Neil Gaiman was talking about prose fiction when he said writers create a world from “twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks…and look out through other eyes”. But it could just as well apply to what reporters do every day when they seek out and tell true stories—they help people visit places and worlds they may not know of otherwise and bring them stories they might not hear.
The stories in this week’s Mint Lounge are a reflection of the resilience that has become visible during the last seven months. The theme that runs through the writing is perseverance. Our cover story is on people who set up new businesses during the worst months of the lockdown simply because they felt they could solve a knotty problem, help neighbours or others less fortunate than themselves, or use the pause to reassess life choices. They have drawn on their savings, turned homes into warehouses, made deliveries themselves, and have got big-city venture capitalists to consider possibilities outside their usual view.
Keeping to the theme of perseverance, in Business Lounge, Suguna Foods’ B. Soundararajan sanguinely tells us how virus outbreaks are par for the course in his line of business—they have recovered from losses before and will do so again. There’s the grit and determination of Kieren D’Souza’s frankly frightening ascent of the 6,001m Deo Tibba, running up and down the Himalayan peak in 19 hours, 38 minutes. There’s the gentler yet just as inspiring tenacity of older adults, once footloose and enjoying retirement, now tied to their homes but finding ways to remain busy and fight off loneliness.
At Mint Lounge, what has kept us going through the pandemic is our capacity to tell the stories of others’ resolve. We have created a new website to bring you stories through the week in different styles and formats—do take a look at Mintlounge.in and share your thoughts with us. We have highlighted some of the past week’s best writing to get you started. We are, after all, the stories we tell.
Write to the Lounge editor shalini.umachandran@htlive.com @shalinimb
