Despair, an apology, and...

 May 21, 2021

A prickly thing with small sharp teeth. That

bites daily, ripping small pieces,

of you. Exposing brittle bone beneath the protections.

Despair takes a bright sunny day and tosses up a storm.

Searing lightening bolts, thunder that rolls endlessly, dense acid rain. 

And your hair falls out.

 

I wrote this, sort of, poem two days ago. After watching people gasping for oxygen, hearing accounts of the black fungus that is attacking covid patients treated with steroids. I felt insane despair as I watched images of countless corpses floating in the Ganges, more buried on its banks — while listening to the official denial narratives about these corpses. I had grown my own fangs and had been snapping, snapping, biting at anybody who came within chomping distance. Crying at times and raging at people who couldn’t understand the fragility roiling beneath my surfaces.

 

I remembered those months in 2001. Right after the bombing of the World Trade Centre. I remembered the ‘shock and awe’ bombing of Afghanistan that the Bush administration began. I googled it and read that this kind of tactic was used earlier than 2001, but I remember this one for the daily images of destruction akin only to Hiroshima and Nagasaki — in my memory. 

 

I remember going to peace meetings, signing petitions to stop this War on Terror. It changed the world after. Made it a more dangerous place to be in. I remember wandering, trying to find a way to stop the devastation I felt within and saw outside. Trying to find a way to be ‘useful’ to the innocents killed then, to the ravaged land. I remember seeing American citizens waving posters claiming that they didn’t vote for Bush or apologising what their country was doing. I also remember many Americans feeling deeply their own wound of 9/11 — which is huge, deep and unforgivable. 

 

I want to wave those posters today. As an Indian I want to apologise to the world for the Prime Minister I didn’t vote for. I want to apologise for the hubris, the early jubilation, the ignoring and burying of scientific data, of a completely messed up vaccination policy, the taking the eye of the ball to win an election, to image build — that has made the world a more dangerous place today. 

 

I live in Singapore, which is experiencing a burst of  covid clusters and renewed restrictions. Polite Singapore calls the B.1.617.2 variant the South Asian mutation – not Indian. Yes, they are called out by the citizens for this. Yes, there are racists comments and questions why Modi won’t close his borders as well as questions about why the government here won’t close theirs. 

 

How can anyone be blamed for a natural mutation of a natural virus. But conditions in India created by policy of the ruling party provided a petri dish for it to thrive. The low amount of genome sequencing once it was detected, the early ignoring of its virulence, the lack of research into it, the absence of tracing, of sharing what little they knew with the world, allowed the mutation to travel to places, and enter the community there. With advance knowledge maybe many countries might have shaped their entry and quarantine policies differently? Just like we say that early knowledge about the virus when it was first seen in Wuhan might have helped us avoid some of the catastrophes we saw last year.

 

I feel, like many others, that Modi, along with several others, should be tried by an International Tribunal for crimes against humanity. 

 

But he won’t be. Just as Bush and others — with the policies and conditions that provided a petri dish that lead to 9/11 — never will be. Modi will probably win the next election instead. 

 

India is grappling with its bleeding wounds. The immediacy of the situation and the response to the constantly evolving events leave no time for reflection. But once we are past it, I truly hope that we can have truth commissions that accurately reflect the deaths and the ways in which they could have been prevented. A court in India has called what is happening a genocide. We have to, just have to, acknowledge the true numbers, the true harm that was done to the people of India, and to the world by the actions of the current Government. And more than anyone else his supporters need to call him out for what he didn’t do. As the world turns and more things happen we forget things in the past. This year, and the last, I hope remain in our collective memory for a while. 

 

Even as I write these words I know I have only captured a tiny bit of the churning within me. There is so much, so much more but grateful that a few words have escaped the too ‘much-ness’ and the paralysis I have been feeling.