DHARAVI’S CORONA CRISIS HAS BRITISH MEDIA GOING BONKERS
The Dharavi father knows his children’s Lakshman Rekha. A rope strung across the entrance to his canvas and tin shanty in Asia’s largest slum. His children stand behind the rope. The father, on the outside, wears a facemask. The FM is an attraction in Dharavi. Especially with children. There aren’t nearly enough to go around and the ones left out are children.
Dharavi is now a Coronavirus sanctuary. And the news has reached England’s shores. Britain takes a propriety interest in Dharavi. After Slumdog Millionaire won Britain’s Danny Boyle an Oscar. Slumdog was shot in Dharavi, Asia’s – yeah, yeah and yeah – “biggest…” and all that crap!
The reality is Britain sits on more coronavirus-positive cases than India. But the British media are fascinated by corona’s antics in India instead of the havoc it’s causing at home. A daily dose of India-centric stories helps keep harried minds centred at hotspots across the seven seas. It also scares the living daylights out of the Englishman and his dog.
The authors of these India-centric stories include Indians. At least Indian-sounding names. Appears like nothing much has changed since ‘Gora Sahab’ in sola topee ruled India. The British-Indians alliance is still strong. But, of course, the Dharavi-kind of corona stories also do a heap of good to people with a Prime Minister in intensive care. It lifts the spirits to know that there’s somebody else in deeper crap!
The fact, however, remains that Dharavi stands on the edge. And the authors of the Dharavi and India-centric stories that appear in British media have fantastic imaginations. Don’t be surprised if a couple of the write-ups are turned into movies. Danny Boyle hasn’t so far caught the corona.
But the corona-stung-and-strung white man is blind to the major transformational changes that are taking place. As also to the fact that, for some reason, the virus does not like ‘white’. POTUS Donald Trump believes the coronavirus hated ‘yellow’, too. China says it’s a white lie! Trump’s ire is raining down on the World Health Organization which, he says, is “China-centric”.
Listening to the POTUS gives one the impression that he’s banking on the United States to find a cure for COVID19 or a vaccine to beat the coronavirus. But somehow talk of vaccine and cure does not lift spirits. For, deny as much as can, coronavirus has laid bare claims of global unity, i.e., all of humankind is bound together by a single thread, and dealt a crippling blow to globalization. Soros must be one of the walking dead!
Globalization during corona reads like fiction. Pulp fiction. The way China and the United States are behaving, world unity will have to change name. China is still keeping its “exact” COVID19 death numbers under wraps. The United States – its own virus-dead numbers transparent and visible to the world – is laying down rules of behaviour for the world.
So, India was threatened with “retaliation” if it dared to withhold hydroxychloroquine. Modi took the threat seriously. India has agreed to ship the hydroxychloroquine to the United States and Trump is smiling like a Cheshire cat. Wearing a Sola topee!
But ask the guy in the national capital region and he tells the chap in Panjim in Goa to perish the thought. No way will Trump be anybody’s friend. Now, it’s up to Joe Biden. Unless it’s from the fry-pan into the fire, without anybody’s bidding!
Last, not presidents and prime ministers, kings and dictators, people at large are also to blame. Careless and casual human beings. Some of whom consider themselves superhuman the coronavirus cannot penetrate. It such skin-deep arrogance that fails to cut ice. If in South Korea, it was a cult that took the coronavirus to every corner of the country, one-third of the corona positive in India is because of the Tablighi Jamaat.
British newspapers did not highlight the Tablighi story like they did Dharavi and ‘migrant labour’. Could be that if it does so, the white man‘s Raj-day stories will find their way out of the woodwork and there would be hell to pay! Namely reparations that will bankrupt Britain. And perhaps expose Britain’s coronavirus story that Britain will pay to keep under wraps.
India’s 21-day lockdown is in for an extension. That means a longer run for misery. In Maharashtra, coronavirus is on a rampage. In other states, nobody has an idea. Men in uniform in Pune and Maha interiors are behaving like “musth” elephants! Citizens found outdoors are being “disciplined”. It doesn’t matter if the citizens are outdoors to buy essentials.
God bless Dharavi’s father. And his five children. A British newspaper put the picture along with the story. Another story published in the same media a day before was written by a photojournalist who boasted he and his friends in his neck of Panjim were the “most educated and affluent” among Indians. But faced with corona, h wasn’t too different from the Dharavi father!
Final thoughts: The lockdown, here or in Britain, is not likely to be lifted till a cure or vaccine is found. The British media should know that and worry more about Covid19 in Britain wrecking havoc in Boris’s country than coronavirus invading Dharavi Mumbai. Let sleeping Slumdogs alone!
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