Covid 2.0

It's all playing out now as we speak. 

Last year covid was controllable with masks, social distancing and sanitizing. Lockdowns helped create this awareness at a mass scale. Many countries with smaller population managed it well. 

And then people started to think it's not so deadly (asymptomatic majority), it's an old person's disease (mainly comorbitidity deaths), social rebelliousness (no virus can change my life) and that it's just a conspiracy (numbers were low, did not happen to them, perceived economic exploitation by hospitals, testing, pharma) some of these seemed like valid reasoning to even the well educated. 

Thanks to all this, the virus went berserk in certain countries (UK, Brazil, S. Africa, India) and its variants are now airborne, bypasses immune system, goes straight to the lungs and sometimes doesn't show up in RT PCR tests. It's more infectious, affects any age group and this makes it a new pandemic at a completely different level altogether, that is very difficult to comprehend, let alone control.

What brought us to this juncture in India and Brazil? And will the same thing happen elsewhere? 

Many things to think about, as we contemplate our actions going forward.

For all the Jim Morrison fans out there.

For all the Jim Morrison fans out there. 

Jim Morrison, a saggitarian born on 8 Dec 1943 was only 27 years old when he died in July 1971. Just 27!!! If he was alive today, he would have been 78 years old, alongside Paul McCartney, Barbara Streisand, Harrison Ford, Calvin Clien and even Joe Biden.

So, after founding The Doors in 1965, all that he achieved was done over a span of a mere 6 years. In six years, the first two of which were spent in obscurity, they went from small time band to international fame in 1967 and all the great music we hear today was composed between 1967-1970.

The fame of Doors shot up even higher after his death of an alleged heroin overdose after which he was found in his bathtub (ala sridevi). Others who died at 27yrs in that same year were Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, just within months of each other.

It still took years for The Doors to be known worldwide, mostly posthumously, due to the cult following they generated and the 21 compilation albums that followed. We are still listening to them today.

Just think about it, what did all of us do from the age of 21 to 27 to make such an impression on the world?

How much amazing music has the world been deprived of, due to the untimely death of awesome singers due to overdosing on drugs and related stuff. 

Imagine what a rich music world this would be if Jim Morrison had lived on longer, like Frank Zappa who made over 100 studio albums in another wild career spanning 30 years, until he too died at age of 52. Or Elvis Presley releasing over 60 albums before dying at age of 42. The Doors only released a total of 9 studio albums and 5 Live albums, in a span of 5 years. And thats it. We are missing more than 50 albums, gone from a world that never happened for Jim Morrison.

Heroin has single-handedly killed off amazing talent from the music world, followed only by plane crashes that also caused similar shock untimely departures. But on the other hand, could heroin have been the very reason for unlocking so much talent, creativity and perspective, and therefore, the ultimate price to pay for all the fame that followed. Perhaps these super talented musicians end up living life on the edge only to please their fans, to give them more and more of their talent until one day it just goes dry, and the overdose happens when they push the limits a bit too far.

If all these singers went early and unwillingly to the big happy stage in the sky, today its the Cloud that is taking them to fans across time, across generations.

Jim's dying at 27 has however kept him young, we never got to see an old version of him, he was always the youthful Lizard King and it's perhaps the only way to stay forever young, by dying young.

I raise my single malt glass to great musicians who have made our days and evenings memorable.

My Dear Kamala Aunty

 

MY DEAR KAMALA AUNTY

 

When Kamala Harris became Vice President elect of USA, Indians all over the universe (Yes there is one selling tea on the Moon and looking to open a StarMusk chain on Mars) got very excited. Everyone dug deep and excavated their relationships, scrambling fervently to find a connection.  How could we own a piece of history for ourselves.

 

In fact, it was just within minutes of the nomination that furtive searches started taking place up and down family trees, as our elders are known to do whenever something significant happens to someone we heard about. A discovered uncle here, a forgotten aunt there, a long lost cousin and all sorts of other family connects get thrown up for scrutiny, even if they are difficult to prove. For all we know she could be my maternal uncle’s second cousin’s third niece. It’s really quite that simple.

 

That particular HARRIS family tree grew a few thousand new branches overnight. If one could not find oneself up that tree, one was quite content to be a nearby plant or a weed, settling for a relation-by-association.

 

Let me tell you how that works. Whatsapp was abuzz with chats on who had a connection to the Harris Gopalan Family from Chennai, India. More specifically, Besant Nagar’s Elliots beach that was home to her grandparents and the annual family holiday destination.  A famous man himself, her grandfather P.V. Gopalan was not unknown to the neighbors. Even my mother, who lives 300 meters away and shares the same initials and name but obviously from the opposite gender, was enquired on if Kamala was her grand-daughter. I got messages enquiring if we were related, having the same family name.

 

Upon getting our disappointing answer, many of the enquirers resorted to their own relation-by-association, often delivered with an air of superiority. “I passed by them every morning when she used to take a walk with her grandfather, I saw him shape her thinking during those walks whenever I passed by”. Or, “I used to have coffee in the same place where they had coffee after their long formative morning walks”. And even “I passed by their house every week and I got a good look inside and i saw him talking to her on the portico”. Not wanting to miss the party, all I could smugly say was “My dog and their dog sniffed each other’s backsides as we passed by them on their daily walks.” Ok, you wont get that unless you visualize it.

 

In India, Kamala Aunty is what she would be called, with our penchant for making everyone older into a relative. If she dared to visit now, she would be garlanded at the airport, received by truckloads of new found relatives and friends, chanting “Long live Kamala aunty, may you prosper and bring good name to our country, our city, our street and our village.” 

 

And that actually, is quite a good new year’s wish, for my favorite "relative" of the year, My Dear Kamala Aunty.

 

 

Trumped Up Charges

 

Trumped Up Charges

and other unforgettable tales from the swamp.

 

The Mickey & Donald show is finally slated to end in its first season, after a dramatic run of 1461 days. It’s one of those reality web series where waiting for a potential Season 2 has been a mixed bag of emotions for people from both sides of the proverbial fence. A one-hit wonder it should turn out to be. Stand-up comics and late night shows have suddenly woken up to the realization that they have not only lost their favorite daily impersonation act but also the will to live. Nevertheless, this development is akin to the burning of libraries in the medieval ages, so much comic material that was to come our way is now going to remain unwritten, and lost to civilization for good. What a pity!

 

But, let’s go back a few years, when the saga started. In a world filled with sophisticated conmen, all the proverbial glib-talking snake-oil salesmen were put to shame by the world’s most successful conman, who was officially crowned the king of them all when he became the the Conman-der-in-Chief of a nation that had over the years become a role model for the world. Take a guess who put him there. Yes, its Kellyanne Con-way, who, living true to her name, helped him con his way to the top-dog spot. Somewhere along the line, she also coined the new word “alternative facts” into the English dictionary. Not to be outdone by a lesser minion, the Donald responded almost immediately and copyrighted the word “Fake News”. That was the beginning, and the world lived on those two words, day by day, minute by minute, for over four long agonizing years.

 

Being the POTUS that he was, Making America Grate Again was happening on a daily basis and the country very quickly became the laughing stock around the world. We all remember waking up every morning to the disbelief of a tweet from the twit, or twat, as you would prefer to call him, depending on which country you are from, and wincing unpleasantly at the thought of something smelly that he regurgitated at your breakfast table. What usually went down with great relief after a hearty breakfast was for the last four years being served well before your bowels were activated.

 

Let’s look at some of the things Mr. Maga did. First things first, he cleaned up the swamp. Ceremoniously. But when you clean up the swamp and fill it with monsters from your own world, you just get another swamp with a new name and address. That’s actually all what Trump did. And he did it bigly. At first, he filled it with beautiful women, which was definitely a pleasant change from the dowdy yet efficient politicians we are used to. For a while everybody was thrown off trail by the glitzy glamour of the Trump World. Even Fox news had become Foxy News. But, throw in a reluctant wife, a drop-dead gorgeous daughter, a slick son-in-law and a rabid talking mini-me, and then flavor it with a doting deputy, a dangerously-quiet world leader, a pet dictator, a storming porn star, a dodgy alt-newsman, a turncoat lawyer, a rogue FBI boss, a side-switching ambassador, a clueless educationist, a teen-stalking ex-mayor, fact-changing press handlers, and finally season generously with sprinkles of plainclothes members of the Klan emerging from the woodwork, you can start to see it all go downhill pretty quick.

 

Bizarre happenings like this are unthinkable anywhere except in the US of A which has always promised to entertain us every second of your day, especially while you are sleeping. Yes, you can’t make up this kind of stuff. For writers, inspiration and muses do come in different forms, and this time, orange.

 

Many strange things happened afterwards, but I won’t go there today. I would need to write a book for that, not an article. Let’s take a closer look at the more recent debacle of the election results being fiercely contested on the basis of Trumped-up charges of falsified elections. At the end of it all, POTUS realized that he has something un-flushable. From "Not being in it to lose", he rapidly turned into a very noisy sore loser. From being zealously win-eager, all his grapes were so sour that everything quickly turned into vinegar. Trump had campaigned “VOTUS, VOTUS” but people said “NOTUS, NOTUS”. Then, when he went to SCOTUS, they decided not play DOTUS, instead leaving him quite QUIXOTUS. So, off he went, back to FLOTUS, the only one who tolerates his BLOTUS EGOTUS, to scheme a new PLOTUS. Will they finally get his GOATUS? It remains to be seen with the season finale just a few days away.

 

Sometimes, I do wonder who really tried to rig the election. Only a Master of the Con would be able to understand what fraud is and how it can be orchestrated. The accusations were highly entertaining to a world that has never seen this before. It seems we had fake voters, dead voters, amnesiac voters, and god knows what other abominations tumbling out of the woodwork, quite like the fabled resurrection on judgement day. But let me tell you a thing about the Dead, if we were to let them vote, they would have probably voted for Trump. Perhaps they did. Maybe the Donald knew something more about the “rigged” elections that he called out three months before voting even began, because in all likelihood he himself was rigging it to get to his record number of votes, which by the way, his opponent still beat by a large margin. So, hey, who really rigged the election? We may never know.

 

It does look like finally Hollywood killed Trollywood, as the Trump White House should be known, for the record of posterity. When key states beat the Donald, allegedly “at his own game” and when the Collegiate finally validated the score-card, history was indeed created, for a while. 

 

However, let us be kind. To be the “Most Memorable First Term President” in the history of the world is not a poor title by any standards, especially when he is in the company of the punk band called Mugabe, Fat Kim and the Dislikables.

 

This presidential couple, Melania & Megalomania, The Beauty & the Orange-utan are definitely going to be missed. Sorely missed? Fondly missed? All this depends on how the Biharis will do, who are slated to take over soon. Well, that's what Biden-Haris are known as… only Indians will get this joke, or those who are aware of Indian ethnicity, because, hey, this time there is Indian DNA in-da-House, and we own that joke.