The rapidly-disintegrating global village as nations shuttered themselves, the spiralling infections, the disconcerting accounts of dead bodies stacked high for mass burial or cremation, were like a throwback to another age, instinctively bringing to mind Kathleen Winsor’s 1944 bestseller Forever Amber which I first read in the late 1960s. (Amal KS/HT PHOTO) The riveting story about a country lass who ran away to London and scrambled her way up the social ladder to become a mistress to Charles II. Deserted Connaught Place in New Delhi during the lockdown in May 2020. Stuck in the US with no imminent end in sight following the Indian government’s ban on international travel, struggling to understand what was happening amid a whirling kaleidoscope of conflicting reports and analyses, rumours, speculations, and advice from concerned friends and family members, the phrase “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” seemed to make a whole lot of sense as each morning off-loaded diverging data on infections and fatality rates. During those four months however, the world changed in ways no one had anticipated and it was end-June before we were able to return home. We travelled from Mumbai to Northwestern University (USA) in December 2019, intending to return in early April 2020.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |