Demagogue’s apathy at its best

Will we once again repress grief and ‘move on’ without ever demanding accountability? Will we allow ourselves to rely on forgetting as a coping mechanism so that those of us who survive can invest our energies in the labour that survival entails? Pic/AFP

These days it feels like I am dragging my body, coaxing it to perform routine tasks without spilling over, without allowing my anxieties to get the better of me. Especially when I am obliged to be present on Zoom conferences and meetings as if the world I have known all my life isn't crumbling, as if the fires aren't raging, as if the freshly dead were still alive. I am confused. I am enraged. I am afraid of all the grief that still awaits, all the collective trauma of this moment that has yet to manifest.

In June it'll have been a year since I arrived in Italy. More than half of it has been spent with little to no social interactions. We have been so careful, especially when the virus knocked at our door, especially as we witnessed it spread through the town of Tramin, especially at the beginning of the year, when people selfishly let down their guard to celebrate the carnival. We heard the funerary bells remind us of the death toll. It was difficult for me to talk about it then because at the time in India people were beginning to enjoy a semblance of freedom after the tough first wave. Some friends told me that in India everyone was behaving as if COVID was over, not surprising, considering the messaging that was being sent out by the
administration.

This mismatch in COVID wave timings across continents has made it difficult for me to relay the anxieties of my life here to my loved ones back home, and obviously makes it presently impossible for me to even begin to empathise with their tenuous state of being. I can only imagine, I tell myself. And that's part of the problem, because I can only imagine the terror you must feel, the sinking feeling of not having agency over the future. Here in Italy, life is beginning again after six months of intense lockdown. There is hope. There is elation. There is optimism. There is relief. Habits have been formed. We wear our masks at all times, we get tested each time there is the opportunity to do so. Restaurants have finally opened but you're only allowed to go with a negative test result that has a three-day validity. Even though those in my age group and younger have no idea when we will get vaccinated, at least we know we will have recourse to treatment, should the worst
come to pass.

But there, on the other side of where I am, where you are, is a world that would have totally fallen apart had it not been held together by kindness and civility. I don't know how to reconcile the distance between these two worlds. I am scared. I feel helpless. I also feel tremendously lucky, which can transform, in a split second, into guilt. We have never before been so vulnerable. Never before have we felt so abandoned by a heartless government that cares more about its Hindutva brand image than the people it is under oath to protect. The lack of empathy and the pervasive sense of misplaced priorities is frightening. More chilling is knowing that so many bhakts actively want to continue to live in the delusion of the toxic masculinity upon which they have subsisted for decades. They are so dependent on the lies fed to them they cannot see that tyranny has a face, the very same face they see plastered on newspapers, billboards and advertisements. Are these the better days we were promised?

Since the government came into power, I have been expecting the ‘straw' that I imagined would break the nation's back, but each time the people of India were dealt a horrible blow, they rationalised the violence as necessary, instead of calling it out. Each time the violence got magnified. How do we make peace with the fact that this horrific, catastrophic moment is Hindutva-made? It is the consequence of a demagogue's apathy and the callous arrogance of his followers who remain blinded by their convenient faith. My biggest fear is that we will, once again, repress our grief and ‘move on' without ever demanding accountability. We will allow ourselves to rely on forgetting as a coping mechanism so that those of us who manage to survive can invest our energies in the labour that survival entails. When the ashes collect and we are able to breathe again (and we must believe in and work towards this future), how will we rebuild all that is collapsing as we speak? Will we remember that there were culprits or will we forgive half-heartedly and find ways of living in the bubble we will call normality.

It was always dangerous how we excelled at settling for third-class citizenship.

It was always gut-wrenching, the great disparity between those who had in excess and those who could barely make ends meet. There are so many diseases that have amplified the immensity of COVID-19, the worst among them being casteism and our patriarchal conditioning that runs so deep it has festered our society. What is being taken from us and our loved ones is not only the right to live but the right to die with dignity. This has to be the last straw. We deserve and must demand better.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx

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