Yes, we are angry, confused, anguished, irritated, frustrated. We may be running out of adjectives or expletives, to capture our physical and mental status. This is not symptomatic (pun intended) of the impact of the Covid19 Pandemic on India but the entire world. Just scan the world on print, electronic and social media platforms, which broadcast facts and not peddle #FactNews. These faculties are reinforced. There seems to be nothing inspiring to note, as there is not a semblance in sight at the end of the tunnel. Add the criticism from our usual suspects on whatever our State and Central administrations are 24×7 trying. No, they are not mild. Administrators are being ‘slammed, lambasted, taken to the cleaners, kitchen sinks being thrown at them for thoughtless and senseless unplanned missteps’ (this is from one of many such reports). This author may have run out of his vocabulary.
And now add Narendra Modi’s call for Janatha Curfew on 22nd March, 2020. “He wanted us to clap for the Covid-19 Warriors. We got to our roof tops and balconies, to make lots of noise. Wow, miraculously Conronavirus has evaporated”, was a cynical tweet. And reports also came that our citizens ‘celebrated the call for Janatha Curfew by coming out into the streets and bursting crackers’. No dearth of such sarcastic messaging from those who have hated every syllable in Narendar Damordas Modi, from 2002 onwards. It is a virus ‘they’ have voluntarily embraced, and refused to get themselves inoculated in the past 18 years. To expect them to pivot from their partisan pandemic purview now, is worse than trying to straighten the dog’s tail. (It does happen sometimes, animal lovers say- but never with our log).
Now, Modi’s call for us for a Nine Minute Lighting Prayer on 5th April,2020 at 9 P.M., is pooh poohed by them. One more Tamasha from this man- to ‘Unite India to indulge in idiocy. Who knows he may have read and believed in some Medieval Magic from Hindu Sastras’, they accuse. No matter what the emergency situation in India, this time the world over, these characters cannot set aside their animus and visceral hatred, for the man at the helm. Their construct vitiates and taints their responses. Be that as it may, it may be time and place for We The People to disdainfully ignore these dissenting naysayers (they are so negative) and instead plunge to pray for humanity. Social Distancing, Stay Home is the new norm. But prayers are powerful. Inspirational messages do matter in a war like environment. Donald J Trump claims “I now am a wartime President, for sure”.
It makes eminent common and timely sense to read Chritopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, where he evocatively records, “Over eight days in May 1940, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops stranded in northern France were rescued by boat and taken back to England. Some were rescued by military boats, others had to wait for hours, stood shoulder to shoulder in the water, to wait for the flotilla of fishing boats, lifeboats and civilian sail boats hastily assembled by people back in Britain. The story of the rescue against the odds and the conditions that the soldiers endured has entered into British lore, to the extent that people in the U.K. today still talk of the “Dunkirk Spirit.” But what exactly does that mean? Dictionaries give slightly different, though complementary meanings: The Macmillan Dictionary defines “Dunkirk Spirit” as “an attitude of being very strong in a difficult situation and refusing to accept defeat.” The Cambridge Dictionary gives the definition as “willingness by a group of people who are in a bad situation to all help each other.”
Lest we are accused of indulging in superstition and anachronistic indulgence, it is scientists, yes scientists and not charlatans, who have spoken about Divine Matrix or God Particle or God Principle or The Field, or whatever you or they may choose to christen it as. Between 1993 and 2000, a series of groundbreaking experiments revealed dramatic evidence of a web of energy that connects everything in our lives and our world- the Divine Matrix. From the healing of our bodies, to the success of our careers, relationships, and the peace between nations, this new evidence demonstrates that we each hold the power to speak directly to the force that links all of creation. What would it mean to discover that the power to create joy, to heal suffering, and bring peace to nations lives inside of you? How differently would you live if you knew how to use this power each day of your life? Join Gregg Braden on this extraordinary journey bridging science, spirituality and miracles through the language of The Divine Matrix. Greg Braden is a scientist, a geologist and for those who care, they can google his name and listen to his Workshops too, on You Tube platform. He is trust and belief worthy, notwithstanding the doubting thomases we may be, for all our caveats, we may care to place our trust on ‘scientific temper’.
Let us not belittle such get together exercises, the 1.3 billion of us (even ignoring the usual suspects- who knows, for all you know, they may also be clapping in silence or lighting in the darkness, but not seen to be in public, like our Dravidian friends for their belief in the higher. Good for them and us, why grudge?) It means a lot. They carry substance too. Even if it remotely evokes the Dunkirk spirit or tucks into the Divine Matrix, or even on the edges of the The Field, it would have served its purpose. Or in the alternative, even if it meant nothing to the God Particle, just nothing, at the very least, it would have ensured we all stuck at home, social distanced and lit the lamp of life, all together, in sincere prayers, and that surely would be nothing small or little.
(Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan- Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)
