UNMASKED REFLECTIONS...

At a stage in life which is often described as Vanaprastha, I was not willingly retreating into the forest, but was largely confined at home over the past two years. It has been a difficult, trying, sometimes fascinating, mostly exhausting year. How does one capture in few words the most significant facet of the year? For me the most obvious symbol of this time has been the "mask”.

The metaphor of wearing mask is not new. As psychologists inform us, we all wear social masks. We put it on, go out and put out our best image. We wear different masks as situations demand and most of lives is spent on putting on and taking off masks! Often we wear the masks to protect our vulnerable inner selves.

With the advent of the Covid we became aware as to how physically vulnerable we can be and masks made inroads into our everyday lives in tangible ways.

But mask wearing is not new. They have been with us for aeons The earliest well documented masks were from the arid Judean Desert in the Middle East which were found in caves near the Dead Sea about 9,000 years ago. They are the earliest preserved masks that we currently know of. It is possible that they were funerary masks.

During the Black Death when plague ravaged Europe, doctors wore a mask with a bird-like beak to protect them from being infected by the deadly disease. It was believed that the disease spread by miasma, a noxious form of ‘bad air.’ To battle this threat, the long beak was packed with dried flowers, herbs and spices providing a sweet fragrance. A French doctor named Charles de Lorme is credited with the design of this mask. He designed the bird mask to be worn with a large waxen coat as a form of head-to-toe protection, modelled on a soldier’s armour. It was perhaps the first PPE to be used during pandemics! It’s even possible that the cumbersome beak helped to create a small amount of “social distancing!”

The discovery in 1861 of the presence of bacteria in the air by Louis Pasteur made people aware of the dangers of breathing in harmful pathogens. This led doctors to prescribe cotton masks to limit contagion during epidemics.

During the Manchurian plague epidemic in 1910-11 in China, it was Wu Lien - a Cambridge educated doctor who emphasized the important role of masks as a ​‘prophylactic apparatus’ that could be worn by all to protect themselves from the plague. In the same decade as the Manchurian epidemic, over 40 million people around the world lost their lives to the Spanish flu of 1918. This number is greater than the total casualties from World War I. The same outbreak, when it reached India, arrived as the Bombay fever and took 17 million lives, 40% of the total deaths worldwide. The practice of covering one’s face with scarves and veils with the intention to ward off disease originated during this period.  

Over the past two years we have been striving to protecting ourselves from an unseen virus that can be present anywhere and masks have played an important role in this. We make sure that we wear one when we venture out into the world and heave a sigh of relief on taking it off once we reach the safe confines of our homes.

Beyond every mask there is a story…

As I take off the mask in the sanctuary of home, the task has been to creatively engage with the physical isolation. During this year we also had the first-hand experience of being quarantined! Our house help tested positive during a routine testing and as primary contacts we were confined to the home for two weeks. Quarantine has its origins from the Italian word quarantena, a shorthand for quaranta giorni, meaning “forty days.” It has biblical connotations referring to Christ’s forty days in the desert, the forty days of Christian Lent, the forty days of rain that compelled Noah to build his ark, even the forty days that Moses spent waiting atop Mount Sinai for the Ten Commandments.  The religious significance of the period for quarantine was not simply coincidental: it was chosen to encourage those undergoing quarantine to look on it as a period of purification to be spent in devotion.

Beyond the brief period of quarantine, we have been mostly confined to home and I spent time reading, writing blog posts and mostly listening to music.

The books I liked the most are ( it is a long list…just mentioning five of them!):
1)The Overstory by Richard Powers. It is a brilliant and passionate book about humans and their relationship to trees and the natural environment.
2)Midnight Borders: A peoples history of modern India by Suchitra Vijayan:  A brilliant account of a 9,000-mile seven year journey among the people living along the many borders of India.
3)Mrs Bridges by Evan Connel: An artful portrayal of suburban life in US.
4)Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker: A poignant story of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia written with compassion and insight.
5)The Awakened Brain by Lisa Miller: An engrossing exploration into the neuroscience of spirituality.
But the book that left a lasting impression on me is Nandini Murali’s “Left Behind.” It is an extraordinary, inspirational account of a suicide survivor written with sensitivity and compassion.

Some of my blog posts during this year:
​www.profraguram.com/musings--reflections/through-the-looking-glass-with-apologies-to-lewis-carroll
https://www.profraguram.com/musings--reflections/balpandia-silent-sentinel
https://www.profraguram.com/musings--reflections/wayfaring-with-a-wilted-leaf
https://www.profraguram.com/musings--reflections/a-unique-depiction-of-garuda
https://www.profraguram.com/musings--reflections/the-mango-tree-and-bodisattva
https://www.profraguram.com/musings--reflections/bewitching-murals-of-bodinayakanur

This year also marked my 70th birthday. As Mark Twain commented on his 70th birthday, "It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked." I resolved to take his advice seriously!

We had a small pooja at Bhoganandeeswara temple near to Bangalore, which both Ahalya and myself like immensely. Glimpses are at: https://photos.app.goo.gl/DjoP6coFEevY14X47.

There was a small blip at the end of the year when Ahalya had to undergo a surgery. Fortunately, everything turned out well and she is back on her feet. We are forever grateful and deeply cherish the support and assistance from all our close friends.

What remained concealed for long time and was then revealed in this tumultuous and agonizing year was the gross inequality in health care. It also unmasked the collusion of religion and body politics. Both religion and politics are so good at masking and unmasking realities!
Fervently hoping that the hold of the virus will loosen in the new year and we can meet each other without the masks!

We spent the past year
Shielded by masks
Alone in our dreams
Waiting for the numbers to subside
Waiting to shake hands, touch, embrace
We are waiting…

Look forward to your reminiscences about this post and that of the year too!