The other side

In these days, when life is as though suspended, I feel like a person standing on that bridge from Garouste's painting. Neither on this side nor on that

The last time I went to the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi, which was a few weeks before the lockdown was announced, the guard appeared harried. A visitor before me had refused to put down his credentials in the entry register. “He didn’t want to touch the pen. He said it might have the virus. You tell me, how can this have the virus?” he vented. I nodded sympathetically as I made an entry in the register, wondering for the umpteenth time why in the first place the national gallery had to follow this sarkari practice