It was a bright Sunday morning in Bengaluru. I woke up to the roaring sound of bikers racing past my residence, which abutted the National Highway on the outskirts of this sprawling metropolis. Sunday mornings are the only time these rapturous bikers have plenty of space and time to ride their majestic bikes to fetch barrels of euphoria.
As usual, the moment I woke up, I reached for my journal and the graphite pencil kept on my bedside table. This is a morning ritual I've been following ever since I instilled the habit of jotting down wonderful thoughts and ideas that spring to my mind when I'm semi-awake and before I get out of bed. But this time, instead of writing in my notebook, I kept staring at my pencil, examining it for hours. Days passed and months elapsed as I tried to decode the worth of this innocuous-looking object that I have been using to scribble bizarre words and figures since I was a toddler.
Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic started wreaking havoc on an unprecedented scale. The entire country was put under lockdown after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his abrupt decision through the national media. As a medical professional, I was working ceaselessly to enforce Covid-19 containment measures, yet I felt a sense of emptiness and despair due to the complete lockdown. The National Highway adjacent to my home, which a few months ago had been a bustling, noisy zone, was now desolate and silent. It seemed that all Homo sapiens had vanished and a new species would soon take their place, just as they had replaced the Neanderthals about 60,000 years ago. The situation perfectly resembled the harrowing scene from Avengers: Endgame-as if Thanos had incarnated as Covid-19 to unleash hell on Earth.
To combat the melancholy, people started exploring various skills and exhibited their unique talents on social media. This period saw the emergence of a new genre of social media artists -painters, singers, dancers, scholars, chefs and fitness experts-all desperately trying to flush out the cortisol accumulated because of stress due to prolonged confinement at home.
Hindu (1765)
Philosophers (2327)
Aesthetics (317)
Comparative (66)
Dictionary (12)
Ethics (44)
Language (350)
Logic (80)
Mimamsa (58)
Nyaya (134)
Psychology (497)
Samkhya (60)
Shaivism (66)
Shankaracharya (233)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist