An Ear full 

         By- Pamarty Venkataramana

All world is locked down as factories down their shutters; offices remain closed; shops are shut and almost all human beings worthy of their life are serving a sentence imposed by their rulers – all in one common fear of an yet really unknown virus seeking to devour with an appetite as large as the greedy bureaucrat;the hungry political animals and the every voracious big house industrialists.

There are a few uniformed folks out on the streets and at makeshift Covid-19 hospitals serving the battle of Mankind against the deadly disease.

There are yet others ‘working from home’.

The ubiquitous housewives are of course the unsung homemakers who laboriously serve the Family.

What about us, the remaining lot.

Comprising of a majority of vagabonds, busybodies, armchair pundits of good governance and every other topic ranging from UFOs to haute couture?

And, the jobless, homeless, rudderless beings locked up in confines of a newfound ‘fear of life’ ?

We, the People.

Yes.

It is to the vast majority of useless and aimless populace who do not possess any particular socially useful productive work skill or goal to further the cause or purpose of life as an exalted ‘human-being’ that all these faceless monsters called as ‘The Government’ tend to subserve.

Behind the facade of a haloed Constitution!

We, the people who swim in entitlements and bask in glory of being chosen to be reserved as ‘special category citizens’- be it based on primordial considerations as DNA of ancestry (commonly labelled as ‘caste’) or subsequently embraced ‘religion’ – are the superior creatures of this holy land which boasts of ‘equality of laws as well as equality before laws’.

We are bored stiff.

Boredom stalks us now more than ever before. We criticise the ‘total lockdown ’ and its many extensions.

We have begun to feel guilty.

We suddenly began to notice the thoroughly useless cub reporters who bravely and unhesitatingly seek to mouth English in their rustic desi lingo with a bit of twirling lips and more of bow-bow noise-effects.

Surely, any one of the street minstrels eking a livelihood at railway platforms or outside temples, churches and dargaahs could have applied for that most worshipped job occupation : the ‘pay’ may be measly but the huge attention by sensation-seeking masses glued to phones and television sets would lend great aura to our least glamorous life.

We have started to discover that all litigation revolving around human rights, personal rights and domestic violence was an important engagement by society.

Lawyers and Judges are as ‘non-essential’ as the litigants themselves.

The emergency courts are but mere strings pulled by baton-wielders.

So, why at all waste huge public resources in recruitment of court staff or establishment of elephantine court complexes?

As before the Constitutional democracy was thrust upon an unsuspecting slave-continent, the bunch of five seated under shade of a banyan tree could resolve all

friction in society, in virtually no time.

And, with collective wisdom and not ‘in-camera’ by time-wasters. Or, better yet, online faceless judges could assign numerical identity to disputes and pass judgments over fate of the citizens. As has tax babudom sought to commence its newest drive of image-building!

We have also observed how trains of helpless manual labour force are trekking back to their native places as train and public transport services remain audiences.

The astronomical announcements of contributions to a national public Fund remain piped by pipers who bag all power. So, where is the difference between planeloads of Desis being ferried back to ‘homeland’ at huge expenditures and the plight of these who are left being studied as a class apart from us urbane dwellers staying holed up in confines of a concrete jungle? If you spot the marked gap in treatment accorded to all, you are eligible to join the ranks of all whose eyes have started to open up in this enforced world calamity!

We are jobless. We are homeless. We are aimless. They are focused. They are productive. There was no brain drain. There is no reversal of sociological studies.

Only that the TRUTH has come out. It has emerged as the lone warrior. And, the sole survivor. Out of all this unfortunate mess.

I could go on and on.

About how the crow as well as the eagle and the pigeon and the parrots are peeking at my window since a few weeks.

Or, how I have begun to peer at a rare aeroplane flying down into the nearest International Airport that was used to ferry in all ‘fit for quarantine’ cases from abroad and turned the maximum City into the accursed hotspot reporting largest number of Covid cases of the land!

One wonders if anyone likes another human being anymore. Be it a woman or man. Whether the tribe of Bouncers would be banished by departments licensing pubs and bars. Whether the world’s oldest profession and the second oldest one (of advocacy) would survive this onslaught on social relationships.

Was this lockdown a ‘business investment’ ?

Has it awakened the lazybones of society to welcome creepy fear and paranoid tendencies into every psyche?

Well, many have been waxing philosophical as well across social platforms.

‘Why do you spend your time here like this? ‘ – over a governance system over which you have no control whatsoever.

Why not begin to engage in more creative pursuits as arts,literature,sing or dance?

We, the bored, have definitely got enlightened by the universal panic: a government is created to collect taxes, impose fines, act holier than thou but not to address Constitutional dictates of equality of life for all society.

Tranquility is attained not through the hookah or the dynamics of hard work and economic activity but via inaction.

Boredom.

Curse neither Life nor Death.

In a scenario of ‘all are losers’, who wins?

Boredom.

Nero fiddled while Romans died. 2020 smirks as all world halts itself. In utter panic.

But, boredom is more active.Than ever before.

Do you belong here or on the other side of boredom?

Ponder. Please do.

🙏