I spend hours and hours of my day doom scrolling, reading with horror at what unfolds around us. The terrible images and stories, the mess, what seems like a colossal collapse and abdication of what a decent life should be. I have done nothing to help. Yes, we haven’t been irresponsible or done anything outside of what is permitted, but that seems a small contribution. I worry incessantly about my children and their wasted years. I waste time and achieve very little. I fret and complain. I read and absorb.
Deaths in India are meaningless, they happen with such frequency that it is second nature for everyone here to distance it from yourself, the poverty, the lack of dignity, the overwhelming nothing-works-everything-is-corrupted onslaught of daily life here just encourages you to scurry back into your safe space and switch off.
Many people do so much more. It is humbling to see.
What seems to be driving the anger this time around is that is a mess of the current government’s making – that the corrupt, morally defunct, villains that they are resulted in this, our being reduced to this disaster. it is also scary – my daughter got fever and suddenly the horror knocked on our doors.
But India is where I live. This is who we are. This is who my country is. Faced with years of having friends and colleagues scoot off abroad, shyly or arrogantly living it up, I always told myself it wasn’t for me. If I was honest, I probably picked the easy path, the comfort zone, maybe because no one around me told me that I must escape. I also embraced living here, convinced that I wanted to raise a family here, making peace with what it is. Because, at the end of the day, what I genuinely lived for, could be had anywhere.
But faced with the ugly reality of what surrounds us and the inescapable messaging from everyone that one is better off outside India, those buried conversations in my head buzz again. And I feel irritated that everyone who left this is, not just in a better place, but somehow is a better person, is better than me. I know it’s childish and facile – but it’s inescapable. I cannot shake off the sense that everyone outside India is just relieved that they are not here and what is happening here today is a vindication of their decision to have left. I was convinced that I take the right decisions, but maybe I didn’t.
There are more messages everyday – a senior from college who died, people who are now hospitalized. They are people I know.
I am often so angry – angry that no one else is, that everyone’s limited response is to hunker down and wait for this to pass. Yes, maybe whining and wallowing in the horribleness is no solution, but without even staring it in the eye, what hope is there that anything will change. No one calls or wants to speak to me. When I reach out we exchange platitudes. Everyone just wants to return to a facile, soothing past, where we were rich and in control and our bubble protected us. It is tiring, defeating, surviving everyday. How can we pretend that this has not changed something irrevocably? That this isn’t a phase which passes – that you will never be the same person again?
The Stories Page 