Nov 1: Day 1 of my fast, day 251 of our chain.
The last few weeks have exposed how globally vulnerable we are to our own intolerance, our irrepressible desire to seek comfort in our familiar belief systems, and our general unwillingness to acknowledge that our critics speak the truth just like we do. Just like our truth is obscured to them, their truth is hidden to us under layers and layers of differences in perception. But the truth does not cease to be true just because we are blind to its different manifestations. Our critics are not our enemy. If anything, they are our windows to a broader reality, our key to discovering the truth in much deeper relief than our familiar, sheltered worlds would ever allow us to appreciate.
#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah
Nov 2: Day 2 of my fast, day 252 of our chain.
When we’re way more privileged than others, playing just for the sake of winning is cheap, immoral and meaningless. The only meaningful victory is then to help others win too. Let’s learn to share our privilege.
#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah
Nov 3: Day 3 of my fast, day 253 of our chain.
As I delve into issues of privilege, I realize how fortunate I am to occupy the middle rungs in the ladder of privilege in the world. I can say I have experienced both – superfluous privilege as well as a critical deprivation of it, by living in different parts of the world as a woman of color, as a privileged majority, as a shunned minority and much more in between.
I am thankful for each experience, because my greatest privilege is that of having had the opportunity to see the world from more perspectives than one. My personal trials are clearly not exceptional. Our world today is throbbing with questions of privilege, as different sections of the world’s population emerge from hitherto isolation and mingle with each other robustly, drawn by the promise of new opportunities, but terrified by the discordant strangeness of the unknown world.
Deprived of the comforts of familiarity, we yearn for some control over the course of our own lives, and resent others the privileges we lack. But the realization of being in a sub-optimal situation is the greatest propellant for personal growth, and the more that realization sinks in, the easier it is to shed a yearning for revenge in favor of healing. As for revenge, here’s a quote by Marcus Aurelius that really speaks to me: “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah
Nov 4: Day 4 of my fast, day 254 of our chain.
Election Day yesterday was draining, and very reminiscent of the Indian general elections of 2019 that saw Modi back in power for a second term. Years of monumental failures by the incumbent candidate with little else to show, and yet, there are droves of people who vote them back to power just to spite a community they have been brainwashed to hate. Thankfully, it looks like a narrow escape from four more years of Trump for the US! Not that it means any of the systemic problems the last four years exposed are going to vanish, but at least we have been spared a continued entrenchment of the Trump clan in US politics!
Foremost on my mind today: what will happen of the Republican Party after four years of allowing itself to be ideologically hollowed our and subverted by Trump? Even more pressingly, will the Democrats become such safe players now that they will be the new conservatives? Who will now be progressive enough to really push forward the systemic changes needed to get us out of the terrible quagmire we find ourselves in today? I look with hope at AOC and her squad.
#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah
Nov 5: Day 5 of my fast, day 255 of our chain.
When we are born to privilege in a highly unequal society, we automatically become party to an infrastructure of oppression. The slightest scrutiny suffices to reveal that our habits, comforts, and pastimes are built on the misery and desperation of others. We remain the unwitting gatekeepers of an unearned, hereditary privilege as long as we refuse to shun our decadence and actively embrace this reality.
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed beyond a doubt who the most essential workers are – it is the humblest cleaners, farmers, and nurses we need the most, and yet we keep falling short on showing them our gratitude. In India, we even snatched the bare minimum living resources from them, forcing them, including the very young, sick and old, to walk en masse from our opulent cities hundreds of miles back to their impoverished hometowns. The lack of outrage at this from our middle class was telling. It was an open declaration that we are a society that doesn’t care.
Let us assume that the sudden onset and uncertainty surrounding the virus contributed to a general panic resulting in this lack of compassion in March. What is our excuse in November with the lockdown effectively over for months in spite of large numbers of daily positive cases? It is again the humble physical laborers who have to risk their lives and endure needless hardships to feed themselves and their families: my dear friend Ira Ghosh recently expressed her consternation at buses being allowed to transport these laborers but not trains, which are more convenient. Reports of hiked bus fares and flouted social distancing norms are also doing the rounds. Such reports are now coming in from other parts of India too, including Mumbai and Delhi.
Why do we squeeze those we need the most to their breaking point? This is not a failure of resources or infrastructure – it is the failure of our own collective will towards humanity.
#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah
Chain Fasting For Peace 