Two recent developments

We Indians were never known to be much of travellers till the economic boom raised the income levels and foreign travel became a fad. In one of my earlier blogs, I had mentioned about my father never owning a passport and his much of inland travelling also happening after his retirement. And here I am not including those who have their children abroad. Travelling to them can hardly be described as tourism though our children do take us out to the most cherished spots of the region when we visit them.

Of course, we do have a section of society that’s known for not only travelling but also making their travels knowledge trips. Bengalis distinguish themselves in this field and even if some of the middle class families can’t afford exotic locations abroad, they do travel extensively within the country.

The provocation for suddenly writing on this theme arose from two recent developments – one pleasant and one none too pleasant! Space travel by two of the most maverick business persons, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their intent to open it for discerning and ultra rich section of society was covered extensively by media. It’s indeed a big achievement and I am sure like everything else, as the technology progresses, this is likely to become more commonplace with more and more people fulfilling this wish of seeing our beautiful planet from the top and experiencing zero gravity.

Second news was unpleasant and cause for concern. It was around the public, frustrated by repeated and stretched lockdowns and travel restrictions, crowding the popular hill stations and making mockery of social distancing and other Covid related protocols! It was rightly termed by certain learned commentators as an open welcome to the third wave.

It’s really a mystery that when we are repeatedly coming across cases of even fully vaccinated people getting affected by Corona, delta variant raising its ugly head in large number of countries, including advanced nation and large sections of the society yet to be vaccinated, still we are simply throwing caution to the winds and trying our best to invite third wave. While the first wave caught the world by surprise, it’s surprising that we are refusing to learn any lessons from extremely virulent and lethal second wave! We all understand that health workers, sanitary workers, law keepers, essential service providers and daily earners do not have option of sitting and working from home. But the fun seekers, party animals, travel bug bitten and other outgoing types must restrain themselves if we are to collectively defeat Covid .

Hope good sense prevails over the people! Ultimately , like the crowd has no face, the suffering also comes without seeing any face and this face could be yours or mine!