Look for the numbers through your pain

Early one morning I watched a video clip of a speech by Rajya Sabha member and Rashtriya Janata Dal RJD spokesperson Professor Manoj Kumar Jha and wept I couldnrsquot help it There were so many words in that speech I never realised my soul was longing to hearLike shikayat ldquoKahan jaata apni shikayat lekerdquo asked Professor Jha as he talked about writing an article in desperation Yes deserted by the system whom did people have to turn to with their plaints in the nightmarish weeks of the second wave No one to listen to you makes you aloneHe said apologymdashan apology is owed to those denied dignity in death by a failed system In a world dedicated to power the word sorry is an admission of guilt and must never be uttered if we want to cling to our power In a world of compassion though sorry also means sorrowmdashdistress at someonersquos suffering But those are not words we hear from our government much in general when its fellow citizens are suffering Perhaps for that one must think of all citizens as fellow citizensLast week a young photographer Danish Siddique died in Afghanistan Many who knew him were shattered Many who did not know him were also shattered for he had entered our lives through his photographs dramatic and precise but also humane Condolences came from around the worldmdashbut was not from our own head of stateBecause Siddique had photographed the grids of burning pyres in the second wave the online right wing rejoiced at his death In not feeling sorrow for the suffering of others they may dehumanise the sufferers But they also dehumanise themselves Not just the dead they the living have also allowed themselves to become just a number A number on a viral tweet a number in a voting bloc a number that lines up with a sideGovernments argue about numbers We watch the number of cases obsessively as they drop Because the numbers drop does it mean the suffering is over I am still writing condolence messages every day mdasharenrsquot you India has had four million excess deaths For those who have lost their loved ones the shadow of pain is sharp in the searing heat of loss and economic hardship tooProfessor Jha named some departed colleagues from Parliament ldquoRaghunath Mahapatramdashwhenever he met he would embrace us and say Jai Jagannathrdquo he said bringing a dead friend back to life from the coffin of statistics for a minute with his anguish By expressing the experience of loss he acknowledged the pain of other Indians each of whom as he pointed out have experienced some similar loss invoking our human interconnectedness He asked the House to consider the Right to Health and Work as extensions of the Right to Life To do that would mean looking at peoplersquos needs with a compassionate eye not only a calculating one Or to put it in Professor Jharsquos wordsmdashapni peeda mein ankda dhoondiye look for the numbers through your painTrue Words and numbers derive meaning from each other The government did that as they declared how many deaths had occurred due to lack of oxygen in the second wave They found a number equal to their pain Zero As you know India invented it in the Golden PastParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom