Letter from Underground
Image credits: Express photo by Nirmal Harindran
“New times demand new measures and new men”, I woke up often these past few months, not just from the delusional reverie of a deep sleep, but also from the perfectly alive surroundings of a cautiously breathing consciousness to these James Russell words, reverberating in my mind, resonating with my thoughts, summarizing so surprisingly the mood of entire humanity. The eerie emptiness of loved cities, the ghostly demeanour of the familiar streets, the sad silence of abandoned monuments piercing through our collective hearts like the shards of chilling ice, betray the air of a civilization of olden days, rendered to ruins by the wheels of age, looked upon with a romantic melancholy by a people of present through the tinted glasses of antique reminiscence.
The nature however, is rejuvenating and healing itself from our many errors and excesses. We are soaring through these heart wrenching times under the generous shade of the heavens which are now bluer than ever and a kind sky which is now full of soothing stars, protected by the great mounts now visibly stretching their arms in embrace, nourished by the revived purity of once again sparkling rivers, in the extended companionship of other beings of mother earth. The harassing madness of developmental fanaticism and the naive exertions of a mistaken invincibility, the misguided incursions of an imagined infallibility and the fictitious assertions of a divine supremacy, a foolish disregard for fellow life and a thoughtless underestimation of the mighty nurture are all dawning heavily on the newfound realisation of human mind. The fog is lifting from man’s Lilliputian existence in this infinitely vast and immensely benevolent universe. A novel awareness of survival in sync with nature not divorced from it is knocking hard on our conscience, and demanding the rise of a new self within each of us, prompting us to adopt renewed ways of maintaining and encouraging humanity, and uphold the best of it when we step back into the transformed world.
Image credits: twitter.com
All mankind currently co-inhabits a watershed juncture in the eternally renewing womb of the all pervasive and ever changing time, where we are tasked with either evolving to interface with the shifting perspectives of civilizational traits of human society and human bonding, while passionately keeping intact the essence of humanity; or withering away to stagnancy, irrelevance and futility. This is the beckoning of an age of reflection, an epoch of evolution and an era of struggle for the constitution of equilibrium between the indispensible old and necessary new. Compassion, kindness, care, thought, capability to associate and ability to love constitute the core of humanity. With a global pandemic suddenly altering the composition of the outer ambience of human interplay, quickly throwing the equations of physical connect out of balance; these core elements have become even more essential, for preserving everything human. Social distances should not birth apathy; fears should not deliver desertion, and privilege should not be allowed the luxury of negligence. Vulnerable shall not be forsaken as weak and dispensable. Labours of sweat and blood should fiercely be guarded from indifference and debilitation; and providence of producer should never be starvation.
Image credits: indiatoday.com
To reign unbeaten through this calamity, humanity needs to assume new avatars to connect, and adopt new ways of conduct, to find expression and to weave denser than ever the threads of mutual coherence, courage and friendship. Virtual presence is now striving to fill the gaps circumstantially left behind by the hasty compelled departures of our race from the revered temples of civilization we have built over a period of thousands of years, to the newly exclusive safety of human homes. New modes and inventive means have surfaced as the new guardians of the pillars of social organisation and coexistence. Innovation, the most godly of all human endeavours and most distinctive of all our capabilities has come to rescue the world we have created and to mobilise it. It has taken upon itself to conserve the knowledge we have birthed, and to help it prevail. But the vocation of scripting the journey and conclusion of this story of mankind cannot be undertaken by a mere invention. It remains faithfully in our fateful hands. Here on, every step taken will either scribe the history of human triumph or will engrave the sorry tale of our remorseful defeat. The pursuit of knowledge is the generative blood coursing through our way of life. Inquiry into the material and metaphysical, and thirst for answers has kept us obsessively absorbed since times immemorial. The vast repositories of knowledge both constructive and destructive, being created every moment, if visited with humility, might guide us safely through this rapidly renovating world. Hope is not in gloom and despair, but in the lessons of the past and devices of the future. Hope is not in dejection and isolation of souls, but in the fellowship of spirits and compassion of hearts.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’’ –J. R.R. Tolkien
To all our battles of hope and despair these past many days……..
With love
Nivedita
