DailyOh! States announce strict Covid curfews, to why Bill-Melinda almost didn't happen
Did you know that Melinda beat Bill Gates at a math game over a work dinner?
Corona, like nature, has its own plans. It peaks and falls at its own will. After hitting the highest-ever daily tally in the world on May 1 with over four lakh cases, the cases in India are now showing a slight dip. On Tuesday, the country recorded over 3.57 lakh fresh Covid cases, a marginal drop from Monday's 3.68 lakh.
As we had said earlier, let us not rejoice too soon. Laxity can prove fatal. The top four states recording maximum daily cases continue to be Maharashtra (48,621 cases), Karnataka (44,438 cases), Uttar Pradesh (29,052 cases) and Kerala (26,011 cases). The latest entrant to the ignoble Top 5 list is Tamil Nadu with 20,952 cases recorded on Monday, replacing Delhi in the fifth slot. The state has now announced new and more stringent restrictions that will come into force on May 6 for two weeks, until May 20.
Not just TN, the Bihar government has also announced a lockdown in the state until May 15, owing to the deteriorating Covid-19 situation. The CM also tweeted that a detailed guideline over the restrictions will be announced soon. The state reported over a lakh active cases, with 11,407 fresh cases along with 82 deaths on Monday.
Curfews and restrictions are being announced in state after state. But will they help? Not unless the lockdown is absolute, says AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria. Brushing aside the night curfews and weekend lockdowns, saying they hardly work, he predicts a third Covid wave if the virus continues to evolve further.
The dreaded virus is not just killing people and orphaning children but has also breached the IPL bubble. BCCI has suspended IPL 2021 amid the rising number of cases among players and support staff in the last 48 hours despite the bio-bubble.
Not just the cricketers, legendary badminton player Prakash Padukone, along with his wife and younger daughter have also tested Covid positive and are undergoing treatment in a Bengaluru hospital. For the Bollywood buffs, that is Deepika Padukone’s father, mother and sister.
A ray of hope has come in the form of medical supplies from foreign nations. Several tonnes of foreign aid — from oxygen generators, concentrators to ventilators — were received by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials in the past week.
However, what is justifiably infuriating for the common man is the way the Centre sat over it even as patients were dying in droves waiting for aid. According to reports, the Centre took seven long days to frame the Standard Operating Procedure of distributing the foreign aid among states.
And as if the virus was not killing enough people already, many political party workers have been killed in the post-poll violence in Bengal. Party offices have been ransacked and torched. The Centre has sought a report from the state government over the same. The BJP, meanwhile, announced a nationwide dharna on May 5 against the violence, which they allege was by TMC workers. The TMC has, of course, denied all the allegations. The BJP has moved the Supreme Court over post-poll violence and has demanded a CBI probe into the matter.
Our Word Of The Day today is dharna. The word is defined by the dictionary as ‘a fast held at the door of an offender in India as an appeal for justice’. Like many other words of Indian origin, dharna has also been incorporated into the English dictionary. It traces its roots to the Sanskrit root — dharaṇaṃ — which translates to ‘support’ or ‘prop’.
What has not been supported, however, is Kangana Ranaut’s views on Twitter. The micro-blogging site has suspended her account after she criticised West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee in a series of tweets.
It is not the criticism that mattered but the language of it, that Twitter says was objectionable and violated the guidelines. What was Kangana criticising Didi for? The post-poll violence in Bengal.
From all the national gloom to some international news.
Bill and Melinda Gates have decided to end their 27 years of marriage and have announced on Twitter that they are getting divorced.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 3, 2021
Before you jump the gun and wonder about the fate of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the couple has said that they would continue to work together. The Foundation, as you might know, is the world's largest private charitable foundation.
Bill and Melinda Gates met when both were working at Microsoft. It started as an office romance in 1987. But did you know that star couple would have never happened had it not been for a hiring manager at IBM? We will tell you how.
When Melinda finished her MBA at Duke University, she was offered a job at IBM. It made sense to her since she had worked for the company for several summers as an intern. However, once she finished the interview, she casually mentioned to the hiring manager that she had one more interview. “At this young company, Microsoft.” In the mid-1980s Microsoft was a fledgeling.
However, the hiring manager reportedly told her: “If you get a job offer from them, take it, because the chance for advancement there is terrific.”
Melinda took the advice and the job, and the rest is history. She joined Microsoft as a marketing manager and was eventually promoted to General Manager of Information Products in the early 1990s. She met Bill at a team dinner, beat him at a math game and then met him weeks later at the office parking lot and romance bloomed.
Read all this and more about the Gates in The Moment of Lift — Melinda’s memoir published in 2019. You can read that if you want. Another great read we recommend you today is Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. It is historical fiction, about Shakespeare’s son, told from his wife’s perspective.
Might as well pick up the book, now that there is no IPL and options on things to do staying at home are narrowing.
We take your leave for today. Take care and stay safe.
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