There is something unique and mysterious in the Indian psyche. That is no reason to celebrate. It is important to add this caveat because one of the mysterious attributes of Indians is their alacrity to celebrate for non-existent reasons. The prime minister had asked Indians to conduct something like a collective candlelight vigil on Sunday evening to experience a sense of unity in the face of a ravaging pandemic. He said nothing about creating a din. Yet people in numerous places around the country burst crackers and blew car horns and conch shells. When a virus, still not under control, is killing patients in their thousands all over the world, when its grip in India has not even been gauged adequately while deaths increase in number, what kind of mind thinks of bursting crackers? It is no party, no Diwali; it is the time to be together in strength and determination, in grief and mourning, in feeling for those risking their lives without adequate protection while tending the sick or conducting essential services, in remembering the thousands left without earning, nutrition, and even shelter in this catastrophe — and some Indians think it is party time?

It has to be asked where the crackers came from. Their manufacture does not fall under essential services. Who supplied them? They are forbidden, or at least limited, even during Diwali. There will obviously be no investigation. The cracker bursting, however, brought forward another unique feature of the Indian psyche: its complete obtuseness regarding pollution. Just when a wounded human race is trying to discover something positive amid sickness in the lessening of atmospheric pollution, a whole lot of Indians decide to pollute the air together. It seems that they cannot bear to breathe clean air or enjoy the quiet. Perhaps the outrageous display on Sunday should be put down to the fact that they have grown so used to deafening noise — they enjoy music by turning on loudspeakers so everyone else is forced to cower — that the lockdown is stifling them. But the latest eagerness to pollute is especially ironic, for whatever else is unknown about Covid-19, one thing is more or less certain: it poses the greatest danger to the respiratory tract. Sulphurous smog is a sure-shot way to hurt the breathing system.