"Not the war itself but what it has revealed about the Vietnamese people, about their extraordinary power of resistance. Ordinary people, peasants...no one knew they had it in them. This isn't a matter of technology, it's plain human courage. And it takes your breath away." ++

Of late at home, my parents often discuss what a disappointment Ratan Tata has been in terms of relief work in the pandemic. They never expect much of Adani, Ambani, Birla, Mahindra anway. They often praise Azim Premji. And the Muslim fruit business owner who donated crores ++

I find myself thinking of photographs I see on Twitter: a vendor of fresh coconuts who offers coconut water for free to patients' family members outside a Delhi hospital. A man bending down to put a teep (bindi) on a shrouded body. A cab driver refusing to take money to wait ++

at a hospital. So many auto drivers running their autos as ambulances, sometimes for free or for subsidised bills. A bill of accounts from a sweet trader cooking meals for those who can't cook who wrote, 'pay me whatever you can afford'. Perhaps because it was Ray's centenary ++

I think again and again of his film Pratidwandi and its hero, Siddhart Chaudhuri, who spoke of "plain human courage that takes your breath away". At the interview he said this, he was called a Communist. He didn't get the job.

Ray is right, though. It takes your breath away