Paris Dairies: Villains and Heroes
Who are the heroes and who are the villains? Every story has good guys and bad guys and the best stories are when the bad guys, unexpectedly, do good deeds.
When you look back and retell this bizarre story of when the world was brought to its knees by an unknowable pathogen, what character will you say you played? All roles are up for grabs. Every story has good guys and bad guys and the best stories are when the bad guys, unexpectedly, do good deeds. The most disappointing kind are the ones where the people you root for and trust to get you through turn bad, or worse, remain undecided, turn a blind eye, or render themselves helpless.
This surreal period, where life felt more like a movie in which we were all unwillingly cast, has had some incredulous twists that would have felt too fantastical in fiction. It started as a sci-fi about a ‘foreign’ virus, then became a political thriller – with those running the show from sanitised ivory towers unilaterally doling out suspicious decrees – quickly turned into a period tragedy with an awful sense of déja-vu, unleashing unimaginable, manmade mass misery. Now, this movie is officially genre-less.
The Pandemic, along with unlimited access to the Internet and to everyone’s eyeballs, has laid bare the systemic failure to guarantee basic rights to the deprived and oppressed across the globe – the plight of the invisible classes in India, the disregard for black lives in America, class inequality widening the digital divide, pushing the already disadvantaged further into the margins. For decades, the world has been too busy to notice, or care, that these historical wrongs have gone uncorrected. Now that we are locked in in front of our screens, there is no hiding from the ugly truth of a system that has normalised prejudice and privilege. The unfolding saga permeates our homes without escape.
Who are the heroes and who are the villains? The elected protectors have stumbled through, leveraging personal gain, adding fuel to the raging fire of mass suffering. This could have been their Messiah-moment if they didn’t blindly crave it. It doesn’t take a whole lot. Look at the nation chanting prayers in the name of Sonu Sood, and rightly so. He saw a need and fought to fill it (can you imagine the number of egos and amount of bureaucracy he must have had to deal with?). Surely, it would have been easier for the all-powerful government to do it. So, the screen villain became the hit real-life hero. And the self-styled defenders of the destitute dithered, rendering themselves into helpless, heartless bystanders with no vision, or plan in sight.
Watching India from afar, as I (almost) freely roam the streets and meet friends, now that we are out of confinement in France, I’m baffled. Why did India go into lockdown when there were hardly any cases, cripple the economy and forget to plan for half its citizens? Was it simply following the West without inquiry? And why is it opening up the country as the cases are spiking, while simultaneously and half-heartedly sending its forgotten people on crowded trains and buses back home to villages, where till now there have been limited reported cases? The logic eludes me. If it is to save the economy then surely the workers who keep the wheels churning will be needed back in their old jobs just as they finally reach home (many vowing never to return). Why not reassure them with urgent filmy speeches (dropping a tear, or two) and directly put in their hand a financial relief package (from the crores amassed in the not-so-transparent, overflowing and underused centralised relief funds) to help and cajole the workers to stay put, shelter them safely in refashioned schools till the country is ready with a plan to follow the West into a more egalitarian society?
Maybe I’m the ubiquitous NRI in the movie, living in a somewhat fairer society, being exposed to what governing should mean, and I know my beloved Indians will scoff at me: “Ya, ya, but it’s hard to value everyone’s life as the same in such a big country, these ideas of fairness don’t work in India”. Well, isn’t it time that they did?
Once characters (the Establishment) are relegated to being unessential in moving the plot forward, no time is wasted on them. The plot, instead, moves through a Gandhian twist of individuals helping individuals to change the big picture. An octogenarian woman packs food for the hungry. A young dog lover ensures the street canines are fed. An old school friend from Germany posts handmade masks to all the people she can reach (delighted to have unexpectedly received mine). An American Sheriff converts a protest into a parade by walking hand in hand and protecting the outraged people, instead of firing at them. Alumni law students weave through the system to charter one flight after another to get migrant workers home, a drop in the ocean, but a heart-wrenchingly beautiful drop. From the airport, pictures and videos of spotless wage earners and their kids dressed in their Sunday best emerge. Where did they manage to clean up? They blink and smile disbelievingly at the kindness of strangers, a kindness which should have been a right given to them by the government – but the movie is not interested in sidekicks anymore. It’s racing to the climax.
Before it all ends and the last tears are wiped, decide what you want to remember yourself as. Will you be the one who paid and reassured all your domestic help, going a step further to increase their monthly salary above what a fancy meal costs, or the one who chose to look away? The empathetic friend who quelled anxiety, or the hate spreader forwarding endless unverified messages? The person who saw the daily wage workers as an unchangeable mass of poor people living rough on the edge of society, or the one who finally saw them as equal citizens? In times like these, it takes little to be a hero. Be one.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)