Analysis of life during lockdown and predictions of post Covid-19 situation

     This blog, I am writing realizing the fact that how wrong the lifestyle of a so-called modern people was. Prior to Covid19 lockdown people were living for weekends, and rest of the times they would be busy dying. Hope the situation has improved a bit during this lockdown considering the lifestyle as the main subject of this discussion. though in a single post it will not be possible to bring light to every aspect, it will be just an overview kind of thing.

     Our Society is mainly divided into three classes; Rich, middle class and poor. These classes can further be divided into subclasses but we restrict our discussion to the main divisions. It is almost 6 months since the lockdown started, now it is in unlocking phase for the last couple of months though. 

   If we pan the camera and try to fix the focus on the lifestyle of those, during the lockdown, whom we call poor, we will see a horror movie running on this video screen of the minds. That sudden lockdown, left them to immobilize with very limited resources for survival. Migrant labour was the most affected one. After a few days since the lockdown began, they were running out of food and money. So they had no option but to walk thousands of miles towards home, as there was no transportation system deployed. That was also not an easy one and the police were monitoring the movement on the road. So most of them took the road along the railway line. They would take rest on the lines as all the passenger's trains were cancelled. But those goods trains were still running. And as a result, we saw the people being run over by the train at night time when they decided to take rest due to the fatigue of walking miles. This class of poor people were fighting for survival. They are still struggling. Farmers would have food to eat but labour and construction workers do not have that luck.most of us tried to help them by providing foods and services and money to them all over India. Some celebrities came forward to stretch their helping hand to them. During that initial period, the numbers of covid cases were increasing rapidly. It was a difficult time for poor people. 

     I would rather refrain from commenting anything about the life of those rich people in this country. They are the least affected ones.

     As I belong to the middle class, according to the definition of the economy(Though I consider myself a poor in terms of wealth and property) I have seen people of this class are also struggling to adapt to the new situation. Few of them lost jobs due to this pandemic (or might be, those companies were waiting for a valid excuse to execute their plan to sack employees). But those who do not have the fixed-job, those who are in business got hit by the hasty decision taken by the central government. few had to find survival strategies by demoting themselves, like if someone was doing some business prior to COVID lockdown, during the lockdown he would become a street vendor or hawker, ended up selling vegetable on the streets. and the cost of Corona treatment is also high for some unknown reason. So those things scared them a lot.already the graph of the economy was going down and the lockdown put the final nails of the coffin. Farmers from the middle class were the people who had a little comfortable journey considering poor or other middle-class people. They had resources to survive for months in their storages.

       In this article, I'm not going to criticize the government, rather I will emphasize on the things we have learnt so far from this terrible situation around the country and world. So human beings are now forced to stay at home and work from home. Let's focus on the bright side of this situation, otherwise, we can talk about the number of death, or the number of affected per day or we can discuss how bad our health and medical system are, how insufficient our infrastructures are! we could go on and on about the negatives. By the way, Health workers and doctors are trying their best to improve the situation, even putting their life at stake. Police also tried to do their work. for more listen to the recording(link is on the next paragraph)...

            So this lockdown is having a positive effect on the environment, now we have less pollution, less traffic, at least I can see here in Bangalore. People are left with not much option of recreation, so they started to become creative. I have seen people reading books who would previously runway from reading anything. I have seen people are painting pictures, listening to songs and writing stories, poems, prose and blogs(I would like to include myself into this group). Also, people have become health conscious. The sale of bicycle increased thrice throughout the country. People are maintaining social distancing, so it also helps to stop the spread of other diseases.they are eating healthy food. And the important thing of all is that this COVID situation has changed the mindset of people.for me I've learnt to cook food, learnt to take the bold decision(previously I also took decisions, out of the box according to society, but nowadays I was afraid to make any of them).at the starting of the lockdown we three I, my roommate and my Friend, we three were living in the same apartment. Till the month of May, we were staying together, but then Chirag left as the unlock process was started by that time(we had the sweet and sour experience during the stay), and in the next month roommate left for his hometown as we were instructed to not to go to the physical office location till the end of the year. I decided to stay here in Bangalore to experience the journey in solitude. The biggest challenge I overcome is to going to market to buy vegetable, then comes the turn to give the cooking a try. My friend from Manchester wanted us to share the lockdown experience by sending her an audio recording which she would play on the community radio station in Manchester. But it yet to happen, we(Me and my friend Chirag) recorded the audio sent to her.   Link for the recoding: Recoding of the experience

     Oh, How could I possibly forget to mention the student's struggle during this period. They had to take online classes. And word meeting friends had become virtual, literally. From class 1 to university, everywhere the students, as well as teacher, were facing difficulties to cope with the situation. Though students would be familiar with online courses but depending on those methods fully by cutting off the connection from the outer world, it must be a challenging thing to do, considering the mental state that time. Anyway, they also had to sit for competitive entrance exams by risking their health.

     As I am writing this line, I can see in google under the statistic tab for "covid19" search it is showing the number of cases is 4.75M in India. I thought it would be maxed 1.2M, How wrong was I, predicting the count. The deviation is significant, so I can reject the NULL hypothesis at 95% confidence level.

     So far I can say we should focus on finding positive from these unavoidable, stressful, uncertain phases we are going through now.

      Now if we try to predict the post-COVID times, we would find these things like wearing the mask, maintaining social distance, working from home, or focusing on health and environment will be the new normal. It will take time for the economy to recover itself. but one thing we should have realized so far that what was normal previously was not good for anyone. We have to define new rules and we have to focus more on sustainable development. If we could avail public transport we should consider it as the first option rather, having a personal car on the road. We also need to take care of our mental health, as these changes are so rapid, it may affect our mind negatively.

      I want to end this post with a positive note. Whatever the situation may be in future, the human race will find a way to survive, and I hope they will take care of the other species of the earth too.

Trying to write something which may make some sense

 

                                    

Roddur ,the sunshine and our dreams to create a better world

    Continuing from the previous article. So the question still remains open  "Why do we need  Roddur, when we already have Pratyasha". To answer that question we have to look into the contemporary education system of India. We, the five started that journey together but along the way two of them became busy with other organizations, so now mainly three of us, Pronobesh, Sourit (who became professor of prestigious Glasgow University)and I from the old team, are actively thinking about the organization along with the new members, unfortunately, I don't know everyone's name. 

Anyway, so the current education system is here to produce clerk, engineers who can not think beyond the syllabus. The exceptional students would choose to be Doctor, scientist or scholars, which is very challenging considering the current government education policies(I am not talking about this current policy, which seems to me be more like imaginary rather than realistic one and we are not going to discuss that here.let's keep it for another post).In the current education system, there is no value for sports, music or other creative arenas, which is a must needed thing to transform a teenager into a complete human being. I know how we were pushed to become a good student rather than becoming a good human. Though I was lucky enough in this matter despite having rough and dark times in my educational life. At Maternal Uncle's home, grandfather taught the necessary things that needed to survive in life. But now when we see the pupils are not having time to play outside or they are taking sports as a subject and learning it professionally rather than enjoying it. Parents are putting pressure to get them ahead of this rat race. But those students are from the privileged class. Our focus was towards the underprivileged or deprived students, those who don't get opportunities like their counterparts have.

      So we wanted a system of education which could be a model for modern education in future, realistic or not.we were thinking of providing free coaching classes to those students from a relatively poor background. And for that, we would have to have a place which we could use as a classroom. One woman from the locality near Alipurduar Railway station told us that we can use her land to build the classroom .she is poor, but she did not hesitate to donate her land for education, because she(Pushpa di) and her children did have that the opportunity to get a proper education. Anyway, we started to build our classroom with bamboo fenced wall and tin roof. Pronobesh and Nabakumar were monitoring the teaching works initially and Sijal supervised the construction work, in the later phase, Nabakumar joined another charity organization.

     so as Pronobesh has a network of people around the locality due to his social and political image, it was initially easy to get volunteers.so for few months the number of teachers was almost same as the number of students. We had difficulty to bring students to the classroom, as parents were seeing our teachers were teaching things that are out of syllabus or which are not bookish. In the later phase, Biman did set up the second branch of  Roddur at his home, which was not fully free but we would collect token money of Rs 40 to convey the importance of it to those parents. this branch is now not functional.

      other than providing lessons about math, science, history and literature we would organize drama workshop.there were Dance classes, karate classes (Shibu da, the blackbelt, was teaching the technics).For a few months, there were some Yoga classes organized. Once a Mime artist came from Kolkata to take mime class for a week. we almost reached to the mark of 40 students.

       overall we tried to provide them with the complete package to become a human being for free, actually, we wanted to see them grow so that they don't need money from charity, rather they can earn the money by themselves.

         other than providing classroom teaching, Members of Roddur organizes awareness programs. Biman and Ankit did a cycle Rally from Alipurduar to Siliguri and back to spread awareness about the rights of children. Roddur organized an excursion to nearby Rajabhatkhawa forest and museum. Blood donation camps were frequent before the Lockdown, and Biman and Pronobesh would take charge of organizing those. Roddur also used to organize programs like Rabindra Jayanti, independence day or Saraswati puja. The programs related to saving nature and environment, like planting trees, were common. Initially, My brother and cousin brother and sister were trying actively to help the organization grow. 

         But the issue with this kind of non-profit organization is that people who are not motivated enough will lose enthusiasm after a few months. Roddur also was not an exception. We lose a few members due to lack of enthusiasm. They might have imagined Roddur as something else and made themselves disappointed. But we also found new members joining it. 

        I guess volunteers also have learned something from the journey with Roddur. They have the chance to see the underprivileged classes from that close. Only those volunteer with knowledge and enough enthusiasm to learn would realize the fact, they will know how privileged they are and will continue to do good things towards society. This experience will become a treasure for them along the way

      Roddur went through difficult times, time to time, but never had that fear of having this organization going to shut down completely until the Corona came. The premises is close now, but surely it will open soon, to keep our dreams "to make the world a better place" alive.

Pratyasha To Roddur : A journey to be continued ...

   As long as I remember it all started on the day of Durga Pujo at Alipurduar.It was 2010, I and my friends were doing pandal hopping in the evening on the crowded street of that subdivision town. we were discussing things ranging from food, politics to education and things that humans beings would discuss at the age of 25-26. So when we were discussing the topic education, then suddenly we came up with an idea of organizing a talent search exam. five friends Nabakumar, Pronobesh, Manan, Sourit and me. Previously I was thinking of providing a scholarship to the needy student who is having innovative ideas. So that day Sourit brought up the idea of doing something to identify talent here at the town, I immediately  seconded that proposal along with others.so immediately we headed towards Sourit's maternal uncle's home, which was nearby one, to discuss the proposal. and that's from where the journey began of "Pratyasha".

       so for the next three years, we were organizing exam in science and arts subjects. those questions papers would be innovative, set up by the alumni of prestigious Universities of Kolkata. My school Mc William H.S. School allowed as to conduct the exam on Sunday.me and Sourit was out of town as I was studying MCA and searching for a job in Kolkata, and Sourit was Studying literature at Presidency University. Though he was in charge of setting the questions papers. I was just advertising about it on social media, and one thing I forgot to mention is that we were doing these mostly from our pocket money.I had to sacrifice the money I kept for buying Digit magazine. anyway, next year I got a job in a startup so now I could afford to buy Computer magazines too. The ground level works were done by Pronobesh, Nabakumar and Manan, from printing questions to arranging and conducting the exam flawlessly.

Facebook Link: Pratyasha

pic: Talent Search Exam going on.

On the third year, we decided to conduct free coaching classes as arranging those exams were becoming a challenging task, and we also found that those students from the privileged class were doing the well and were getting the prize money, there is nothing wrong in doing well in the exam but for us, it was carrying coals to Newcastle.

so Nabkumar and Pronobesh started taking free classes after their work, Naba is a school teacher and Pronobesh is a banker. That classes were conducted for underprivileged students at a place near the Town. 

this system continued till 2015 , after that there due to unavailability of classroom ,it was discontinued until it emerged as another Organization Named "Roddur" the sunshine on 2016.

Pronobesh took command of the new organization and recruited volunteers for those teaching posts. One Woman from the underprivileged class let us use her unused land as the classroom.

 

                                Pic : The Initial look of the Classroom

  so there were members form young generations , those enthusiastic youth community who were helping us in teaching the students time to time.

During Saraswati Puja

Roddur's moto is to help students to think out of the box, so there used to be Yoga and karate class along with Drama workshops. Our aim is to make those capable of fighting any odds in life.

                                                                            Karate 

Roddur conducted various awareness programmes to spread the light of knowledge and scientific thinking. Now Due to Covid19, there is a pause in those activities, but soon those activities will be resumed.Right now we are working on registering the organisation.

                                                                               Cycle Rally                  

                                                                tree planting program 

A lot of things yet to write down about this organization. I will write those in the next article. The focus would be on the education system we want to revolutionize through making small but continuous changes in our mindset and in society.

Roddur Facebook page

  

Manush manusher jonno (Humanity needs humanity)

  Today this blog will be again another journey to my childhood and to my schooldays, it is not that I don’t have any story in my recent life, there are plenty of them Happy, sad, mesmerising and some of the stories are I am not much proud of. Anyway, today’s topic is not about those, rather our focus will be into something fundamental which we are forgetting nowadays, another way to practice the act of humanity. Even me, who is writing this blog is guilty of the same crime.

starting from a story that began from my home in Assam, for some reason I will be using first characters of those names I am going to introduce to you now.we were and are still living as a traditional joint family for some extent. I am talking about those eras of early ’90s. We always recruit people to have some helping hand for our daily chores .whether it is about gardening or cleaning or cooking. In those days women of the family suppose to get some help from housekeepers. I couldn’t remember how and why she(we call her “Phua”, aunt ) was recruited, My mother told me that she came to our home, with her mother, when she was a teenager and got married few years later. I can recall, she(Chhaya Phua) was staying with her three children *Cn, *Pn and *Sn(looks like elements from the periodic table, but I can’t help it.have to withhold the name unless they provide the permission ), her husband(*Rm) was a fisherman and was staying in a hut nearby the Brahmaputra river. Anyway CN and Pn are older than me and Sn is younger than me. I can remember my family has never had discrimination. I was allowed to play with them and spend time with them as long as I would have my home task completed. They were also studying in some school then. Three of them are now well established, they have their won home, Cn and Pn have their own family and maintaining a modern lifestyle. They are like an older brother to me. So the reason to tell this story is that I want to convey one thing is that, in those days, one family might have extra members those who were not the part of the family but later we would count them as a family member. if they(CN, PN, Sn and their mom) were not staying there in our home, then their life might say some different stories. That time the total member count of my family was around 10. And our family members never had any issue with some extra head-counts, probably in those days, it was so natural to help people in need especially if it was related to someone’s education.

*Cn=Chuni,Pn=Puni & Sn=Sunny(Three brothers)…Rm =Ram lagan (Their father)

The second story took place at Alipurduar.In the year 1995, I moved to Alipurduar, from Dhubri, Assam.I took admission to MC William H.S. School to class 5. I was staying at my maternal uncle’s home,(Mama bari). The family members that time

Were Grandfather, grandmother, maternal uncle, aunt, little cousin sister and two other members who were not family members as such. One person is Shanti Didin(our version of grandma) and another person is Mina Masi(maternal aunt), both belong to Oran Tribe. I can still recall the father of Mina Masi would visit every day and would do some gardening or would have some Adda time with us with tea. And in the evening he would come to watch the news. He was previously working as a labour of some tea garden and was enjoying his retirement. He has two sons Ram and Khudiram other than daughter Mina.Ram mama would visit every day and would do his homework with us. I heard he was supposed to stay there with his sister Mina, but probably because of the restrictions and rule he chose to stay with his parents who were living nearby small PWD quarter(or maybe it was not a quarter, I am not sure ). Mina masi was my friend and elder sister, I could share anything with her, stories, incidents anything. I remember I would like to go to the ration shop with her because I might get to eat some street food. She would know lots of people around the locality, that means lots of stories to listen along the way toward the shop. She was studying in Alipurduar College. after her graduation, a few years later Mina masi got an in Municipality. And only after her marriage she left my maternal Uncle’s home. Actually, grandfather, Subodh Ganguly wanted to educate them by providing shelter, food and creating an environment for study. and Didin(Shanti) was there as a housekeeper, she is still stying there in that 1st floor at the old wooden two-storeyed building. Now, the grandfather and grandmother are no more. Anyway, Ram mama, brother of Mina masi is also doing some government job at Alipurduar.when I moved to Alipurduar in 1995, that time the financial condition of my grandfather from mother side was not that much good, and my Maternal uncle recently had just started his Homeopathy medical practice. But the financial condition did not become a constraint or obstacle for them to help other people.probably in those days it was kind of social norms.

     But Nowadays we seldom see this kind of example to help people. We are too busy to with ourselves, busy earning more and more money for ourselves only and even not thinking about other people who need help.we are living in a nuclear environment, forgetting the advantages of commune system. Yes, the Commune system has its disadvantages but those not as much as the nuclear family system has, and this (nuclear one)system applies only to developed counties.

      So the time has come to think about these things again, the Covid19 has given us a few pointers , few indications, we should use it wisely.

150 years old, they said

PIC:-The place where I spent my childhood, relatively new construction, wrote a few lines to express my feeling 

This is the room from where I started my journey, my school life. this is the room where I fought for my life twice because of typhoid and malaria. This is the place where I started to make my friends before moving to West Bengal for education purpose. Happy and sad moments, captivated my mind. Now they will remain only in memories.

Pic:-almost 150 years old Grandmother's room.

Pic:-almost 150 years old Grandmother's room. this door will now become the entry point of the memory lane.

        Pic:-almost 150 years old Grandmother's room.Almost gone.

 This room of Grandmother was working as a safe house or shield for me. when I did anything wrong or made any mistake, the only way was to take refuge to "Thakuma"(Grandma), she would shield me from scolding and beating. 

  there was a wooden almirah along with other age-old furniture, where Thakuma used to keep a bottle of Hojmola(a tasty digestive tablet).

we would demand one tablet after each meal.there was a big old Iron chest, which would require two men to open the lid.it was also the room of grandpa (Thakurda)...He died when I was in class 5, was staying at maternal uncle's house at Alipurduar, West Bengal.

impermanence is the only constant thing. if something is created then it is bound to be get destroyed. 

along with these, rooms of my uncles will also be gone and we will have a new modern building for all of us soon. But the memories that I have, the experiences I've gathered, it will sometimes make me nostalgic, sometime that past memories will haunt me.

When a Parker pen Costs more than an iphone

This is a story of a PEN which once became a part of my life and stayed with me until I made a blunder.

it was a true story which started from. those school days of mine. My school days were kind of cumulative experience of good and bad incidents, it is common for all(“Chakrabat Paribartante Sukhani Cha Dukhani Cha”), I guess, the only difference is the degree of good and bad we experience. I used to stay at my maternal uncle's house we call it "MAMA bari" in Bengali. and we children used to get pocket money from relatives visiting the house. after their stays, at the time of sendoff, most of them would give us 5-10 rs, which was a large amount considering the economy of the '90s.

     So I was saving that money to buy things like an electronic motor or other science-related things or to buy my favourite thing which still helps me to put down my thoughts on paper, in french it is called "Stylo or Plume", and in English, we call it PEN. I was studying at Mc William H.S School, a Bengali medium school, and nearby the school there was a stationery shop there, a centre of attraction for school students. We would gather at the shop to collect new pens, pencils, stickers and a lot more things after school. There I first saw it, inside the showcase, the parker vector. By that time I heard about parker pen, those were expensive ones.so we use to buy Rotomac, Reynolds, Cello, Montex etc pens. But this one was different. 

I went home and counted my saving found I still needed Rs 10 to make it to 100. I had to wait a couple of months and the day arrived. I went to "Das Paper house " the stationery shop and found the pen is still there or maybe it is just another one. I can recall I was studying in class 10 , and the Madhaymik exam was knocking at the door. anyway, I bought that pen and kept it for the exam. The Madhaymik exam went well , I wrote every paper with this pen , which was a ballpoint one.

      next chapter started when I was promoted to class 11 as everyone. I choose Science stream for H.S exam. It was a difficult two years for me and then the exam day came, Those 6 hours of torture ,1 hr break in between , was making us all nervous. but I had my friend, the Parker vector. So somehow I was trying to clear all the paper,2 papers each day.and it was a horror film , a nightmare I was living. anyway, the H.S exam also went so-so .and the pen did not let me down , despite my unfinished physic 2nd paper syllabus at the time exam, I was able to earn enough marks to apply for the Graduate school. Though I did not immediately enrol myself to any course, actually I enrolled myself to zoology , but never attended any class. I wanted a break from study.

         After 1 year I enrolled myself to the math major course , and another chapter began. A three years course , which I took 4 years to complete, again for almost no reason. anyway this time also the pen was my saviour.I, an atheist , that time, became little bit superstitious about that writing instrument. I would feel comfortable when it was with me , I would become anxious if I found, it was not in my shirts pocket. anyway, I got a graduation degree in Math(Hons) and that parker always stood by me along with those supportive friends. I am lucky to have that friend circle.

        Then I decided to pursue a Master degree in computer application. I went to south-Bengal from north Bengal and that pen was still with me. My 3years MCA course went well with the assistance of "Vector". The JOB search started at that time and clearing the written interviews were challenging ones, and I got a job in C  for developing Algo trading software.

          It was the month of March 2016. I and my friends decided to do our first trek to Sandakfu. Meanwhile, I switched companies and switched my domain to iOs app development. So I had to buy an iPhone 4 for testing the apps. We set the date on our calendar, marked 17th of May to start our 6days journey to Sandakfu from Kolkata. It was a three days trek. On 2nd day of the trek, I lost communication with my team, I was too slow to reach the next checkpoint Kalapokhri.some of our baggage were sent by a jeep.I was walking without any communication instrument as my phone was in the luggage and it would be no help even if it was with me as there was no network along the trek route. but I forgot where did I put my iPhone, I was using it as a camera. anyway I was walking alone, and due to the clouds the road was not visible, I reached Kalapokhri 15 minutes after them and was anxiously searching for my iPhone in luggage, which had just arrived by Jeep. I was still carrying my Vector pen with me in my pocket, kind of superstition. The days we started descending from Sandakphu we were tired and content. We were taking a break in between the checkpoints.in such a time of the break, I realized that I could not find my beloved,co-fighter Parker pen. Probably at the time of putting off the Jacket on the way I lost it. The iPhone was more costly than that pen but that Pen added more value to my life. So I was sad for a moment and the tiredness and joy of doing the first trek overshadowed the sadness. But I still remember that PEN. It was a companion for the span of more than 15 years. I never valued anything, any object like that in my life. I think Object should be used, not the people. It helped me to become whatever I am now, I never gave importance to the exam , rather I focused my mind on learning, but the whole system is based on the marks we get in exams. Anyway sometimes object like this one becomes the subject of importance by adding value to mortal life and becomes costlier than any other things.