None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Though there was some foreshadowing, yet the whole world changed too abruptly and too absurdly, to make any sense of it at all. One-day people scurrying through their daily routines, businesses marching to the tunes of sedated regularity and everything’s going along fairly well and suddenly, the entire nation is clothed in destitution and everyone is on the breadline. Before one could even begin to assess the drastic and novel change which snuck up and took us unaware, we were shoved deep into the pit of despondency.
Even today, we are trying to come to terms with this atmosphere of distress and tribulations continuously looming over both the mind and space, trying to disentangle this unspeakable suffering stifling the remnants of an already frail and gasping hope – a hope for a humane tomorrow. This has been termed as the worst unitary downturn in the history and no one has been spared from this unfortunate tide of devastation.
This downturn began with the onset of March, two years ago – a week after my daughter’s first birthday – with the crash of International System of Units Organization (I.S.U.), signalling a larger and more horrid collapse which was to follow. All levels of industries and business sectors were ruinously and suddenly impaired, bringing everything to a complete standstill. The construction industry was hit the first and worst by the crisis. All ongoing nationwide building and construction projects were immediately halted as the shortage of standards of length, particularly foot and meter became evident and inescapable. This slump, closely followed by abeyance, soon spilled over to other divisions as well, including the primary, retail and manufacturing sectors. Among the various poisons of the slump, the recession of length and mass units was most inimical and substantial in bringing the world of men to a complete halt. Big, small and everything in between was unprejudicedly stricken by the epidemic of downturn. Without tons and quintals, all the farm produce and harvest became useless and the dearth of inches and centimetres rendered barbers jobless. Every stratum of society was hit by this unforgiving storm.
By mid-October, the I.S.U. had lost two thirds of their measuring units and in the following year, a national emergency was officially announced. There were some feeble and doddering actions taken by the leaders, to lift the decaying morale and resuscitate the conditions through the Measure Reconstruction Corporation and re-establishment of the General Committee of Weights and Measurements, but such attempts were only in vain and couldn’t assuage the bleeding of people or the life within them. The counter measures adopted by the various international trading partners to alleviate the an already tenuous situation only exacerbated it, resulting in further shrinkage of international trade and decline in the global flow of S.I. units and measurements. The steady decline over the time caused a monumental upheaval and degradation on an extensive scale and by late the 1930s the whole country had hit rock bottom.
Down the line, when these achingly woeful events are chronicled and the measurement historians simplify the cause by attributing the start of the Great Unitary Depression to the sudden and devastating collapse of I.S.U. Organization, know that there has to be a deeper, underlying cause for it all. One doesn’t require the sharpest of acuity to see that. There had to be some tell-tale signs for the enormities that were to beset us. And I am not trying to invent any conspiracies here, but when millions are swept to their doom in an instant, there has to be something more to it than just a collapse of a manmade institution. The whole situation bespeaks of a grodier, deeper complot and that the I.S.U. crash wasn’t the start but a symptom of it.
What exactly contributed to the crash of I.S.U. and the beginning of Great Unitary Depression might be hard to pin-point, yet in an era where everyone is an expert and overabundantly opinionated, one can find plentiful of propositions being played out. The overdone ones among them include the sterility of the existing measuring units without any upgradation or new reforms in their standardization, units overproduction, unstructured legalities over the usage of units which probably led to mismanagement of the available units, corruption in the related departments, no bar on the export and international trade of the units as well as no bar on permissible usage of units.
No matter the cause, the epidemic continues to take the world in its tormenting grip. Millions have lost their jobs and worse, and all have witnessed the demise of sanguinity of any sorts. Some have migrated, some remain but everyone endures the crippling poverty and an unimaginable degradation of life. For me and many others alike, every single day comes as a toil and struggle, with taxing uncertainty and unbearable strain from not knowing on how to make the ends meet, just for another day, just for today. Sporadically, the government aids would issue us food from some of the local warehouses but this clause comes with the much emphasis on the ‘sporadic’ adjectification/ objectification. On such days, if one can survive the interminable long lines of dilapidated pre-maturely aged figures in rags which ensue outside such ration places, one would be allotted the insipid ‘feast of the downturn’ or referred by our nation leaders as an ‘wholesome meal’ in the most courteous manner. On most days, the warehouses are as desolate and dismal like the town itself. There are still few other places where people have stacked food and barter it and where I currently make most of my appearances, as a beggar– the most thriving and befitting trade of the time. I transitioned into this professional shift quite evenly, after selling off all of my humble belongings as a formerly night watchmen, which you would have surely made out isn’t enough when you have been struggling with the depression for over three years and also on the fact of not having many alternatives available.
But even in such tumultuous times, the gust of inane spectacles hasn’t gone extinct. It persists through those who, with their jostling and self-assured spirits, have devised the sure-fire plan to emancipate the soul or at least the soul’s consternations and lead the world on a direct collision course with purest form of utopia. Many find a fervour and some an avocation, in such unionism which manifests itself in forms of marches and protests, involving impassioned noises and impotent flagrant performances, unkind to their throats and esteem respectively, and which eventually subsides on the account of infeasible or far-fetched objectives. Such voices and cries scar and colour the streets in various shades ranging from the gratuitous omnipotent religious factions who through their all-knowing that encompasses the matter and matterless, deduct such a calamity pertaining to our sins and offer consolations through hard-to-find faith and ever available repentance to the band of spry young broods, brimming with second-hand vigour and hormones to bring about the much required change, only after once they resolve the quandary of what to change and replace it with what. I am not sure that I know it either.
As for my penny on matter and not on the matterless, I am solely and wholly concerned with providing for my wife and daughter, by any means necessary. Beg, borrow or kneel, whichever way, I’ll manage to cope up with the adversities of the downturn and make sure to see my family through it, no matter how much disagreeable the conditions might get. Earlier in the days of normality, we managed to stay happy and playful and always accomplish a decent life with what we had. I also liked my job of a night watchmen. I was completely acclimatized to my hours and never got acquainted with the so called overbearing work-pressure. You can say that it was a satisfactory and easy-going life. Nowadays, we try to keep the same spirit, living hand-to-mouth on whatever we can find.
Presently we stay in a small aphotic quarter with shared bathrooms, where my wife works as a live-in domestic worker. There is no electricity and no running water. During nights, we use kerosene lamps and as for hydration, washing and other water related purposes, it’s a couple of miles tread to the end of street where there’s a hand pump on the corner. Just take your bucket, go down to the corner, mash the top of the pump, get your water and walk back to the house without spilling much. Pretty plain and simple. And since we only had a single bucket at our disposal, this drill has become a ritualistic practice in our lives.
During winters the situation gets a little more prickly, not only because winters diffuses the already scarce food supplies but also because surviving cold in such poverty-stricken conditions is a truly a challenge. Our warmth donors include blankets, aforementioned kerosene lamps and a scruffy coat with pointed lapels and oversized pockets. Mostly I could be seen donning a white shirt, a snappy woollen trouser with 1 ¾ inch cuffs, a modish hat and black shoes, neatly mended with the scotch tape at all the places it’s torn. As far as the food goes, whatever I am able to fetch off the streets and purchase through my wife’s meagre pay, we share. There have been countless days where I had make do with something like blueberries or nuts for days at end, so that my family can be fed passably.
But before any praise of any sort or form emanates from you, for any of my traits which might have presented itself based on my account you have read so far, let me take opportunity to assure you that these have been naively projected onto the author. If you sensed any kind of fortitude within my actions or glimpsed any shade of heartedness in form of my protracted parental or spousal sacrifices or saw any other laud worthy quality, it surely doesn’t originate in me. And if you seek to ask me from where I derive my strength to drink these bitter dregs of worries – available in plenty – that what keeps my courage screwed on against such adversities, the answer is bifold; it’s the two ladies in my life. Only they prevent the collapse of my sanity and my soul. It’s for them, my willingness to endure this long, debilitating ordeal ploughs on. It’s in the time spent with them where I become completely amnesic to our tribulations and the state of worry and insecurity everyone is in.
On one night, my daughter somehow recognizing the sorrow in her mother’s eyes, asked her the cause of her dismay. Based on the assumption that her daughter’s grasp on ‘life’ was too unripe to comprehend the adult world protocols, her mother replied “My dear you won’t get it. We don’t have enough inches and meters. We used too much of it.” And on hearing this reply, she asked a follow-up question, “What are these inches mommy? And does it come from?” Even we didn’t we have an answer for it.
But I’ll also have to confide, that she has been a real fighter throughout the whole ordeal. Surviving in such pernicious conditions and on limited food supply is quite difficult for a child at this infancy. Being so young also makes it her hard for her to understand that her childhood is neither a typical nor an appropriate one. Of lately, she has become slightly disinterested in her activities and is also showing aversion to eating as well. But I am sure, soon enough she go will back to her usual conduct of prancing and playing around, keeping her daddy’s heart beating with joy and hope. It’s for her I pray for prosperity to return again to her health and soul. I know once this depression abates, she will grow up to be one fine woman and one day, sitting in a comfortable, safe home, far away from this time, she will be telling her plump sons and daughters, stories of this struggle. Would she even remember all of this – the hardships and ordeals that she had to go through; that how her mother without any slightest trepidation had the bare-minimum food possible, not indeed from the lack of hunger; that how she was my sole impetus to live on for, during this depression?
