Grief, like Covid-19, mutates and escapes the inoculation of both time and the reassurance of loving friends. It is less sledgehammer and more screwdriver, drilling little holes in your head and heart, leaving you haunted by the ifs and buts of your decisions.
Interpretation
Grief evolves and affects us deeply, leaving lasting emotional scars regardless of time or support from others.
In this quote, Barkha Dutt compares the nature of grief to the mutability of a virus, emphasizing how grief can change over time and evade remedies. It suggests that while we may receive support and comfort from friends, the emotional pain often persists in subtle, invasive ways, leading to constant reflection on our past choices and regrets.
In practice
In a memorial speech to honor a loved one, this quote could illustrate the enduring nature of grief.
It's never said out aloud, or in so many words, but for many urban, upper caste Indians, 'the backwards' are precisely that - citizens of the hinterland, ungainly and otherworldly - an inconvenient blemish on their shining, gleaming future.
It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
Why were you so old when we met? I answered with the truth: Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.
No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.
From these prejudices there arises conflict, transient joys and suffering. But we are unconscious of this, unconscious that we are slaves to certain forms of tradition, to social and political environment, to false values.
If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only no matter how big its membership may be is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.
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