Thank god for porous borders!

Seventy-two days ago, at the end of an inconclusive meeting in New Delhi, I left for home — a 20-minute ride across the Yamuna — in Noida. There were no checks or barriers or visible boundaries to imply territorial exclusion. This was still days ahead of Modi’s exploratory, one-day lockdown, though already a sense of uneasiness had set in. Offices were voluntarily shutting down; work from home still had a novel ring to it that no one took seriously. My daughter, who worked unenviably further in Gurgaon, had set up temporary office in our bar room a week earlier. Eighty