file affidavits on how they had helped this crisis before challenging the government. He called them armchair intellectuals. 

I have been called these names too. Not yet Vulture, but the rest and also anti-national. As are all of us who criticize the government. This government seems to need a whole lot of acknowledgement and praise simply to do its job – which it is doing incompetently right now. 

Arguments -- that descend into the verbal equivalent of a fist fight – I’ve had many with supporters of the government. But what is puzzling me right now is a mini conflict with a friend who I have worked extensively with against BJP agendas of hate, one who is definitely on the same side of the divide as me. 

Whenever she brings up stories of hope, stories where ordinary citizens are attempting to fill the gap the government has left, I feel myself bristling. I want to yell, ‘STOP IT. STOP IT. It is not enough. It is never enough. Stay with the fucking lack of hope. Stay with the fact that we are seeing this happening in the first place.’

And that is the crux of it. In the society we are living in these issues exist, they always existed and we have found ways to make our peace with them. During crisis the good hearts of so many are opened. They/We come out and help – but then once the crisis is done they/we go back to their/our lives. Why should we not – we too went through the stress of it and we too need to feel normal, rested, hopeful.

But there are those who will not feel normal, rested, hopeful even when this crisis is past.

How, oh how, can we change the way society is structured right now? At the very least hold the government – any government – constantly accountable to the needs of the poorest? How can we ourselves decide that no more – no more will we blind ourselves to the continued enslavement of the poorest? None of us want to live the day by day existence they do. 

Yes, I am the Voice of Doom in that sense. I find it hard to embrace the stories of hope. I tend to constantly peer into the shadows where the most suffering exists. Sometimes that is where some glimmers of change emerge.