THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2024
Molly Fernandes
A short video clipping that I watched ran through my spine as the young lad tasted the hard hit lathis from CISF. The susegad Goan community was caught in the deep with the Janta Curfew being extended till March 25 and the nationwide curfew from March 26 till April 14, 2020.
Well, the food loving Goan community who love to feast at the roadside gaddas, be they chicken shwarma or the mouth watering bellpuri, pannipuri or ros-omelette or any related fast food. It has always been a craze for KFC, Dominos pizzas and the like... For the growing teens the food cooked at home seems boring, as they come home stomach full with junk food! Some of them use the modern technology to cook their tasty food after being instructed instead of eating outside four small pieces for four hundred, to have the whole of chicken by making use of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) studies which also gives some experience of cooking.
Today, most of these things stand still. No gaddas, no shwarma outlets, no evening outings at pubs, beaches or river side, Baskin Robbins, neither to the theatres nor the malls.... The walls of the houses are reverberating with sounds and music. There’s video conferencing four at a time! There’s family prayer, and food with limited supply but tasty! And indoor games too!
After the uproar of COVID-19 pandemic, the social media was full of relevant Bible verses or quotations from the Bible, like Isaiah 26: 20, Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. Then about the lockdown in Egypt... when the Angel of death passed by the Israelites who were protected, those whose door post had the blood of the lamb; the flood lasted 40 days, the Exodus..., 40 days of fasting and that 40 represent change.
We see the planet generates quickly, as, it is we who need the planet earth to live, because the planet earth can survive without us. The elements like water, air, space – are getting restored, the pollution decreased! No doubt, what the Nation leaders could not do or stop, to control pollution, the drug menace, the murders, the rapes, the pandemic has done. Despondently, though destroyed precious life without mercy as if what the Word of God says in Isaiah 41: 11, “those who rage against... will disappear from the earth” taking place.
The miracle of ‘Pater Nostre’ being prayed together by whole world from where we are and the world mutually in spirit was uniting with the Pontiff for the ‘Urbi et Orbi...’ at the empty St Peter’s Square, amazing! Yet painful!.
Nonetheless, it was the ‘return of the prodigals’. Physically it was empty but in spirit, packed more than ever!
The social media is filled of Eucharistic celebrations; chain prayers called with fasting, the way of the cross done at home, etc. Gal 6, 9 says: Let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. The Church’s initiative of adoration for the people to do it at home! A platform for the upcoming Lockdown Holy Week in the history of the Church!
Something to remember after April 21 – the virus is not eradicated and the need to avoid public places, overcrowding of public transport, etc. To use masks, sanitisers, hot water flasks and social distancing for your sake, that of the society!
