LOCKDOWN: Limericks and Rhymes  (Hardcover, Dipankar Gupta)

This collection of limericks and rhymes were written during the lockdown years when we all stared at a bleak future ahead. The immediate dangers that threatened us at every turn, the many tragedies that all of us endured, should have alerted us to the errors we carelessly committed in the past, but did that happen? The verses here, some of them nonsensical, attempt a light hearted way of coping with the gravity of the lockdown and, at the same time, uses the setting to sneak in a lesson or two about good citizenship with, hopefully, a smile....Dipankar Gupta taught sociology for nearly three decades and has had a long and abiding interest in literature, particularly poetry. The cover lockdown altered our world and that nudged him to look for a little glimmer between the threatening viral clouds in order to alleviate the spectral gloom all around. What better way, he thought, than to write limericks and verses which would lighten the atmosphere and also hand out a few tips on Covid appropriate behaviour? Dipankar Gupta has written several academic books on castes, peasants, modernity and citizenship but none of them made him feel as good as when he composed the verses and limericks in this book.