Been thinking about how we tend to draw comfort from the privilege of distance. As long as those bearing the brunt of what is happening in India now are not an immediate relative, we can make ourselves numb to the pain and horror. But there is no choice when someone...

Someone we know is caught in the crosshairs of what is happening. The statics become all too real then. Of phones being engaged, the 20th person saying that they don’t have the medicine you need. Being told that oxygen is running out as your anxiety level mounts.

... Having to beg for a cremation slot. Covid, then, doesn’t remain a casual topic of conversation, like the weather. And the official indifference, the apathy really hits you then. And you acquire a genuine appreciate for folks who have the heart, the desire...

... to do whatever little they can to actually make things better. The desperation and helplessness that people are feeling now has to be felt to be believed. We simply can’t turn our faces away. We must all reflect on what we have done, through our action or inaction...

to make the current state of affairs possible. This is not politics as usual. Or just an intellectual discussion. It is pure, raw, all-consuming pain. Surely we did not construct our lives, brick by painful brick, for them to be destroyed this way.