It’s been six months now since we have been more or less confined at home and I was feeling a little down the past few weeks. So I decided to compile some quotes on positivity to cheer myself up and to tell myself that things will get better. Since it did lift my mood, I thought to share them with you too…
Turbulence – David Szalay
A woman strikes up a conversation with the man sitting next to her on a plane after some turbulence. He returns home to tragic news that has also impacted another stranger, a shaken pilot on his way to another continent who seeks comfort from a journalist he meets that night. Her life shifts subtly as well, before she heads to the airport on an assignment that will shift more lives in turn.
In this wondrous, profoundly moving novel, Szalay’s diverse protagonists circumnavigate the planet in twelve flights, from London to Madrid, from Dakar to Sao Paulo, to Toronto, to Delhi, to Doha, en route to see lovers or estranged siblings, aging parents, baby grandchildren, or nobody at all. Along the way, they experience the full range of human emotions from loneliness to love and, knowingly or otherwise, change each other in one brief, electrifying interaction after the next.
The rains are nothing new to Singapore, and these days we have rains most afternoons, but because the sewage and rain canal systems are good, there is hardly any flooding here. But it’s a completely different ball game in Mumbai where each Monsoon means wading through sometimes waist-deep water and having the transportation system crippled for a few days till the waters recede. But there is a magic in the rains and I used to love the monsoon. I loved having it rain when I come back home from college because it meant I could walk home from the bus-stop without opening my umbrella and get wet in the rain, but conversely hated this when I went to school or work because it meant staying in wet clothes all day. The rains have been slashing Mumbai in the past month or so and when I saw the visuals of wet roads and some waterlogged areas, this poem came about unbidden. This poem is a relfection of how the monsoon used to be when I lived in India, so it may be different now.
The Mumbai Monsoon
When June makes it way, newspapers hold sway
Everyone has their own theory on when the monsoon will come and play
The MRF prediction is hotly debated, Kerala and then Goa’s rains are long awaited
When the sky starts to darken, the mood shift is palpable
Everyone looks upwards in an occurance that is annual
With hope and a prayer in their heart,
They pray the rain God will do his part
Shower the city with just enough rain
So the streets don’t flood, causing people pain
But flooding is inevitable, the price Mumbaikars pay
For a system built ages ago, in a city then known as Bombay
But the spirit of the city during times like this magnify manifold
It’s only during a crisis, when you see people’s heart of gold
But the monsoon in Mumbai is something really special
To see the waves buffet the Gateway and Marine Drive
To get wet in the rains, to revel in the pure water that is sometimes harsh, sometimes gentle
This is a time when your soul comes alive
I really miss the Mumbai monsoon and maybe those years
When life was more carefree and simple, without the stress which interferes
But life moves on and I hope to experience the monsoon once more
To live that life of that carefree child and young adult, without any worry and chore!
BB & GG have both started their holidays and I have made it my mission to start them on some exercise regime. Before we know it, BB will be called up for his national service commitments and I want him to be as fit as possible before he enlists. Let’s see how much I can push him to improve his health.
Singapore’s COVID cases have been dipping and slightly increasing, but so far, touch wood, our total daily cases have been below 100, with most days the count being below 50 and our daily community cases being single digits. I also know that Singapore’s active cases are now less than 1000, which is good news for us as a nation. This essentially means that less than a thousand cases are either still in hospital or still being treated.
India, on the other hand, has an exploding crisis in their hands. I am reading the reports almost daily and seeing the daily number of cases increase every day is really frightening. As of yesterday, India had reported more than 4 million cases with more than 125 thousand deaths, about 850 thousand active cases and slightly over 3 million recovered cases. This shows that as of yesterday, about a quarter of confirmed cases have recovered.
But I have also heard anecdotely about how hospitals and COVID specific clinics are fleecing patients and inflating cases. So I am a bit in a bind whether to actually believe these numbers or no. What I have heard is that if testing centres get about 10 swabs to test, they make sure that they confirm at least 7-8 swabs to be positive cases so that they can earn money from the treatment of these seven odd cases purely for profit. Again, this is all completely anecdotal and has been gathered when speaking and texting with family and friends in India and from forwards sent from WhatsApp university.
The rest of our week was the usual, with everyone in front of their laptops, working and playing. On one hand, I am loving this work and study from home as this is probably the first time I am getting so much one on one time with S and the children, but at the same time, because of this enforced closeness, we sometimes get on each other’s nerves. Oh well, c’est la vie!
This was what we did this week, hopefully everyone is safe and is practising safe and social distancing as well as masking themselves when they are out of their homes. See you all next week and enjoy your weekend.
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star – Paul Theroux
In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux recreates an epic journey he took thirty years ago, a giant loop by train (mostly) through Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia.
In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and so much more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot.
His odyssey takes him from Eastern Europe, still hungover from Communism, through tense but thriving Turkey, into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbour Azerbaijan revels in oil-driven capitalism. As he penetrates deeper into Asia’s heart, his encounters take on an otherworldly cast. The two chapters that follow show us Turkmenistan, a profoundly isolated society at the mercy of an almost comically egotistical dictator, and Uzbekistan, a ruthless authoritarian state. From there, he retraces his steps through India, Mayanmar, China, and Japan, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone.
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Memories and Such 