Dec 31: Day 1 of my fast, day 311 of our chain.

I have been swamped with work deadlines all through the holidays this December, and today is going to be no different – thankfully, Christian is sailing in the same boat (ah, the perks of sharing your line of work with your spouse!) and Neal is easygoing as ever!

What of 2020 in hindsight? Here’s a short list:

1. COVID forced us to reassess our priorities. I called home to check on my parents much more frequently than ever. It is a precious connection I would otherwise not have appreciated enough.

2. COVID helped us cross our imagined boundaries. I spent most of my life seeing professional work and political engagement in binary terms – it was either one or the other. I now know that both can be done at once. Science and democratic values go hand in hand.

3. COVID taught us to care for people in spite of their distance from us, both literally and figuratively. It drew us away from narrow tribalism and strengthened our sense of solidarity towards each other. Solidarity feels increasingly like a vaccine that helps us achieve a herd-immunity against evil. It is the most wholesome way of being I have ever known, and has absolutely nothing to do with self-sacrifice.

Happy New Year! Let’s make it a good one!! ❤️

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Jan 1: Day 2 of my fast, day 312 of our chain.

The past year in India has been a time of nonstop upheaval. After Kashmiris, liberal arts students, Muslims, migrant workers, and political dissenters of all hues, farmers find themselves at the center of our latest crisis. I can’t write with any authority about the farmer’s protest: having grown up in Mumbai, I have very little grasp of the core issues. I would only make a mockery of their suffering if I claimed to ever speak on their behalf.

What little I do understand is this: the Modi government, with its “impeccable record” in implementing structural change (as proven by demonetization, GST, NRC-CAA, and the nationwide COVID lockdown of March 2020), wishes to bring structural reform to our farmers by removing the minimal safeguards currently in place to ensure that farmers earn a fair price for their toil. Modi wishes to unleash on our farmers a brutal, purely profit-driven, free market economy mediated by “scrupulous” capitalists like Ambani and Adani.

It is understandable, even for someone as clueless about farming as me, that our farmers fear for their security. Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India. The rates at which our farmers have been committing suicides in states like Maharashtra and Karnataka is alarming (https://www.livemint.com/…/the-geography-of-farmer…, https://thewire.in/agriculture/farmer-suicides-data). Our farmers suffer from poor infrastructure (bad rural roads and irrigation, lack of efficient farming equipment and cold storage facilities), bad debts, and the lack of a meaningful safety net in a profession that is exposed more than any other to the vagaries of nature. All this results not only in low agricultural productivity but also in the Indian farmer receiving a considerably smaller fraction (10% to 23%) of the national consumer price than in developed countries (64% to 81%), the difference going to losses, inefficiencies and middlemen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India). Agriculture employs 59% of our total workforce, while accounting for only ~23% of our GDP (http://www.fao.org/india/fao-in-india/india-at-a-glance/en).

A benevolent and competent government would be moved by these numbers to recognize farmers’ issues and elevate them to a high national priority. Rehabilitation measures would involve infrastructural reform, debt relief and the provision of re-education opportunities for small and marginal farmers who are tethered to the profession merely for the lack of safe alternatives.

But the Modi government is neither benevolent nor competent. All it has ever done is ignore the needy, and when those suffering get too clamorous, Modi and Shah, like Mr. Burns of the Simpsons, just “release the hounds.” Or wolves, in this case, like Adani and Ambani.

No Indian deserves such treason from its own elected Government, especially not the Indians who toil to feed us. So, in spite of not possessing a single farmer’s bone in my body, I stand with our farmers in solidarity and dedicate my fast today to their struggle.

#StandWithFarmers

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Jan 2: Day 3 of my fast, day 313 of our chain.

Today, I’d like to take a moment to thank Facebook for giving me friends who are my friends not just as a result of physical proximity, nostalgia, or family ties, but are people I can truly connect with. In particularly, I’d like to thank Agnivo Gosai for posting this article (https://www.wired.co.uk/…/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine…) about Katalin Kariko, who has been at the helm of Biontech’s mRNA Covid vaccine, but who, in 1995, struggled against the greatest odds to secure funding for research she felt was important. As I sit in my corner, slogging away on grant proposals while the whole world seems to be celebrating their holidays, it is nice to know I’m not alone.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Jan 3: Day 4 of my fast, day 314 of our chain.

Yesterday, I was thankful for the relative normalcy of my post. After all that we have been through during the past year, I felt a sense of respite, and hoped BJP supporters were finally sobering up. Alas, that was just wishful thinking, and I was shaken back to reality early this morning, as I saw a video of peacefully protesting farmers in Haryana being bombarded from a distance with tear gas bombs late in the evening in the cover of darkness. Will we ever get to know who was behind this dastardly attack on lawfully protesting farmers?

As if that wasn’t disturbing enough, a dear Muslim friend in Indore, one of the strongest, most fearless, kind, and brilliant people I know, said she and her family were in a state of alarm after noisy rallies in her neighborhood by BJP supporters, accompanied by the police, who went around demanding donations for building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. From a Muslim perspective, I cannot imagine a worse manner of adding insult to deep injury, the worst kind of injustice imaginable.

Just four days back, similar pro-BJP mobs had desecrated a mosque in the city, loudly chanting Hindu slogans while namaaz was being offered inside the mosque. The media is already demonizing Muslims for stone-pelting in retaliation. Why is no one saying anything about the cruel humiliation and deliberate provocation they are being subjected to? Am I supposed to feel proud of belonging to a religion that menaces and threatens my dear friend and her community for no sensible reason?

I am on edge as she is. For her safety, well being and peace of mind. I want her to live with the same pride and self-confidence that I would want for myself. Instead, I fear that she will forever be scarred by what she and her community are being subjected to. We have already seen Hindus wash their hands off humanity in Gujarat in 2002 and in Northeast Delhi in February last year. It would be foolhardy not to feel threatened in Indore as a Muslim.

Hindus will carry an unbearable burden of guilt, shame, and bad karma if we don’t correct course soon. My shame feels bottomless. Pained, revolted, and woefully helpless about what my friend, my sister, is being put through…

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

Jan 4: Day 5 of my fast, day 315 of our chain.

There are times I catch myself being terrified of things that aren’t Earth-shattering but which I find disturbing to imagine anyway. Things that are trivial, even laughable, and often imaginary actually, like the thought of being rejected by a random stranger over a misunderstanding. They continue to command my thoughts until I call myself out for the imaginary bullsh*t I entertain to support my flawed narrative.

Which makes me wonder: what are the imaginary fears authoritarian leaders around the world get attached to that drive their thirst for power? Do they realize that their fears compel them to commit blind acts of violence that make them dependent on power to merely survive? Do they even leave themselves the choice of imagining an alternative?

What are the fears behind a billionaire’s drive to accumulate wealth beyond any mortal human’s needs? Don’t they realize that they are condemning their children to a life of superfluousness, depriving them of the meaningfulness that makes life so sweet to live? Do they ever pause to think of an alternative to the golden cages they have willingly locked themselves in?

What makes fundamentalists so fearful of their beliefs being questioned? Why does it feel so dangerous for them to step out of their imagined order? What storm do they think rages “out there”?

These questions make me incredibly thankful for the times I went out on a limb and tried something unknown and unexpected. Those were the probably the only times I was in true possession of all my senses, and those were the times that truly enriched my life.

I bring my fast to an end today with the hope that we can try every now and then to break free of the prisons of our fearful imaginations, and give reality a chance to surprise us. In hindsight, our most fearless choices may prove to be a lot more pleasant than we imagined.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah