DailyOh! All who attended Nizamuddin event are our Covidiots, to what killed Meena Kumari
Thousands gathered in a masjid, throwing calls for social distancing to the air.
Hey there,
The number of positive coronavirus cases has now gone past 1,300 in India. The spike is natural because the disease is highly contagious. What the authorities are dreading is a sudden spike that can become overwhelming for the country’s health system to control. Now, Monday night, the fear that India could be facing a sudden spike started to appear real. Do you know why?
That is because of reports of people who had gathered for a Tablighi Jamaat event in the Nizamuddin area of Delhi. The event was organised at Alami Markaz Banglewali Masjid, the headquarters of the popular Tablighi Jamaat in New Delhi.
The gathering was organised between March 1 and March 15. Six of those who attended have died in Telangana and one in Srinagar. Twenty-four people from the area have so far tested positive for coronavirus in Delhi. You can imagine the scale of the problem from the fact that the Tamil Nadu government has said that 1,500 people from the state attended the event. From Assam, there were 400 attendees.
Hundreds who attended were from outside Delhi. They returned to their homes in Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Andaman, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana among others, in trains and airplanes. The challenge now is to first track each of those who attended - estimates say, about 1,000. The second challenge is to track people who they came in contact with.
You may be wondering how the virus spread among the group. There are reports that the people from Indonesia, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan, who attended the congregation, could have been the spreaders.
Ameer-e-Jamaat (national president of the Jamaat), Maulana Saad Sahab, has said the Markaz is always crowded so there was nothing new about the crowd. If only the ameer knew there is nothing new about the world except for the new coronavirus! And that has forced the world to adopt a new lifestyle. The Delhi government put a restriction on any gathering of over 200 people on March 13. That too, we say, was stupid. It should have come in much earlier and 200 was too big a number.
Any gathering beyond 200 people that took place post this was illegal. Any. pic.twitter.com/zuIhjYzXJp
— Chaiti Narula (@Chaiti) March 31, 2020
But going ahead with a gathering of over 1,000, that too in which foreign nationals participated, and then caring two hoots about self-quarantining, beats all levels of idiocy. All those who organised and all those who attended, are our Covidiots Of The Day. We began by telling you that numbers in India could see a sharp spike with no intention of fear-mongering.
The only intention is to advise caution. Stay cautious. Do not step out. Lockdowns help authorities track positive cases, trace their contacts and sanitise areas. Help authorities do their job properly. Stay at home.
What will you do sitting at home? Everything that you always wanted to do but didn’t have the time for. People are just a call away. What does distance actually mean in this tech age? Nothing. Well, almost nothing. There is nothing that can replace the warmth of human touch; for everything else, there is technology. There are apps that can connect up to 100 people on a video call. Most meetings do not have those many people in a room. Maybe seminars and conferences see those many people under one roof. And so many people are downloading video-conferencing app Zoom. Zoom has taken over popular apps like WhatsApp, TikTok, and Instagram to emerge as the most-downloaded Android app because of these times we are living in.
The company is based in Silicon Valley but the man behind the firm is from the same place where the coronavirus originated from. If you want to read more about how the app has topped the charts, read this.
Eric Yuan grew up in Shandong Province of China. We hope you don’t hold the Chinese people responsible for the mess the world has landed into. If at all, it is the Chinese government which is responsible for hiding crucial information that could have saved the world. But that shouldn’t mean we hold the Chinese people responsible. Remember, they also suffered. They also died. Eric, however, is now an American citizen. And he founded the company that is now connecting people across the world.
The story behind why Eric founded Zoom is kinda cute. Eric hated travelling, but had to travel because he was in love. What would people in love not do? So, Eric would take a 10-hour train ride regularly to meet his then girlfriend (now wife). And that’s when he thought of developing an app that would help him stay in touch. So, if you are in love or trying to court someone, and the lockdown is preventing you from meeting them, you know what to do. Get on a video call. You can also do that to get in touch with your work teams. Many people are holding birthday parties over video calls. You can do that too.
Whether you do that through Zoom or WhatsApp or Skype is your choice to make. It was only our suggestion to give.
As people sitting at home think of newer ways to make the ‘sit at home’ more comfortable, there are those venturing out to steal. The government may (also, may not) have relief packages for those hit economically because of the crisis. But the government, for sure, will have no relief package for those who make a living by stealing or robbing. No, we have no sympathy for them.
We brought out the issue because they stepped out of their house to steal. Not in India. In Amsterdam. What did they steal?
They stole a painting by Dutch master Vincent van Gogh. The painting, The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884, was housed in the Singer Laren museum east of Amsterdam. The museum had been shut to prevent the spread of Covid-19. That is sad. We hope those behind the act would be caught at the earliest and the painting is recovered. Van Gogh's paintings are not easily sold, so when they are on sale, they can fetch millions.
In 1990, Gosh’s work, Portrait of Dr Gachet, sold for US$ 82.5 million, which means Rs 6,218.025 million, which means Rs 62.18 crore.
While his paintings can now make millions, Gogh faced many financial hardships during his lifetime. Now, what if we told you there was not one but four Vincent van Goghs? You may say what’s the big deal? Many people have same names. The big deal here is that all four of them were in the same family.
Van Gogh, the artist, was named after his stillborn older brother, who was in turn named after their grandfather. His other brother Theo van Gogh also named his child Vincent.
Whatever suits whoever.
In all this talk of coronavirus, we forgot to tell you today is the death anniversary of yesteryear Bollywood star Meena Kumari. Had she been alive, she would have been 87 years old now. But she died at a rather young age of 39.
We are often told that Meena Kumari had a very hard life which pushed her to alcohol addiction. The actor began supporting a family of 31 members in her teens. She married director Kamal Amrohi, but the marriage too was an unhappy one.
As time passed, Meena Kumari started having trouble falling asleep. Reports suggest she was prescribed a peg of brandy to sleep. But that peg soon led to heavy drinking, which damaged her liver. On March 31, 1972, she died because of it. That was indeed a huge loss to Indian cinema.
Sorry to have added to the already sombre mood that exists these days. Now, let’s lighten it a bit. Listen to this classic from Meena Kumari’s movie Pakeezah (1972).
Coming back to Meena Kumari’s death, we know that you know alcohol is no solution to problems.
Remember what they say about problems? “Everything is okay at the end. If it is not okay, it’s still not the end.” Okay, that’s pep talk. It helps some. It irritates others.
But we all have been told with regard to all our problems, “It’s going to be okay.” Even through this lockdown, we are being told, “It’s going to be okay.”
Do you even have an idea how many times a day you type “ok” or “okay” or just “K” in reply to messages? It’s just so many times that we don’t keep a count.
Now, K is considered rude, while okay more formal. Ok lies somewhere in between. Short, but not too short to sound rude, and not too long to divulge whether you care or not. We find ‘ok’ the safest.
But where does ok find its origin? No prize for guessing, ok, used countless times through the day, is our Word Of The Day.
There are many sources attributed to the origin of ok. Some say the word comes from Scottish expression och aye, others say it comes from the Greek ola kala ('it is good'), and some others say the word comes from Choctaw Indian oke or okeh ('it is so').
But the most likely explanation for the word’s origin is that the term originated as an abbreviation of orl korrekt, a jokey misspelling of 'all correct' which was in prevalence in the US in the 1830s.
The written references come from the use of ‘ok’ as a slogan by the Democratic party during the 1840 presidential election in the US. Democratic candidate Martin Van Buren was nicknamed 'Old Kinderhook' (after his birthplace in New York State). His supporters formed the 'OK Club'. That is said to have popularised the term... not enough to get Van Buren re-elected though.
We hope it would be ok to leave you on that note for today.
Stay safe. Stay indoors.
We will be back tomorrow.