The city of perils

HIT BY COVID-19 AND AN EARLY MONSOON, MUMBAI HAS NEVER SEEMED SO CLOSE TO THE BRINK

- JERRY PINTO

My aunt, Celine Coelho, is a retired teacher. She lives on her own in a studio apartment with a patch of carefully tended garden. Over the last six weeks, she has been looking after herself, washing her clothes and ironing them, cooking her meals and eating them alone. She has no smartphone, no computer, no laptop, no Netflix. She has books and her writing. She is 84 and for me, she is a hero of the lockdown. But even heroes have lessons to learn. “I have always valued my independence,” she said to me over the phone. “What the lockdown has taught me is how dependent I am on other people.”

It is a lesson every Mumbaikar is learning quickly. This is being written as Cyclone Nisarga begins to sweep inland and netizens are reading Amitav Ghosh’s warning message about stocking up on candles and drinking water. It is being written just after we were told that the locusts were coming. The locusts are now in Maharashtra and eating up the crops. We have never seemed so close to the brink.