Corona Crisis: Gems from Debris— A Spectrum of Fresh Reflections
One thing that COVID-19 has done, it has stimulated our imagination towards creative living, though mostly confined to our homes. We’ve invented different ways of leading a sane life. And the human imagination knows no limits and invents its survival techniques in most desperate situations. From cooking a dish to writing a poem has been my salvation in COVID-19 pestilence.
ast week I received a book published in Delhi by Heritage Publishers, edited by a distinguished Shakespearean scholar Professor Vikram Chopra.
The volume of around 300 pages has essays, poems, meditations and quotations by scores of academics, writers, poets, philosophers, and medical experts.
The foreword is written by Dr Karan Singh, who visited Fiji decades ago as the Minister for Tourism in the then Congress Government. His father was Hari Singh, the maharaja of Kashmir, who decided to join the Indian Union in 1947.
Thereby hang many tragic tales of terrorism and conflict between the two siblings born out of the terrible Partition of India. It was a caesarian operation performed by an imperial hand –Britain.
Indians were complicit in its making and today both India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed. And the subcontinent’s population has quadrupled in the past 75 eventful years. Peace on the borders has been elusive.
The volume makes interesting reading and covers enormous ground from the Vedas to the most modern medical advice and is arranged in five distinct sections: Moral and Spiritual, Literature and Ethics, Cultural and Humanism, Autumnal Exuberance – poetry, nuggets of wisdom.
The theme of the volume is COVID-19 and its catastrophic consequences globally and in the lives of numerous individuals. The subtitle of the volume is ‘A Spectrum of Fresh Reflections’.
The essayists and poets write from their personal experiences and cultural perspectives; as one would expect, the majority of contributors are from India – scholars, poets, scientists, and philosophers, but the knowledge exhibited is from writings of the world.
The editor has selected an essay and a poem by me, first published in The Fiji Sun. Naturally I was pleased to receive the volume as an e-book and have been browsing through it.
I’m waiting for my printed copy. I like reading books.
How we have coped with COVID-19
What is most admirable is how individuals and communities have coped with COVID-19 and its tragic consequences in teeming cities and obscure corners of villages.
India of course has been severely affected by this pandemic which has overwhelmed smaller and richer nations.
Often in these terrible times people have found consolation and hope in their poetry, philosophy and the moral foundations of their societies. And their faith in their gods in times of crises.
There are quotations from the Vedas, Homer, Shakespeare, Keats, Mark Twain, Pablo Neruda and many others, judiciously selected and placed below the articles; a few rare pictures punctuate the pages .
Most relate to the theme of the preceding article.
One thing that COVID-19 has done, it has stimulated our imagination towards creative living, though mostly confined to our homes. We’ve invented different ways of leading a sane life.
And the human imagination knows no limits and invents its survival techniques in most desperate situations. From cooking a dish to writing a poem has been my salvation in COVID-19 pestilence.
During this period I’ve done a couple of books to keep my sanity going and have established contacts with several almost-forgotten friends.
And of course, one’s family and close friends. A smart phone, an iPad and the connectivity of the internet have been revelatory.
There’s no limit to human ingenuity. And generally the best has come out of most people who care for themselves, their family, neighbours communities and a shared world.
And this volume shows how so many people, especially in India, have lived through this plague, finding resources in their environment and cultural history and spiritual longings.
The book really contains ‘Gems from Debris’ and several pieces are reflections of thoughtful minds.
If only we could think together on the greater crisis of climate change that has increasingly become an existential question not as immediate as a COVID-19, but far more devastating to human destiny and life on the planet.