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.
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness. Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him.
What one side considers a defense the other considers a threat. In the vortex of the struggle, each is trapped by his own fearful outlook and by his fear of the other; each moves and is moved within a circle both vicious and lethal.
As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
Attention, to a terrorist group, is often what the well-meaning, outraged response is to your two-bit Internet troll: it is the food that feeds them.
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
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