🧵 Learnings from #Year2020

1. 🙋‍♀️ There are no bad questions, only bad answers. So ask away, be brave. Because if you never ask, you will never know. It's better to ask and be stupid for 5 minutes that stay quiet and be stupid forever.

I'm married to an Australian. I returned to Australia from the UK in October.

This is my experience of what happened to me when I arrived in the country during COVID.

I think it will help people understand how criminally bad our government's response has been. (a thread).

On arrival, passengers were escorted from the plane by armed police.

We were allocated a government-mandated hotel, and told to wait in a holding area.

Once processed we were led to a coach. Members of the Australian army lined the route to make sure no one tried to escape.

Once at the hotel we were taken off the coach one by one

An Australian police officer escorted me to my room, telling me in no uncertain terms that if I left it in any unauthorised circumstances for the next two weeks, I would be spending up to two years in an Australian prison.

During the next two weeks I was fed three times a day in polystyrene and with plastic cutlery. Below are some examples of the food. It was fine, but there was no control or choice.

After about eight days I was tested for COVID.

This was mandatory, and the first time I’d seen another human since the quarantine started.

Even though I was negative, I was told I could leave only once my 14 days of isolation were over.

Plz take a moment to read this & watch the video.
#threadstorytime
Story of 3D
So when i shifted to Mumbai, a batchmate of mine helped me in finding a rented house. He was fooled by one of his acquaintances, & me with my sister ended up in an under construction building
1)

Near slum.
It is horrific. But I had no choice since we reached by car 2 am, with my 3 dogs. Area was not safe. Even police avoided to enter it

One day when I got down to get in my car to go for work, I heard a growling.
I bent down to see a dog just in bones, feeding puppies 2

Tried to get her out but her one leg was badly broken & bleeding.
One puppy half eaten by rats, coz rats there were bigger than her puppies.
I used auto but contacted many NGO
Got no help.
I started mixing antibiotics & pain killer in rice to feed her.
Initially I had to push
3

The food below the car. But on 3rd day, she actually came out from under the car to eat from my hands.
She started trusting me. I put bandage on her leg.
Called her 3D 😁 which my sister @doorva207 Found really odd & stupid
3D started recovering. She started gaining health
4

I introduced her to children of out building.
Parents found them dirty, but kids are ❤
We gave all of them bath, vaccination.
They were happy.
But every other day her one pup started getting crushed under a tempo or car
People wouldn't bother to slow down
3D would cry to me
5

Make them irrelevant > Hold a grudge

Holding a grudge is the easy thing to do.

But holding a grudge is not the right thing to do.

A grudge puts poison in your body & rewires your subconscious mind.

You consume the poison & destroy your reality while your attacker sleeps like a baby.

Whenever people call me an elitist, I am flummoxed. I am from a working class background, I am a product of public education my entire life, and I spend my free time creating a podcast that aims to make great books accessible to all for FREE.

I am called an elitist because I believe there's a difference between literary art and plain fiction. I believe some books are more worthy of your attention than others. Lots of books are like junk food: pleasurable but not nourishing.

My podcast is dedicated to the idea that great books are for everyone and everyone deserves a chance to learn to enjoy them. This is not an elitist enterprise. It does, however, suppose that some books are truly worthy of your attention and that I have some capacity to judge.

My podcast doesn't pretend to be exhaustive. I have limited resources and time and perspective. But the conceit of the podcast is that in listening to it you will deepen your literary and philosophical education. These aren't just books I happen to like and hope you do too.

My podcast highlights books I think you will benefit from reading. Many of them are challenging; one might have to struggle with them before one can enjoy them at all. The podcast aims to help get you to the enjoyment/appreciation stage, to show that the struggle pays off.