The Fever Book

This is what would have happened had Karl Marx written a novel. The novel is thoroughly persuasive, brilliantly written and cannot be completed without feeling a pang of guilt somewhere along the lines.

When I put a quotation from this book-

"There's a reason why I won't give the beggar all of my money. Yes, I'm going to give her some of it'I always give away quite a surprising amount to people who have less than I do' But there's a reason why I'm the one who has the money in the first place, and that's why I'm not going to give it all away. In other words, for God's sake, I worked for that money. I worked hard. I worked. I worked. I worked hard to make that money, and it's my money, because I made it. I made the money, and so I have it, and I can spend it any way I like."

- as my WhatsApp status update, my friend responded this way.

I have serious contention to the given point.
Biggest is.. that you were born privileged.. or you had some sort of help or something that put you there.. otherwise everyone is born the same dumb child.. but some turn out to be wealthy and others just survive..

I did not argue with him, because such arguments usually lead to nowhere. We all are used to paying a one rupee( or dollar or pound) extra to relieve ourselves of the guilt of the capitalistic fetishism we are engaged in. And to produce the pair of jeans trousers that we have to get in a Christmas sale for next to nothing, hundreds of kids toil in hinderlands of different countries including my very own. To make it easier for things to reach my table, a dozen labour laws are flouted.

The book provides an apt response to my friend's comment-

"There's still the preface'everything that happened before I was born. The voluptuous field that was given to me'how did I come to be given that one, and not the one that was black and barren? Yes, it happened like that because before I was born, the fields were apportioned, and some of the fields were pieced together.

Not by chance, not by fate. The fields were pieced together one by one, by thieves, by killers. Over years, over centuries, night after night, knives glittering, throats cut, again and again, until the beautiful Christmas morning we woke up, and our proud parents showed us the gorgeous, shining, blood-soaked fields which now were ours. Cultivate, they said, husband everything you pull from the earth, guard, save, then give your own children the next hillside, the next valley. From each advantage, draw up more."

And now after reading this, it will stay with me for days, or may be weeks. And after that, I will also go back. To other books that celebrate life, to eat the coffee that my coffee machine gives me, and to the normal life as part of the normality that goes around. But I guess a part of it will stay, especially because of the title, now that we are living in this COVID-19 times.