Three friends from school, who have established themselves in separate professions, have come together to collate their experiences and realisations during the pandemic — and that of others in other vocations — between two covers.
The book, titled Managing complexity and Covid-19: Life, Liberty Or the Pursuit of Happiness, was launched recently at the IIHM Global Campus in Sector V. “When Covid broke out, with lockdowns being declared across countries, a debate ensued between life and liberty. But my contention was one had to choose either both or neither. I wondered how people in other professions were responding to the debate. So I spoke to a couple of classmates and all three of us did a lot of research and decided to write an opinion piece in a newspaper. But that would be only 1,000 words. Then one of my two friends Amit Halder, a neurologist, suggested that we turn this into a book,” said Aurobindo Ghosh, who teaches finance education at Singapore Management University.
The book, it was decided, would be a time capsule archiving how people reacted to the pandemic, the impact in their discipline, how they decided what to do and how it changed them.
Kalyan Bhowmik, the third friend and one of the three editors of the book who practises law, recalled being inundated with calls. “The courts were shut but couples were contemplating divorce. With a lockdown on, they were forced to stay with each other. I counselled them to negate the negative feelings and to focus on the positives in the relationship, especially if they had a child. In several cases, the animosity subsided or what could have taken an ugly turn ended in divorce by mutual consent,” the family lawyer said.
Haldar, who works in a private hospital, pointed out that the lockdown was necessary. “We had to build the health infrastructure. At that point, we didn’t even have RT-PCR test kits. There was bed shortage, oxygen shortage, no laboratory facilities for testing, nor masks and PPE. We did not even know what would be the investigative options at the laboratory level,” said Haldar, who has written on Covid testing methodology and its emergence.
Virologist Arnab Ghosh has written on the concept of herd immunity and various types of vaccines. A view of the banking sector is provided by Taimur Baig, Justice Debangsu Basak has given an overview of the judicial perspective while senior bureaucrat Anurag Srivastava has written about the impact on micro, small and medium industries.
An interesting segment of the book is the fireside conversations with some industry leaders. The chairman of Indian Institute of Hotel Management and Indismart Group Worldwide Suborno Bose, who provided the perspective of the leisure and hospitality industry through one such conversation, hosted the launch of the book. He also happens to be a senior in the same school as the three editors who belong to the 1987 Madhyamik batch of South Point. Cricket icon Sourav Ganguly, pulmonologist Sushmita Roychowdhury and Suraksha Diagnostics co-founder Somnath Chatterjee have also featured in such conversations.
At the launch, several speakers joined from different continents virtually. While veteran physician Sukumar Mukherjee delivered the opening address in person, contributors Howard Thomas, professor emeritus of Singapore Management University, and Vikramjit Mukherjee, medical director of the oldest public hospital in the US, and digital marketing expert Subhobroto Chakroborty spoke from England, New York and Mumbai respectively. Pradip Mazumdar, MLA and advisor to the chief minister, Richa DebGupta, chief of strategy and operations, Fortis Healthcare, Justice Debangshu Basak and columnist Sunanda K. Datta-Ray were also present at the launch.
The book hit the top of the bestseller list immediately on its release on Amazon’s US site in the category of books on diseases.
“We have shared tiffin and played hand cricket together in school. Who knew one day we would also write a book together,” exclaimed Bhaumik.
The book will be launched this Friday in Singapore.