FREE FALL THOUGHTS

22nd March 2020 , India went into a self-imposed day long lock down - the "JANTA" CURFEW. A full dress rehearsal for things to come, except that nobody had a clue of scope & extent of the drama going to unfold in coming days. On March 18th, PMO twitter handle released a tweet late in the night, mentioning PM would address the nation tomorrow at 8 PM. PM Shri @narendramodi will address the nation on 19th March 2020 at 8 PM, during which he will talk about issues relating to COVID-19 and the efforts to combat it. — PMO India (@PMOIndia) March 18, 2020 Indians know, what happens when PM addresses nation at 8 PM. Last time when it happened on a mild winter November 8, 2016 evening, we really had a hard time. The 500 and 1000 rupee currency notes were banned overnight and literally brought everyone on road - standing in queues for withdrawing money, exchanging outgoing currency and what not. Since the declaration of Covid-19 as pandemic a week ago, people were ...

Corona - The Pandemic By the time it was second week of March 2020, the novel corona virus had already infected more than 100,000 persons and had claimed over 4000 lives and had spread to over 100 countries. Human race had collectively outlived many a disasters, diseases and epidemics even in the age when we had not made enough so called "developments" - in medical science, communication networks and information technology. But this one turning out to be different and scary - because of its global transmission and because no one knew the cure. The Covid-19 gained world wide attention, may be because rich and influential were at risk equally. Rather the rich and "connected" were more at risk than poor and "isolated". Common flu virus (Influenza) had killed more people last year - mostly poor estimated numbers varying from ~300,000 to 600,000. Nobody on this world gets bothered with some thing that affects poor. Their votes during elections may be ...

To begin with, here is the wiki link for timeline of Corona Virus Pandemic during Feb-2020  &  Mar-2020 . While Covid-19 virus was making some inroads in India, I was out on the road. From last week of Jan-2020 to second week of March-2020 traveled to many a places, of course in India. 25th Jan - 4th Feb: Patna - New Delhi - Patna 7th Feb - 9th Feb: Patna - Gaya - Patna 22nd Feb - 23rd Feb: Patna - Raipur - Patna 7th Mar - 15th Mar - Patna - Gaya - Patna - Gaya - Patna Patna - Gaya - Patna is my routine trip to hometown during long weekends, festivals or for any personal work, travel to New Delhi and Raipur was refreshing change. It was after long time that I was travelling outside the state - almost after two years. I was getting to meet new people and old friends. Little pleasures of life. And all this, which other wise seemed unrelated, was linked to the ongoing Corona crisis. No I did not get infected. I was visiting New Delhi for a conferen...

HOW IT ALL BEGAN As the second decade of the 21st century was passing bye, it left the planet with a pandemic that would change lives as we knew it. Sometime in Dec-2019, a previously unknown virus started spreading from the Hubei province of China . Within couple of months the viral infection had turned deadly and almost entire planet was under its grip. Nearly 3 billion people globally were under lock down as on 30th March 2020, in their homes under orders from government authorities. All countries on the planet, except may be the Chinese, were still uncertain about how to stop this contagion, which was  declared a "Pandemic" by WHO in a press conference on 11th March 2020, Earth's apex body for  global / international health matters. We live in times of information technology and data sciences. The timeline being well documented by WHO as well as by many others and could be found very easily over internet. Yet for the continuity of the narrative and conven...

24th March 2020, 8:10 PM - Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi in his address to the nation announced with folded hands, that a strict nation wide lock down  is being imposed across the nation, in wake of the covid-19 pandemic outbreak, wef 25th March 00:00AM for a period of 21 days i.e.till 14th April 2020. Take a look at one of the newspaper front page the next monring -  HT New Delhi Edition 25th March By mid of March 2020, much of the developed western world particularly Italy and Spain were under unprecedented crisis caused by the spread of Corona Virus and China, where it all started sometime in December 2019, had just started to contain the situation. Cases in USA, UK, South Korea and Iran were on the rise. With the most advanced health care systems in world struggling to save its citizen, India had to take preventive measures before the situation got out of hand. In a democratic nation state of 1.3 billion plus people, who belong to an unparalleled d...