Sibling Rivalry Gone Crazy

When two brothers in a family get into a fight and pick up a knife or a gun, at what point does the entire village join in? Rarely or probably never. Village elders have always known when to stay away from a fight that is not theirs in the first place.

Aggression only creates more aggression. 

Its day 6 today. The daily updates by Ukrainian politicians and citizens is only making things worse and not helping to diffuse the fast degrading situation. Every response seems to be making an already crazed Putin progressively more mad and more angry. Common sense and survival instinct should tell us that this is not the right time or right way to provoke so that everyone can give finding peace a real chance.

I was looking at what Ukranians are circulating on social media. A pictorial scorecard in particular, of how many tanks destroyed, soldiers killed, planes downed on their enemy side, in a convincing attempt to show that they are winning. Tactical propaganda for sure, but perhaps only some of them realize that provoking further consequences will only invite the full wrath of the evil side of Putin, to be unleashed on them.

Chest thumping of any nature always has a multitude of consequences. Managing complex narratives are like walking a fine line, it can go either way. In this case, an already wounded lion can get even more mad, and then onward, things cannot de-escalate even if they may be willing to do so. On the other hand, demoralizing the opposition may trigger insider actions that may create change from within. What actually happens, one can only know by going forward in a time machine and looking back. Yes, quite often, it takes that long to fully understand the  implications of the outcomes of war.

A sad consequence is that, beyond a point, all of this is making Ukraine into a hot potato that nobody will want to touch, since the hard fact is that they are neither in NATO or EU at the moment. And in an ongoing war situation, it is unlikely that they will get admitted into either, as there is a process behind such things, not to forget that it will bring the war to everyone's doorstep. This is a point of no return for many and there is no way of turning back once you get here.

As of today (2nd March 2022), the situation is dire. 

The Kyiv-headed 40-mile long military convoy has a crazed world leader at one end and fiery patriots at the other, and one can only imagine how this is going to end. If history were to repeat itself, the Ukranian and Russian pride will dictate what comes next, as one of them are known to be from the land of the braves.

As for the world Nations being accused of voyeurism on the side of the stage, some are keeping quiet, others are showing sympathy, some outrage. And many are announcing future sanctions. Yet they all know that all of this mainly helps to contain the problem in one place, till it eventually goes away, which is just a matter of time.

Ukraine therefore has now become collateral damage. In my view.

Regardless of what the outcomes are going to be, the conflict will end one day, but what remains to be seen is, at what cost? Economic devastation and loss of human life are on the cards for decades to come. 

In a mud fight everybody gets messy, and you cannot expect to walk away clean unless u bring a pistol. And let us not forget that fight ends best when both sides can walk away feeling they got some wins. It is indeed a pity that there are no adults in the room on either side to cool the tempers and diffuse the situation. Some social behaviors are cultural and deeply embedded in history. One only has to look at the past 1,000 years of both nations to see a pattern that helps you understand what one can expect in the future.

Pacifism has a reason why it works, because if you can find a way to survive, you can live to fight another day in another way.

Our thoughts today are with the oppressed, we pray for precious human lives to be spared from the egos of the leaders at both ends. 

May tomorrow bring better news.

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.

 

Anatomy Of A Lockdown

Anatomy of a Lockdown

by Sachin V Gopalan

“No matter how bleak or menacing a situation may appear, it does not entirely own us. It can't take away our freedom to respond, our power to take action.” ― Ryder Carroll

We today are in the midst of World War 3. Instead of a war between countries, we are at war with a virus in a bizarre sci-fi plot where humanity is fighting a near-alien non-living species. And to top it off, this situation is rapidly evolving into an economic war between countries that is replete with geo-political strategy and tactics on a daily basis.

World Wars are a time for accelerated human casualties, both physical and social. The havoc it wrecks on the global and local economy is often unimaginable. This time again, our enemy is another human being, who if “armed” with the virus, could kill us if he comes too close. Yes, the virus cannot come to us uninvited, it needs a carrier body to bring it to us, and that makes it the greatest stealth weapon ever. To fight back, its not our soldiers who are at the frontline, but its our doctors, nurses and medical workers. Who would have imagined that such a Hollywood-esque scenario would one day come to life and become our nightmarish reality.

In wartimes, a lockdown, as much an inconvenience as it may seem, helped serve a higher purpose. When at war, a lockdown was a way to protect your citizens from air bombings, artillery firing and missiles, it was a way to survive. It would mean that you would be told to stay at home, not be allowed to venture out and you would most definitely be disconnected from simple comforts that you would have grown accustomed.  A wartime lockdown also helped in rallying people from all walks of life, injecting them with a high dose of patriotism and sending them off to the battlefield, with a smile on their face. This current war is also very similar, we are rallying together for humankind’s collective fight against our new and unseen common enemy, the C-19 virus.

Lets start at the very beginning. Pandemics of this scale happen only once in a lifetime or once in almost every 100 years. It is no doubt an unsettling fact that there is no living person today who can in person,  first hand, share his or her past experience and expertise with a pandemic of this magnitude. We can only rely on news archives, historical data records, anecdotes and a multiude of sophisticated pandemic scenario planning done by research centers. And we can only rely on information shared by early responders, that not only changes every day in confusing ways, but is also served heavily sprinkled with fake news and misinformation. 

What we know so far about this pandemic is very little, it's essentially sketchy information pieced together here and there with facts and fiction. And, the scary part is that it has never been more important to know what we have to do, to stay alive and survive as an individual and as a species.

The lockdowns have affected different people differently. The extroverts have never before felt so caged up in their homes, however large or small their houses may be, because to be up and about is in the very nature of their existence. They crave for human interaction and desperately need to get away from the daily routines. The extroverts see the lockdown the same as house arrest, perhaps even imprisonment. For the extrovert, each passing day is extreme agony, re-lived again and again. Lockdowns just don't work for them because it is a path towards poor mental and physical health.

The introverts on the other hand, could care less. They welcome the opportunity to stay home and go about their already normal lives, barring the odd inconvenience of having to step out to get your grocery necessities. One of my good friends even said that he never realized that he is finally living his dream life, which is to be able to roll out of bed into an office chair and then walk five steps into the rest of the house and then jump back in bed he was done with work. He now is able to live this dream feeling a great sense of gratification and self-achievement, and guess what, he has the permission from his boss. I always thought I was a self confessed extrovert but i feel this way too.

As much as there are physical, psychological and emotional dimensions in adjusting to a near-imprisoned life, we need to apply some common-sensical logic to understand the anatomy of a lockdown, why it is important and how it helps us to make sense of what is the safe path back to a kind of near-normalcy. Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a German aviator, airline executive and religious leader, once said “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” So, this is our opportunity to shape our own responses and come out stronger.

Here are some interesting thoughts that I put together, an attempt at piecing together logical reasoning and opinions that I gathered from talking to folks I know and reading expert insights on digital media channels. These are my views, so, please feel free to debate, challenge, endorse and add your views in the comments section at the very end of this blog.

Lockdowns Help Generate Data and Benchmarks

No nation or government in the beginning of a crisis knows exactly how an unknown virus pandemic will play out in their nation. It has surprisingly shown a varied range of effects on different countries, which means there seem to be several factors at play here. Some of these are measurable factors, such as ethnicity, weather cycles, vaccination policies, historical exposure to pathogens, immunity building practices of people and even their hygiene habits. Many others factors, unknown or undiscovered for now, will be revealed in the days to come as more research is made available to the public.

I strongly believe that a lockdown is an essential First Step. It allows those tasked with handling the upcoming pandemic to have a starting point for generating measurable data on a daily basis. However faulty, incomplete or unprepared the system may be, a benchmark is a benchmark. From that point onwards, we will be able to stand witness to a captivating unfolding of the pandemic’s narrative, a story that evolves over time, making recorded history as it goes about terrorizing citizens of the  world, regardless of your degrees of separation from its victims.

Data is also essential. Humans have a desperate need to know how to compare themselves, how to evaluate others and who is on the top or bottom of a ranking list. Yes, its this data that helps create a sense of competition, a score keeping if u will, a daily tracking of who is ahead, who is falling behind and who has absolutely no clue what they are up against.

Lockdowns Help Understand Scale

Having a controlled locked-down environment is the first step to understanding patterns and trends of a virus outbreak that has run amok.  With the help of a lockdown, we can know how fast a pandemic can accelerate or decelerate, in response to decisions that are being taken. Knowing the scale and then extrapolating where and how it will impact is the most important input we need for developing an effective battle plan, one that can be continuously measured and tweaked for giving better outcomes.

Every government has by now evolved a system and methodology of testing, tracking and tracing Covid-19 infections that is unique to their situation. However much one may criticize it, this process allows for identifying emerging hotspots and then implementing lockdown measures of selective intensity. Its not perfect, but it's the best they can do for now.

Scale is an often-misunderstood beast. Knowledge of exponentials and mathematics come to mind. Pandemics are known to have exponential scale, and that is often unfathomable to even the most intelligent of human minds. Here is an example that illustrates this point well. It's a known fact that majority of the infected people are asymptomatic, and these people already have antibodies, which means they have already been infected in the past, often without their knowledge. They had become silent transmitters during some period of their infection, and they had at that time been passing every thermometer gun test, as well as having access to frequented areas. This could explain how the virus infection is still on its way to peaking despite intense lockdowns. It would also be logical to assume that most countries have had Covid-19 even before the test kits arrived.

New estimates now say that there is a 40 to 50X factor of infected and asymptomatic patients in every country. This means that if official figures say there are 150.000 confirmed patients, the real number of infected will be 50x or 7.5 million people, and this accounts for a very large number in any given population. Scary, isn’t it?

This single factor of scale, if understood well by people, will explain in a logical way why everyone needs to wear masks, wash hands and keep social distance. The lockdown is the only real way to trigger a slow-down of community transmission and minimize it’s reach to the vulnerable people in society.

Lockdowns Allow for Healthcare Preparedness

Most hospitals and healthcare professionals in the beginning of a pandemic have no clue what they are dealing with.  They have no idea how to treat patients except from information passed on by countries that have been hit earlier. They mostly have to learn everything from scratch. They don't exactly know what medication or treatment will work and more importantly, what doesn't.  They have no idea how contagious this is to themselves and their patients, what precautions need to be taken and how well their medical facility is prepared to take on the virus’s deadly attack head-on. Only time can give doctors and nurses the relevant work experience that they need. And a lockdown gives them exactly that. Precious time.

Every patient in early days of the pandemic are really like guinea pigs who will be experimented on without choice. Your chances of getting the correct treatment increase significantly over time, compared to patients in the early days. So you definitely want to delay becoming a patient to the very best of your ability, the best scenario being to be able to hold up safely until the day a proven vaccine arrives. Not just hospitals, even you and your families can get better healthcare preparedness due to a lockdown.

Lockdowns Help Educate People En Masse.

Some of us may remember Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a cosmetic surgeon who stated in his 1960 self-help book that it takes 21 days of completing a task for it to become a habit. Subsequently, other university-backed research debated this and stated that it actually takes an average of 66 days, ranging from two months to eight months. Wearing a mask, washing hands, not touching anything, particularly your own face and eyes, not hugging people or shaking hands, all of these requires learning time by humans to become habit-forming practices. Lockdowns are supposed to be giving us that learning time.

Despite lockdowns, we see many people around us disregarding safety practices.  There is a “cry-wolf” effect due to media hype around us. Since most affected people are asymptomatic, only a very small percentage of people get visibly infected, by this I mean those that need to go to hospital or are visibly sick. For many people, they have never seen a covid-19 patient in front of their very own eyes. This seems to be a sickness that other people get and it’s mainly playing out on television, internet news and Whatsapp videos.

While many people get super paranoid with this overdose of information, some get a false sense of security that the virus is out there, there but not here. And this leads to complacency and lack of compliance for safety measures that are needed to be practiced during a lockdown. Many treat these measures half-jokingly and even disregard safety tips. You can see people with half-mast masks, covering the mouth but not the nose, or even hanging it around their neck like a bandana. People still touch and jostle each other and don't think twice about going into crowded places. The average human being is a rebel and risk-taking can even be a thrill to some. Which one are you?

The grim reality of not understanding the true implication of safety measures is that, what may seem as a calculated risk or a frivolous misdemeanor could become your one fatal step that makes you an unwilling part of the daily statistics. It’s really like playing Russian Roulette, the famed game of one bullet in a rotary six-chamber pistol where you can only be saved by luck or chance.

Lockdowns Help Set Expectations

When will life go back to normal? When will the kids go back to school? When can we go back to work and have a normal day and think back of today as an intense vivid nightmare that we woke up to with relief that it was all a bad dream? These are some of the questions on my mind and I know all of you share them.

Going through extended period of lockdown helps set expectations for the reality we have to face if we are to earn a living in order to keep on living. A vast majority (maybe even up to 90%) of the people cannot earn a living while working from home. A lockdown helps us understand this reality better and prepares us for taking the risks that we will need to do when the world opens up to a new normal. We can then prepare for how best to go about our economic activities with maximum safeguards.

A school of thought suggests that a certain profile of people can be sent back to work, those who have recovered from covid-19 and have test results to prove the presence of antibodies, or people who have low risk profile such as the young with no medical pre-conditions. All others are expected to take calculated risks to go to work, armed with a combination of good personal hygiene habits, common sense to do the right thing, and if they are fortunate, go to places that respect government-enforced habitat rules.

Reopening Lockdowns: Is This For Real?

The burning question I have is, how come we went into a lockdown when the numbers were the lowest and how come we are now getting ready to get back, when the numbers are in fact at the highest?  What is the logic here? Is the Government planning to throw bodies at it or is it based on some perverse sacrifice theory?

It feels that every government’s playbook is that “Look Citizens, at first we warned you, then we scared you, after that we educated you, and when you realized that your money is running out, we quickly gave you a plan for re-opening up. So, go back to work, follow the new rules and make sure you don't come to the hospitals that we have prepared for you. Enjoy your New Normal world”

So what exactly are the risks of the New Normal world? As of today, we know that the virus can mostly kill the outliers – the aged, unhealthy and  low immunity population but if they are kept well protected, the remaining can go back to work. We may get sick, but we will recover. And many of us can be treated successfully, since a 2% death rate also means 98% will survive.

With the global economy suffering deeply, layoffs are becoming commonplace. The SME sector that has historically provided jobs to 75% of the workforce, now finds itself on the brink of shutting down.  People need to be able to earn money and continue supporting their families. As a famous author friend of mine remarked, "If the virus doesn't kill us, hunger will". And now, people need to find new things to do, to pivot from their skills of yesterday and learn how to blend into a business of the future.

Cautious re-opening is the only thing we can do, sector-by-sector, place-by-place and store-by-store. It finally helps to have an entire Lockdown-prepared city that is well mapped for identifying emerging hotspots.  Even if there are spikes and selective shutdowns for the next unforeseeable future, the government needs to ensure a majority of the economy can operate smoothly, and this will be at the expense of the minority who may be directly affected by the virus at any given time.

In the end, what will happen will happen. We need resilience to get out of our current predicament. In the words of Elizabeth Edwards, an American attorney, best-selling author and health care activist ,“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.”

How to Earn Your Salary When Working From Home

By Sachin V Gopalan

While popular research on media is flinging around data that Work From Home is fulfilling and efficient for a lot, the fact remains that for most of us, its not easy to be productive when working from home. All of a sudden we are expected to participate in running a household when we otherwise would be inside an office or at least commuting to and fro from one.  A friend of mine pointed out recently that this should be called Work At Home, because he has now learnt many new skills and has successfully become a combination of house cleaner, garbage disposer, baby sitter and dog walker. (He was still thinking of a title-designation and I suggested Pandemic Houseband)

I think the time has come for everyone to understand the practical consequences of a dysfunctional Work From Home situation. And there is only one way to say this.

WFH does not mean Free Salary.

It’s very important for family members to understand that if their spouse is expected to continue earning a salary, they cannot be given unrelated tasks within an expected “Work”ing hours of the day. Its okay to have the same division of labor between family members as when they were still going to office, but now it comes with some flexibility that you may not be accustomed to.

Recognizing that people have a very low work productivity rate at home, many companies prefer to lay off staff or bench them for a few months or at the very least implement heavier cuts in salary, since they don't see the best efforts coming in from staff and their families. In such times, this can be a very disturbing development, often irreversible. Zero salary can become a reality for you if you are not careful and start to take things as though you are on an extended paid holiday.

Here are five practical tips for families, so that their working spouse(s) can continue to receive a paycheck.

1.     Allow a part of the house to be kept like an office area. It doesn't have to be a separate room, but it should at least be a desk, table or corner of the room in a part of the house that has the least disturbance from other family members and their activities.

2.     Create clear-cut rules about what are you and your spouse’s Work Hours. It doesn’t have to be 8 hours at a stretch, but it can be broken down into shorter segments, and there has to be some predictability to this, not at random. All activities that don't help your household to earn a salary should be done outside these newly set work hours.

3.     Dress for work in a reasonable way, you don't have to wear a suit and tie, but definitely do not be in your pajamas or birthday suit. Being well groomed and dressed semi-formal is enough and it will allow you to take video calls on short notice and in general be thinking of work matters when you are in fact supposed to be working.

4.     Making a work zone in your house helps you to avoid video bombing by your spouse/kids/grandma when you are on Video Calls for work. You may not realize it, but video calls are very intensive and energy draining. Even an unintentional entry into the room will create a distraction or embarrassment, both of which create an uncomfortable or funny moment, which it will amusing be for now, but if it happens often, will have unwelcome implications. When management realizes you don't have your act together and are not able to work properly on a given day, it builds the case for them to downgrade you.

5.     Look for ways to be proactive and ensure that you let your managers know that you are doing your best. Since you are not in the office and not under the watchful eye of a team leader, the general assumption is that you are not doing anything productive when at home. You will have to take extra effort to let your colleagues and superiors know that you are in fact being productive and have been keeping the best interests of your company on top priority.

These are just five tips, but there are hundred more if you really need them. Just remember, earning a salary in the Private Sector is not a birthright, it is a privilege given to you along with trust and it is in recognition of your contributions to keeping the company and economy running.

Make sure you earn your salary today. And tomorrow. And the month after. Because in a pandemic, this work from home situation will not just go away, it will only gradually reduce until things go back to normal. So its really in your hands to become a useful part of the new normal world.