People are dying due to an irregular supply of oxygen to keep them alive and breathing. Ironically, this tragedy is taking place today, in this day and age and in these developed times
As I have been writing, battling the virus or a horde of viruses is just one aspect. The other is, perhaps, more vital, and that is poor or zero governance! Where is that basic oxygen supply to the hundreds of patients! An interrupted to nil supply of oxygen is killing the patients!
This is the harsh and stark reality of the times we live in. Where our people, our fellow citizens are dying because there is no regular supply of oxygen to keep them alive and breathing! Mind you, this tragedy is taking place today, in this day and age, in these developed times!
How would one describe these deaths of the patients left gasping, collapsing and dying? How would one describe the failed system? How would one describe the political rot that’s set in? How would one remain patient and calm seeing so many deaths, taking place inside and outside the hospitals? Mind you, all these deaths could have been prevented if only we had focused on our people and their life and well- being, and not on the elections and election rallies and the hollow speeches heaped on the naïve masses by the ruthless rulers of the day!
Signs of fascism!
Signs of fascism are spreading out, yet as mute spectators we sit all too quiet and subdued. In fact, one of the prominent signs is exactly this. That is, the masses will be rendered so fragile and helpless that they wouldn’t be able to combat the disasters and tyrannies heaped on them by the political rulers.
Another significant sign is the attack on books and libraries and the written word. News reports of the proposed or upcoming demolition of one particular segment or section of the internationally known Patna situated library, the Khuda Bakhsh Library, came as a shocker. Talk to any scholar and he and she will detail how this heritage library is simply loaded with treasure, in the form and shape of rare manuscripts and volumes.
In fact, last evening as I got in touch with the Varanasi-based historian, Dr Mohammad Arif, who taught history at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and is the Chairman of the Centre Harmony and Peace. He told me that he spent years at the Khuda Bakhsh Library when he was doing his doctorate on the Tughlaq dynasty.
