Lately, I find myself surprisingly content—perhaps even fortunate. I experienced the great stillness, that strange gift of witnessing how Brahma might live a single day stretched across eighty mortal years. In those suspended moments, I sometimes reached for Sartre's wisdom like a lifeline, reminding myself that solitude only becomes unbearable when we prove poor company to ourselves. Yet even that philosophical comfort felt unnecessary; the restless energy that usually churns within me had somehow become digestible, manageable.

But I resist the urge to dwell on those locked-away days, because they remain with us still—not as memory, but as ongoing reality that shapes today and all our tomorrows.

When I contemplate "today" and "the days to come," I search the past for precedents, though my knowledge of common history remains frustratingly incomplete. There's a crucial distinction here: the loneliness we choose voluntarily creates a protective distance, making us elegantly aloof. But when isolation is imposed, when we become prisoners rather than hermits, every buried insecurity surfaces with claws extended. We become unbearable even to ourselves, trapped in company we cannot escape.

"Even during the strictest lockdown, when the Sundarbans were blown away by the storm, when workers were labeled 'migrant'... people in her very area were crying for food, begging to survive." — The stark contrast between digital entertainment and desperate reality

Yet we have our anchors: Jibanananda's melancholic verses, Rabindranath's universal humanism. We've learned to create and consume films—perhaps not with perfection, but with an understanding that art isn't luxury but necessity. Even during the harshest restrictions, when cyclones ravaged the Sundarbans and displaced workers suddenly became "migrants" (a term that existed before but hadn't yet gone viral), when TikTok stars performed for audiences while their neighbors begged for basic survival, and elderly cultural guardians sat in air-conditioned rooms behind masks, playing their appointed roles—even then, art persisted.

In some corner of this chaos, Vidya Balan's Silk Smitha smirked knowingly, whispering her eternal truth: "Picture sirf teen cheezon ke wajah se chalti hai" (a movie runs on three things). The cinema understands what we desperately needed—freedom from blame, escape through entertainment, liberation inspired by her brazen honesty.