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In a crisis, the language of life

Apr 21, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

As the arc of coronavirus tightens its girdle around the globe, and stretches to Guyana, I confess to being stirred by the language of life, the grasping for life, that is incorporated in the careful and inspired words and phrases springing forth in the midst of crisis. They come from a leader here and there rising to meet the fearsome challenges that have to be faced with the bravest of unyielding fronts.
There is the boundless optimism amidst the frank and fearful reporting of the numbers and embedded in the harrowing stories of loss and grief, and this is despite the remorseless rush of the still stalking, savaging virus. I reflect on the leadership of New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo and I am intrigued, even helped, by his indefatigable readiness to see the silver lining, to reach for any ray that could gleam amongst his peoples and before a world made to weep by the lethal afflictions that leave few unscathed.
Having spent so many decades in different sections of that crowded city and state, there still is, and always will be, a part of the umbilical cord remaining there. Having half a dozen siblings and their families residing there adds the personal and cherished to the considerations of what is present, what is faced. So, when I hear Governor Cuomo search and find the right words to deliver, it is of more than my own appreciation for the stirring power of the language, it is of the regard I have to give to a leader rising to the occasion to share any scintilla of truth, of clarity, and of hope that he can muster in a very terrible time. I read of him saying of “past the high point” (April 19) and the “worst is over” (April 13) and “we are flattening the curve, we must continue to bend the curve” (April 12), among other determined efforts to deliver any sliver of the optimistic.
Without a doubt, in aggregate, it is not the incomparable transcendent flair or the awesome rolling thunder of the Churchillian. Not by a long shot, there are too rudimentary and sterile; but together they suffice to lift sagging spirits searching for any flickering candle, no matter how feeble, in the deep darkness that abounds. The good governor, a surefooted political animal of unlimited vision, looks better, despite his sometimes mano a mano combat (verbal, of course) with New York City’s mayor and his own president; the former talks a little out of turn sometimes, while the latter talks too much all the time, with most of it of the megalomaniacal variety. Though I have lost much faith in political characters, domestic and foreign, I must recognize a man trying his best to rally his people by grabbing at any speck of the positive that may be gleaned from the circumstances that lay waste and leave stockpiles of fallen bodies and frighteningly depleted stockpiles of defensive weapons.
To be sure, he has only bland numbers to work with, and they are all relentlessly grim and gruesome in their hard, wanton, and ruthless finality. But out of the numbers, he parses for and finds less intubations, less ICU situations, less admissions, less confirmed cases, and less of anything negative and draining from the medical charnel house that is today’s New York.
I have to give him his due. He has risen above occasion, seized the high plains. Already, the politician in him has to be thinking of 4 years into the future. His prospects look good. Now he has to maintain his fidelity to the facts, which he has proven to be good at; watch his steps, which could be much trickier; and watch his own national star rise. Yet even as I say this, I wonder if America has the stomach for another New Yorker.
I, for one, don’t have much of that left for the local heroes around. What have their language been about here in this time of the mystery and crisis, other than of more division, more disfigurements, and more despair? Things are so unhealthy here that dual citizens head from the frying pan that is here to the still uncontrolled fires over there. Clearly, the language uttered lacks power or persuasion. Truth, too.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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