Our Funarena!

The 74 th Independence Day of India was celebrated on 15 th August at the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi giving his customary address to the nation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was sans the usual grandiosity with limited invitees and restricted public attendance, use of masks, social distancing and other norms being maintained very strictly. Celebrations were also simple and muted in all the state capitals, district headquarters, offices and other public places. *** Independence Day seemed to have inspired Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the most successful captain of Indian cricket, to finally call it quits and thereby attain full freedom from the remaining departments of international cricket, that is say, from ODIs and T20Is, as Captain Cool announced his retirement by evening of 15 th August on social media; he retired suddenly and abruptly from Test cricket in the midst of an on-going series against Australia in Australia during 2013

Common people mostly have fickle minds; they are always guided by what they want to believe, often to their advantage. When they are worried, frightened and clueless about the future they are most vulnerable to doubt and conspiracy theories. For the last six months people all over the globe are very disturbed by the COVID 19 pandemic, not so much because of the deadly effects of the virus than the restrictions and lockdowns derailing normal life it has brought in its wake. They desperately need to go back to the sweet normal times and live happily ever after, and therefore they jump to accept and believe fully when some motivated souls offer that ‘COVID 19 is a hoax, it’s nothing more than an annual influenza’. Thus the ‘doubt virus’ is created and the social media as always helps it spread—at times much faster than the killer virus. Perhaps the basic impulses for skepticism stem from the facts that more than 80% of Coronavirus positive cases are mild in nature and recover easily,