Seeking Hope in Apocalyptic Times

In the eery stillness of the first weeks of the pandemic, the air heavy with anxiety and fear, it was hard not to think of the apocalypse. Would we ever emerge from this moment we could not understand, even as we registered the sudden deaths of people who were hale and hearty? The invisible peril from Wuhan was the stuff of mythology and horror films, terrorising humans who could not fathom what hit them but fell to it like ninepins.

Alongside the pandemic, a steady stream of frequent climate-induced disasters--floods, tsunamis, cyclones--remind us of the mythological end of time in several cultures, Biblical rains and floods or the pralayam of Indian puranas. The Ark of our times has turned out to be a private yacht and most of us are still drenched. The Big Fish that was to save the planet seems to have eaten all the small fish. 

"Hell in a handbasket" has been a phrase I have come back to several times a day. Just look at who we have become, the newspapers seem to say to me: mean, petty, conniving, untruthful, vengeful, egoistical, selfish, self-serving, arrogant, oblivious, unable to feel compassion, incapable of empathy, opportunistic. We watch people being lynched and raped and we film them first before briefly performing outrage and then moving on. We are just horrible. 

Our leaders. The less said, the better. In Indian mythology, the Big Fish ate the small fish and corrupt, venal Manus (kings) who oppressed and exploited the people and the earth eventually provoked the Pralayam. 

You tell me--if these are not apocalyptic times, what are they? 

And then yesterday, Ela Bhatt died. 

I did not know her personally. But in recent times, we have lost so many of these good human beings. Principled. Devoted to people--not work, careers, causes--but people. Humane. Hard-working. Trying to live their values. Gandhians. When I type the last word in the context of death, my heart breaks a little more. 

This year, I finally visited Ahmedabad, a city that has been on my bucket list for almost four decades. The first stop we made was to Sabarmati Ashram. I sat on the verandah of Gandhiji's home for a long time, looking at the river, and asking desperately for the courage and determination to get up and do what is needed every morning.

Social media and the derivative news media that report social posts as news have introduced us to many individuals who are famous for being famous or famous because they post online. Good for them! But it is not people of this time I want to be like. 

I want to be like the Gandhians whose presence and work I have taken for granted all my life. I envy that sort of engagement in public life, the span, the depth. I want to communicate like Gandhi. I also want that disciplined daily routine that gently accomplishes so much and is so elastic it accommodates everyone. I want to read and write like Nehru. I want to persist and work in ways that make life better for people everyday--like Ela Bhatt and Jaya Arunachalam did, to name just two. I want to aspire to be truthful and good and I want to bring that simplicity to my messy life.

We have ingrained from the capitalist, corporate world, the imperative of measurement. How many steps did I walk? How far have I come? How many people did I meet? How much money did I raise? How many people did I feed? How many votes did I win? They matter somewhere but they also don't matter at all.

Sitting on the porch of Gandhiji's cottage, looking at the trees and looking in the direction of the river (the high wall that obscures it must be a metaphor for something), I tried to breathe and pray and in some way touch the space and energy of all those well-intentioned visitors who met Gandhiji here, who seem never to have said, "I am so frustrated" or "I am so burnt out." I did not quite succeed. But I did bring back something. Hope, perhaps. 

Ela Bhatt's life work, like that of all the other Gandhians including Gandhi himself, points to one thing--doing something everyday adds up. This is something I too have always known. But the apocalyptic scale of humanity's problems makes me feel--makes many of us feel--that our efforts are useless. They are not.

I am also struck as I leave this blogpost midway to do housework at the equanimity, even joyful acceptance, with which Gandhi embraced the routine, mundane maintenance tasks of life. I am very distant from that ideal, performing them at best with efficiency and more often, with irritation. I could suggest that it is because we are so much more stressed in these times but I am honest enough to suspect that it is also temperament. I am not as evolved and perhaps, as a woman, the expectation of my acceptance riles me as much as the work itself. Topic for another blogpost! The point is that those routine tasks are also part of the big change or the big resistance we say we seek.

Hope lies in solidarity. The deep loss I feel about Elaben's passing is also related to this. We connect to each other through our values and friendships and these keep us going in hard times. When storm winds knock us off our feet, it is the people who hold on in solidarity that keep us from disappearing. When we disappear, these are the people who keep asking: Where is she? When someone like Elaben passes away, we lose a strong, steadfast link in that chain, one that has stood up so long that she has anchored many, many others. 

With the loss of each Gandhian, it is as if that world of principled action and integrity in public life slips further away from my reach and becomes a memory that too will fade. They feel like the last bastion of quiet goodness and that bastion is crumbling. To be as the words of Gandhiji's favourite bhajan suggest, one who knows the pain of others, helps others who are suffering, without ego or pride, is the hard road to hope. 

Will our children ever know of this wonderful world of goodness? All we now know is this apocalyptic moment of invisible evils, nature in fury and amoral, immoral humans. 

I seek hope everyday. In the discipline of a daily routine. In hard work. In the sincere effort to be as good as I can--not good at something, but just good. In solidarity with others--expressed at minimum as compassionate thought, hopefully with empathy and sometimes, as public support. Hope is in my effort. Success is also in my willingness to try. Maybe that was the secret of the charkha and spinning--to centre oneself in the task at hand. To keep spinning anyway. 

Many years ago, I wrote this: 10 things to do in times of political upheaval, DNA, March 27, 2017. It does not seem like enough at this moment, but if this is all I can do, I must do this at least.