 I would like to request Dr. Elika to say a few words about our department and also about today's event. Thank you. Thank you, Gaurab, for the lovely introduction, for such an interesting speaker. We are indeed very fortunate, Dr. Moitra, to have you with us speak to us on such a remarkable topic. Now in our local context, unlike, say, Assam or Manipur, theater, unfortunately, is a lost art. And having lectures such as these will help us revisit our oral traditions as well as perhaps inspire us, especially the students in this direction. And yes, we are, as far as our department is concerned, this is the first PEG studies webinar that we are, well, we've had students' webinar, but this is when we have an external speaker. This is the first time that we are organizing this. So thanks to Gaurab as well for putting us in touch with you. We hope that we will continue this relationship even in the days to come. Additionally, I think this is an exciting direction that we are taking for our department. Our first batch of MS students will be graduating next year. So with these few words, and in the interest of giving you as much time as possible, I humbly request you to begin your lecture. Right. Hi. Good morning. Hello, everybody. First and foremost, I'm so grateful to Tetsuo College. Everybody here for giving me this opportunity to meet you and to talk to you. Thankful also to Gaurab for introducing me to this young and exciting batch of students whom I would not have interacted with otherwise. I'm just glad you're all here, and I hope not to bore you too much, but hopefully the first question that we've been asking all throughout 2020, can you hear me? Am I audible? So if you have any problems regarding the audio, just let me know in the chat box or something, right? Because this can be a little dicey at times. But without wasting a lot of time, I'm going to start talking about, I mean, our topic today, I've named it King Idipas and I. So we'll be talking a little bit about this particular play, which happens to be one of the best known, most performed plays out of classical Greece. Again, I'll explain the social context to you a little bit. In fact, that's how I'll begin. What I'm going to do, I'm just going to lay this out for you. My lecture today, of course, is titled King Idipas and I, Revisiting Classical Greek Theater in the Age of COVID-19. And in this lecture, I'm going to talk about Idipas Rex and how we might read such a text in this time of the pandemic, which has been new and unprecedented in any of our lives. And the exigencies of our pandemic times, in my opinion, it sort of demands that we take a look at a text like this. And so therefore, in this lecture, I hope to speak of some aspects of Idipas Rex. Re-reading this, what is it, is a timeless classic in a way that I think will resonate with all of us. But I think before I even go on to do on my, I mean, my analysis, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a brief introductory discussion say about 10 minutes on what the Greek theater culture was like. This will help us because some of you may not be familiar with, I mean, all of us know what theater is and all of us know what goes on there. But as you must understand that traditions of theater, traditions of performance, necessarily vary from one place to another. The oral traditions of your state, which your dean was just talking about, are distinctly different, say, from the neighboring state five minutes later. In fact, Northeastern India is probably one of the most, if not the most diverse region of India, where performance traditions can shift and change within a distance of a few miles. That's how diverse the region is. So as performance traditions and cultures are diverse, even in your part of the country. So we have to understand that we are talking about performance traditions in a country and in a society that is very far removed from us, both in terms of geography, because it's in Greece, which is of course in Europe. And it's also removed from us in time because we're talking about a period that's almost 2000 years ago, right? So that's something I want you to have a concrete grasp of. And so I'll take ten minutes of your time to talk a little bit about Greek theater and about the story of Oedipus Rex, if you may not be familiar with it. For anyone here who's already versed in it, I apologize for repeating that. But I think it will help all of us. So in order to do that, what I'm going to do is I'll start presenting. And I think I have to go to one particular window. Just give me a minute, please. A tab, right? Right, so is the tab visible to you right now? Can somebody please clarify that this is visible, Gaurab? Yes, yes, it's visible. Okay, so I'll start with the, I'll, right. So again, this has shockingly come at the end, stop, right? So again, as the title page itself suggests that we are going to talk about contemporary things, Swati, the slide is not there. I can't see it on the screen. Okay, somehow I think the present. Oh, the presentation mode has somehow gone off. Thank you for pointing that out. Let me go back there again. Is it visible now? Yes, yeah. How about now? Yes, now it is visible. Okay, I'll keep it in this mode. Hopefully it will not create too many issues, right? So, right, as the header image itself suggests, I think to you that we'll be talking about a lot of contemporary things as well. So, but in order to understand why we are talking about a play that is basically 2000 years old, you need to have a little bit of an understanding of who we are talking about in the first place, right? So we'll come a little bit in this first 10 minutes. We'll have a brief discussion of what I call performance culture in Greece, the performance traditions, because now it is established in contemporary scholarship. And this is something that you will also get a glimpse of should you ever have the opportunity to study Aristotle's oetics, that in Greece, theater was not only very significant as a part of their culture, it was also, and we're talking especially of ancient Athens here, but also other parts of Greece had their own theater traditions. It emerged out of ritual, that is to say out of worship. What would happen is that, again, Greece had a pluralistic religious structure, so they had multiple gods and goddesses. And what would happen is that during prayer, during worship, during ritual, songs were sung in front of the god or the goddess in order to please them. And out of those songs and dances which were initially performed only for the gods, emerged a form that is the Greek theater, so then they added dialogue to it, they added actors to it, and it became a full-fledged performance tradition. Now, parts of this we will never really know in detail about because we don't have enough information on it, but we know that by the time, say, we come to the 4th century BC or the 5th century BC, Greece already has a very thriving culture of theater. If you look at this vase in the image, this is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, you can see that there you have women and young men who are sort of preparing for a very special occasion. And so various occasions, like wedding rites, like funeral rites, and of course, religious rituals would involve these kind of performances. And this old vase is actually helping us understand that a little bit. It's from the 4th century. Right. And this image, if you can see the screen in front of you right now, this is a surviving ancient theater in a place called Epidaurus. Now, this is a very remarkable ruin because it's one of the few ruins that has not only survived, it's actually survived in such a good condition that nowadays it's still used for staging performances of old plays, mostly for tourists, but it's a lifetime dream of mine to visit this place one day. But take a look at the theater. So what's it like? You can see that there is a circular performance space right at the middle, where the actors would of course gather and perform. And from there onwards, you can see that the gallery is sort of going upwards. They had a very fine technology. And if I had time, I'd show you a video as to how people can hear. They don't have mics, right? But the sound technology of the stadium is such that you can sit at the back and you can still be still be hearing the people who are at the front. So that's how it's made the limestone sort of echoes. We don't need to worry about that. But I want you to again understand that this is what a Greek theater looked like. And so you could easily it's almost like a modern day stadium. And you could easily have around 10,000 people watching a play on the days of a big festival. So this was not only a this was not only an event that people liked, but you can see that it was meant to accommodate as many people as possible. It was performed on festival days on which everybody even slaves were released on that particular day, so that they had the license to come to the theater. So that's how important socially important it is. You see, it's a space for community gathering. It's a space where people come together and they talk about, you know, they watch something that's important, not just to them personally, but to them as a community. The plays that were performed in this theater, they were in fact publicly funded. So it was not like I am funding my own play. No, one rich person of the city would be given the responsibility that you fund these groups, you fund that group so that everything could be ready for the theater festival. So again, you have people actually coming together, even before the festival, in order to make sure that the performance tradition stays alive. Because you see, it's not just about a person or their art, it's about a community and their art. It's about the public. So that's something about Greek theater that you really need to understand because that aspect of this as a public form of art will come up in our discussion. This is a this this was probably the most important theater space in ancient Greece. This is called the theater of Dionysius Dionysius is the god of wine and also the arts. This is where the huge Dionysia festival would happen. And as you can see, this is very badly broken. It's very old. It has not survived historically. But this is in present day Athens. And again, it's one of the must visit sites if you go ever go to Greece. This was probably as beautiful and as big, if not bigger than the steam than the other theater that we saw. And this is the Acropolis. This is the temple of Athena. The the Acropolis actually overlooks this is on top of the hill. That's at the bottom of the hill. So this actually overlooks that theater space. So again, you can I think you can imagine the sort of gathering that would happen on festival days. The temple would be lit up. It would be of course on top of the hill. And at the bottom, you would have thousands of people gathering in order to watch the play, right? So again, it's a social, it's a community, it's a public event where people come to celebrate. And here I will play for you. And so that's one aspect of Greek theater. The second aspect of Greek theater that you absolutely must understand before I go on to talk about the deepest is that Greek theater had one component, which was called the chorus. So now when we think of theater in the present day context, we think of, you know, actors talking, having dialogue, maybe there are actors who also apart from talking and having conversations, they might sing or dance if it's a musical. But on the Greek stage, you had close to 30 actors, you had around 26 to 28 actors, depending on the number of speaking parts. Out of these 24 of the actors were actually singers and dancers. This group was called the chorus. The chorus, what they used to do was they mostly sang. And again, remember, I told you the story that Greek theater came out of ritual and singing. So that component of singing and dancing remained very important to them even later. And in fact, this is something that we really miss out on, you know, when we study this theater in class, we miss out on this element of song and dance and how exciting it would have been for the audience. But the Greek chorus, now this is important, C-H-O-R-U-S, the chorus had 24 actors, their job was to sing and dance. They would interact with the other actors who had speaking roles who would, you know, you could not have more than two to four actors, depending on the circumstances. So most actors played more than one role. But the chorus, as this block of 24 people, they sang, danced, they talked and interacted with the characters, but they never themselves participated in the action of the play, the events of the play. So that was a very distinctive feature of the chorus. Now, I of course, cannot really take you back to the Greek chorus, but I will show you one small example of a modern play where they use the chorus. This is also a Greek play called Medea. Just look at what the chorus is doing. There will be four people here. The chanting here. This chanting is being done by the chorus. Now love's betrayed, corrupted, turned to hate. See, these four people, that's the chorus. So Medea, poor Medea, is cast aside. Are your children? Had I not, I was supposed to least. Why? Rubble and mark. Do you want the servants to throw you out? Please, growl. You're making a scene. Just one thing, please. Just growl. One more day. You can see them singing on their own. Telling him how right he is, I now realise, is royal marriage is a good thing. Oh well, even if it does mean betraying me. A symbol of gifts. Private gifts to Austrian amnesty. This is also the chorus. You can see they're also doubling up as actors here. Because I'll saturate my gifts with poison. And that is done. Right, so again, we'll come to the tail of Idipas in a minute. This is of course a modern performance. So I don't want you to think that this is exactly how it was in Ancient Greece. But what they have done is they've taken the concept of the chorus. And of course they can't have 24 actors on the stage. I think that would be very difficult to organise, especially in a closed proscenium stage. So they've got around four actors on the stage who are doing the same thing. They're constantly there. They themselves are not doing anything. Mind you, you see that that's the main character. She's arguing with her husband. She's having a fight. But these guys, they're constantly at the backdrop. They're singing, they're sort of, you know, helping her along. They're watching. It's almost as though they're a part of the audience itself. So while sometimes they have their own things to say, their own observations to make. On other times, it's almost as though they are the stand-in for the audience on the stage. So this is, of course, a modern adaptation. But I think what it does help you to understand is that how they could have used this 24-member chorus very innovatively on the Greek stage. Now, why am I talking about this so much? Because what I want you to remember, and this will come back in our conversation later, what I want you to remember is that the sorry, please move. So what I want you to remember is that the Greek stage could have, I mean, at that point of time, the chorus played the role of the audience almost. Guys, one minute, please. We have a brief interruption. I'm very sorry. My cat appeared from somewhere and wanted to be let out. Very sorry about that interruption. So anyway, I don't think my cat appreciates it. It was very much. So that's the these are the two aspects of Greek theater. I want you to remember that first and foremost, I want you to remember that Greek theater is a public affair that involves not just people, but entire communities. And that secondly, the chorus in particular almost takes on the role of the public because they become the audience on the stage. They have this unique position where they interact with the characters. They also interact with the audience, but they don't actually directly do anything on the stage itself. So this is something you should remember. And I hope you will later look this up because it's a fascinating aspect of Greek theater that modern theater does not really use beyond a certain point. So many people do experiment with it. From here onwards, what we're going to do is we're going to talk a little bit about the story of Adipus. And this is solely for people who are not familiar with the story. It is, of course, a tragedy. And as again, if you ever have the opportunity to read Poetics or if those of you who may have already read the Poetics in the course of studying your tragedies, you know that the end of a tragedy is a tharsis looking for the release of pity and fear that builds up in the audience as the events of a particular play unfolds. In the case of Adipus, the story of Adipus Rex or Adipus Tyranus, the story is rather unfortunate, like most other tragedies. Adipus escapes his home in Corinth to avoid. And I've also written this down so that you can see this. So you see, he's a young man who escapes his home in Corinth to avoid a prophecy. There's a prophecy that he'll kill his parents. So he comes to a place called Thebes, where he sort of the city is being plagued by this particular creature who is not letting anybody inside who is striking people sick. He wants everybody to solve a puzzle and everybody is failing to solve the puzzle. So Adipus goes and solves the puzzle and so he saves the city. So the city says you can become our new king because our old king is dead and their queen who was a widow then becomes his wife. And so Adipus lives fairly happily until a plague strikes Adipus. And this, again, when we say plague, here the word plague does not necessarily refer to the black plague, the typical illness. By plague, we do mean some sort of a illness, some sort of a well, an epidemic if not a pandemic, right? So a plague strikes Thebes and the oracle, the priest of God, Apollo, who is, of course, the God of the, he's a sun god. He's also one of the patrons of the arts. So the priest tells them that, look, the killer of the previous king has not been punished. There has been no justice for the previous king until and unless you found find out who killed him and you give him the proper punishment, you are never going to be free. So then they get hold of this other old prophet called Tidish. Yes, he's blind and initially he refuses to answer any questions. Eventually, when Adipus forces him, he says that Adipus, you are responsible for the plague. Of course, Adipus does not take this very lightly. But as the play progresses, and of course, I'm not going to tell you all the twists and turns of the play. But as it turns out, Adipus finds out that the prophet was right. It is he who killed Lias, the old king. And not only that, this guy was actually his biological father and that he is married to his biological mother, Yocasta. So this is something that Adipus had no idea about. He ran away from a prophecy thinking, OK, I will not kill my father. But turns out the man he killed on the road, a man he did not know, was his biological father. His father had sent off the child in his childhood to be killed because of that same prophecy. But the man who was given the responsibility of killing that small baby could not do it. And so Adipus grew up in another household, in his adoptive household, not knowing who his parents were. And even as he tried to protect his parents, he ended up killing one of them and being married to another one of them. So he is guilty of a number of crimes, his guilty of fratricide because he kills his own father, his guilty of regicide because he kills the king and his guilty of incest because he has married his own mother. So after knowing this, Yocasta kills herself and take the horror. But he sort of strikes himself in the eye in this very dramatic scene, goes blind. He and his children are exiled from thieves. They have to leave. And it's with this departure that thieves finally becomes free of the epidemic. So that's the story of Adipus in a nutshell. There's an epidemic. Adipus finds out that he's responsible and because he's responsible, he has to be eventually thrown out of thieves. Right. So that's the introductory story that about Adipus that I wanted you to know. And again, for those of you who are already familiar with the story, this is a repetition, but that brings us to our conversation today. Now, when we normally read Adipus's story in class, we and I've taught this text quite a few times before. I really enjoy teaching it. I have I have in the past mostly taught this as a journey of Adipus from ignorance to recognition because, right, he doesn't know. He doesn't know that he has committed a few crimes. And that remains the primary point of interest in the classroom as well, because I find students keep asking me, so is Adipus responsible if he did not know that Yocasta was his mother? Then can we hold him guilty? Apollo clearly does, fate clearly does, but is Adipus guilty? Or is he a victim of destiny? These sort of questions come up in class and, you know, we argue, I tend to argue that we don't need to see it in black and white terms. It's not a false binary, right? It's about the place about the fact that human beings can be blind to larger things at work, that we don't necessarily know what's going on in the wide world. And it's also a play about human greatness and inner strength because Adipus, once he decides that he will find out the truth, he does go and face the truth and that takes courage. So it's a play about both things. It's about fate and how cruel it can be. But it can also be about how strong human beings can be, right? When we teach this and I teach this, I also talk about some aspects of Greek politics. Like we talk about the Oikos and the polis and their inter... I'll explain what this is to you. The word Oikos in Greek means the household and the polis means the city. So we talk about the relationship with the household and the city and the connection between the two. We have to... In class, we have conversations like that the house of Adipus has to be ruined, right? It's not Adipus who alone is exiled. It's his children who are also paying the price for something they absolutely are not responsible for. But because they are his children, they too must pay the price. The house of Adipus itself has to be ruined in order to save thieves because the city has to be safe. And so we point out the fact that, you know, why is this? Because Adipus is... Look at the title of the play. It's Adipus Rex or Adipus Tyranus. Rex or Tyranus, both words mean king. So he is not simply an ordinary man. He is also Adipus the king. He is the ruler of the city. And so this is a conversation that sort of comes up in my class always. And we tend to end up debating the place of the king or the place of the king in the polis. What the Greeks thought of... Again, polis here means the city and not the police. What the Greeks thought of the polis and what we might think of our own states. What is the role of the king? In our times, of course, we don't have kings, we have governments. But that conversation also, we have very lively conversations in class about this. But, you know, when I am talking to you today, I'm actually aware of this one element that I have... I admit to you that I have never talked about a lot in my class. And that is the fact that I've never really talked about the epidemic of Adipus Rex. I think that's because before this, we didn't really have to think about epidemics in those senses, right? Sometimes you had a swine flu epidemic, but then it went away. Every year, you have dengue and malaria, but that happens. None of us had really seen a pandemic of this scale. And so, therefore, when I taught Adipus in class, neither I nor my students were really interested in that aspect of the plague. But today, when I'm talking to you, it's the pandemic clearly speaking through me. But that's forced me to confront some aspects of Adipus Rex. And that is the question of the plague. How do we deal with the plague? This is a story that begins with the plague and ends with the plague. And it was a doctor who recently wrote, let me read this out from him. He wrote recently that our current scenario and the isolation it requires contains haunting echoes of Adipus's thieves when it was ravaged by a plague. Why does it mean my current isolation? Of course, all of you have lived through the lockdown. And even now, I don't know what's going on in your home city or in your home village. Wherever you are located right now, I don't know what the situation is like. But I know that here in Calcutta, I'm still going to have to be very careful interacting with people because not only has COVID not gone away. It's affecting people in my immediate son or three colleagues who are one colleagues. A little son is also sick. My father's colleagues, dad passed away yesterday. So this is what we're dealing with, right? I'm sure you have all heard these stories. So if I may quote the doctor again, in the opening scene of the classic Greek tragedy, the Adipus Rex, the contagion's effects are evident as the streets lie empty. Children are ripped from their parents and citizens from their police. A priest laments. And if you turn your eyes to the screen, this is an opening scene of Adipus Rex. And this is what the chorus sings out. A blight is on the fruitful plants of the earth. A blight is on the cattle in the fields. A blight is on our women that no children are born to them. A god that carries fire. A deadly pestilence is on our town. Strikes us and spares not. And the house of Katmus is emptied of its people while black death grows rich in groaning and in lamentation. People keep dying. Not only things as it turns out, it's just not just people who are dying. They also have crops dying. So things are generally dire. But think about this focus, this lamentation. This is not also our story. Have we not watched empty streets? Have we not watched shut shops? Have we not watched with horror as the pandemic hits closer home? I've had family members gone to the hospital. Thankfully, they've come back. But have we not heard of crematoriums being too full in cities like Delhi and Bombay? Have we not heard of hospitals piling up bodies? Have we not heard of mass graves in Iran and in America? Have we not heard of families unable to meet their loved ones for the last time we have? Elsewhere in the world and as we look at the world now, countries and very disparate countries, countries as different as the US and the Iran, they are at war with each other. But they are united by COVID-19 because both countries have had to dig mass graves, unmarked graves, so not even a proper farewell. And such a story, when we think about this, it does demand a closer look, right? And so let's see where Idipus Rex takes us in this time. Now, if you're familiar with Greek literature, you'll know that plagues, epidemics are actually not uncommon in Greek literature. The Iliad, for instance, which is a great, epic Greek epic composed by Homer, it is older, it is way older than Idipus Rex. It begins with also an epidemic that keeps killing all the soldiers in the Greek camp. And it's learned that the god Apollo is very angry. And so, therefore, he's punishing them for this. The Oxford classicist, Mary Beard, she's a great scholar of the classics, she said, the plague in the Iliad was the first pandemic in Western literature. And she told, she sort of urged in this piece that she wrote, Western literature began with infection. I think that's a very interesting way of looking at it. Because it makes a very close and intimate connection between human health, human suffering, disease and literature. Now, this is something we don't normally think about in ordinary circumstances. But the pandemic is in many ways forcing us to do this. If we move away from literature to Greek history, we look at a text like Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. I'm not asking you to read it. It's a huge aid volume book. But he is also a contemporary of Sophocles, the playwright. And he provides the account of a real plague. In Athens in 430 BC, they had this plague, which had probably come from Ethiopia. And presently, doctors have been unable to figure out what that illness was. They have these theories. It was typhoid. It was this. It was that. But the symptoms included sickness, vomiting, hoarseness of the throat, cuffing. People's bodies became hot to touch. So they really ran a temperature. Painful boils broke out on the screen, on the skin. People had a raging thirst. So they were always thirsty. And as the disease took hold again, the people who started to get sick first were the doctors. Poor people especially suffered hugely during that epidemic in Athens. Complete social order broke down. People started, you know, people stopped even praying because they were so sick. And the historian himself, Tuki Didis, the man whom I named here, he himself had contracted that illness. But he of course recovered. But, you know, this epidemic had a massive impact on Athens. Because it killed some of their youngest men, some of their strongest men, which means that they were in the middle of a war. And suddenly their best soldiers are dying out of this epidemic. What happens? They lose the war. Secondly, they also lose their biggest leader. His name was Pericles. Of course, Athens didn't have a prime minister. But had they had a prime minister, Pericles would have been that guy. So, you know, we've seen that President Donald Trump fell sick. We've seen that Boris Johnson fell sick. We've seen Zahe Zaheir was a narrow fell sick. They have of course all recovered. But Pericles was not so lucky. He died. And now imagine your leader dying in the middle of an epidemic. The entire city-state was in complete ravages, right? And so, Pericles. And as well as his audiences, they would have known this epidemic very intimately. And what is very curious is that the story of Hedipas, like all other stories in Greek epic cycles, are not original stories. They are all folk narratives that are passed on from one writer to another orally. And then in a written form, right? But Sophocles is the only person who sort of takes the story of Hedipas and makes this a story of plague. Before him, when Homer tells the same story, the story of the plague is not there. And that's what makes us think that clearly, Hedipas Rex was performed after the Athenian plague. And we don't know if Sophocles himself had fallen ill. But we know that his audience would have recognized this story. So even though we who are already far removed, we don't know what happened in Athens after a certain point. The Athenian audience would have known that exactly what Sophocles is talking about. And that added to the story's topicality, I think. Of course, the story, the plague, didn't win the first prize that year. They had prizes in the festival. Hedipas came second. He didn't come first. But the effectiveness and the popularity of the place, perhaps most evident in the fact that we are still sitting here 2,000 years later and talking about the play that came second and not the play that came first. So therefore, we don't even know which play came first. So how do we read a play like this? How do we, which was composed after an epidemic that left thousands of people in Greece dead? A epidemic that Sophocles himself and his audience members, that they probably survived this. And some of them may have even had that illness. And so one important aspect of how they saw the play, it must have been about the figure of the king, about the leader. And I'm not the only person thinking this because this is the image of, this is the artist representation of the plague. You can see that people are lying on the streets dead. So that's how Thucydides describes it, that people were literally falling off dead in the streets. And I think we have seen examples of this in various parts of the world during this epidemic as well. But let's come a little bit ahead. Now you can see, and that's where we come to the contemporary discussion. These are all opinion pieces from American newspapers. And of course, I'm not suggesting that you only read headlines, but see the three headlines. President Tum Brum versus Edipus Rex. Leaders reveal themselves in times of plague. An ancient Greek tragedy holds a mirror to Trump's coronavirus leadership. When plagues followed bad leadership, Greek tragedy of Edipus Tyranus is a lesson for Trump on COVID-19. So there's something curious going on here. That these three pieces are a critique of the US president. The US, as we know, is the country's hardest hit by the pandemic, even worse than us, and that is saying something. They have close to 300,000 people dead by now. So all these three pieces, they are criticisms of President Trump and his leadership during the plague while in the light of Edipus Rex. And we, of course, because I've told you the story, as readers of the play, we know that it is Edipus who is responsible for the suffering of the people in the play. So therefore, these three pieces are not simply saying that President Trump must learn. They're also saying that he is responsible for the suffering of his people. So that's a very interesting point they're making. And why does such a comparison come? We have to ask. This is an ancient Greek play from 2000 years ago. So how come this comparison is even possible in the year 2020? And let me quote from Mika Altola, who wrote this essay on the politics of pandemic scarce in 2020. He says, and I want you to listen to this, diseases interact with power in that they can be read as signs of illegitimating weakness or as demonstrations of unimaginable strength. The production of health has been often framed as a powerful demonstration of the legitimacy of political rule. And the absence of health suggests the existence of fundamental injustice and transgressions, not only at the physical level, but in the way political power is upheld. So diseases are often linked directly to the health of the country itself, the health of the government itself. This, in fact, if you look at ancient narratives, I apologize if I didn't think when I do examples from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Some of you may not be familiar with the whole stories, but I'll explain them to you. In the Mahabharata, for instance, you have a lot of miraculous healing, strange cures, gods coming into intervene. There are always these miraculous healings and these curses. In the Mahabharata, you have a character called Dhritarashtra. He is the king of Hastinapura, but he is blind. And his blindness is not simply a sign of his physical blindness. It also is a sign of his larger inability, inability to see the problems of his own kingdom and the problems with his own sons. So he is a disqualified leader. Meanwhile, there is another scene in the Ramayana. And again, I understand if you are not familiar with it. There is a character called Hanuman who has to bring this important cure, this one particular plant that will cure Rama's brother, Lakshman. He is unable to find that. So he brings an entire mountain with him. Now, this is not actually a sign of his stupidity. No, it is, in fact, a sign of his strength and his loyalty. So in the story of Idipas itself, Idipas, how does he come to power? I told you, right? He comes to power by solving a puzzle that the Sphinx had posed. And so therefore, he saves thieves, right? So therefore, Idipas himself comes to power by... Why is he so well-loved? Why is he so arrogant about himself? Because he restores health in thieves. He brings a new legitimate rule by making everybody in thieves healthy again. And so therefore, that is what gives him legitimacy, not blood. He doesn't know he is the sun, right? So it's not as though his blood light is what makes him king. What makes him king is that he is able to get rid of the Sphinx and he's able to cure everybody in thieves. And that is precisely what makes him king. It follows then that the plague at the beginning of Idipas Rex, it threatens this very legitimacy of his rule, right? Because he was king, because he had healed everybody. Now, when everybody is sick again with this epidemic, Idipas' whole reign is at threat. And I think Idipas recognizes that. That is precisely why he sends asking for help from Apollo, from Tiresias. He takes pride in his intelligence and he knows what's at stake. He knows that it's not simply the lives of people that's at stake, though that's important too. His legitimacy as a king itself is at stake. His conflict, he ends up arguing with the prophet. And that's not simply a product of his arrogance and blindness. Earlier in class, I used to say that it's because he's arrogant, but it's not just that. He knows that if Tiresias is right, if he really is responsible for the plague, then his political career is over. His rule, his reign, his legitimacy is over. Because you see, the king is responsible for the health of the state, both physical and spiritual. It makes or breaks political careers as it did with Idipas. And now we know as it has done with President Trump, though he keeps claiming that he has won the election. But I think you can see why people were drawing these comparisons. Eventually, the American vote did end up becoming a referendum on President Trump. And people said, you're not good enough anymore because you couldn't save us our lives. You couldn't make us healthy enough. However, I think it would be very unfair if we sort of limited our discussion of Idipas Rex to just the king. Because it's the people who voted Trump out. Dr. Antiel, whom I quoted earlier, he said, the plague of thieves also speaks to the communal nature. By communal, I mean the community nature of suffering. Despite the modern fixation of individual medicine, the current pandemic reveals radical individualism as a facade. We are social animals. And I think you recognize this, right? Because how often have we been told that dealing with the pandemic is our collective responsibility? It's not just me. It's all of us. Because we've been asked to wear masks when they say that, you know, wear a mask. It's not just about protecting me. It's also protecting me from you. We are protecting others from ourselves. The pandemic has weaponized our bodies. And each and every one of us has the potential to cause immense harm to others. When I go out without a mask, I may not want to hurt anybody, but I might end up hurting somebody, right? And that brings us to another aspect of Idipas Rex. This too is something that we neglected a lot in our classes. That's why I spent five minutes at the beginning telling you about the chorus. You see, when we talk about the chorus in class, students don't really get excited about it because it's just lines of poems. Then there's no singing and dancing. So they say, why do we need to read this? But, you know, removed from the vibrant culture, it doesn't feel, they feel very boring to the students. But again, the pandemic is forcing me to think this. They do the songs of the chorus, as I told you at the beginning. Do they not represent the voice of the people? Do they not represent the voice of the citizens? And what do we make of this voice? And just look at this conversation, right? The chorus comes and they tell Idipas. This is one of the early dialogues. They say, look around you, see with your own eyes. They want Idipas to witness, to see their suffering. Thebes is dying, they tell him. So they come to their king and they tell him, please look at how much we are suffering. And what do they say? Look at these lines, especially come to the end of this. They come and tell him, listen. They call you savior now for your actions years ago, but rise up again. Look at the last lines. This is what I want you to read out. Rule our land, you know you have the power. But rule a land of the living, not a wasteland. Ship and towered city are nothing. Stripped of men alive within it, living all as one. Of course, they are being very reverential. They are not threatening him. They are saying that please save us. But there is an element of or else, you know, because what do they say? They say that rule a land of the living, not a wasteland. You need people alive in order to rule them, in order to be king. They say, look at this here. They say that raise up our city, act, defend yourself. But why must he defend himself? What will he defend himself against? Is there a war? This is a kind of a war. If he cannot restore health to Thebes, as he once did in the past, then what other claim does he have on them? A leader who is not respected by his subjects is not a leader. For he has no political power over them, right? If you do not respect your leader, then he no longer has legitimacy. And nowhere is this made clearer. The although, you know, I mean, Thebes itself is not democratic. But Athens, where Sophocles wrote this play, was a democratic city state. And you can see that hint of democracy playing out here as well. The ruler is dependent on the support of the people, not bloodline, not legacy, not anything, not who's son he is. If he cannot heal Thebes, he will probably not survive as a ruler. And the Kodak songs, furthermore, I will not read this whole thing out. But, you know, maybe this one's just as an example that because, you know, when we read this out again, they should be sung and danced with. We don't have that because when it read out, it sort of loses the potency. But this is the voice of the citizens who are experiencing the pandemic. Well, they're playing deaths. So many deaths, numberless deaths on deaths, no end. Thebes is dying, look, her children stripped of pity. Generations strewn on the ground, unburied, unwept, the dead spreading death. Young wives and grey-haired mothers with them cling to the elders trailing in from all over city. Everybody's dying. The city of death, one long cottage and the suffering rises. Wales for mercy rise. And the while him for the healer, the healer is the God, blazes out. So they keep praying to the gods, their gods, to save them. And I think we recognize this, right? Because we have seen the death toll rise even in India. More than a lakh people have died. In my state, West Bengal itself, almost 10,000 people have died. And this has included people I have known, people who were old as well as people who were my age. So this death toll is something that we have seen this, right? People are more than numbers. There's somebody's wife, someone's beloved, someone's child. And in the pandemic, people have been stripped bare of dignity. Because we have seen times where, and we are seeing this in Delhi right now, the capital of this country, which is facing this, that again, the health services are sort of overwhelmed. There are no beds in hospitals. People are constantly trying to do their best to find some cure. But, you know, body bags piled up, crematoriums open 24 hours, mass graves. The chorus might be talking about us here, right? And truth really sentiment as the play progresses, and the question of Idipus's identity that he is the Lias's son, that becomes greater and greater. The chorus also speaks about the anxiety of citizens, right? So they speak in that voice. And once at the end of the play, and this is one of the last scenes of the chorus, it's the concluding lines of the play, the anxiety and terror of death translates into further horror. Because, you know, the chorus looks on as Idipus suffers. Idipus finds out, then he hurts himself, his wife dies. All of this happens. And in this final song, it's not merely a moralistic piece of advice they're giving. No, it's a statement of people who have survived. They have survived the epidemic, right? What are they saying? Look on Idipus. He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance. He rose to power, a man beyond all power. Who could behold his greatness without envy? And now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him? Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day, Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last. This is not these lines. Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last. This is not simply a cynical dismissal of life. No, these are the survivors of the Theban plague who are talking to the audience, who are the survivors of the Athenian plague, the original audience of the play. And they are telling us that the horror of an epidemic, the horror of a plague like this is something that we are left with. The scars remain with us, even if the disease goes away. Because I think none of us will ever forget this period in our history, even if our economy recovers, even if most of us get that vaccine, whenever that happens. The people whom we have lost will not come back. The people who will live with the effects of the disease will continue to live with it. And we will all live with this memory, which is why the voice of the chorus also becomes a voice that's almost our voice. Right? I think I've gone on long enough. I'll conclude with the same doctor whom I've been quoting because his piece moved me so much. He wrote that as a genre, tragedy aims to teach citizens how to bear and respond to suffering. Because that is the aim of tragedy. How do we deal with pain? How do we deal with suffering? That's the key of tragedy. How and when it is proper to feel pity and fear. The original Athenian audience watching the play would have recognized that if this could happen to Edipus, whom all men call the great, the same could happen to them. Tragedy instructs us to accept the limits of our existence. The coronavirus is a reminder of our vulnerability and our finitude. And that's true, isn't it? I personally have lost two acquaintances, one friend and one acquaintance, both of whom were my age. And that sort of made it very clear to me that it could happen to any one of us. And death too could take us. We are small, we are finite in the face of something like this. When the pandemic comes to an end, whenever that is, I don't even know what will happen to our world. If we will be speaking as survivors, the same way that the chorus is speaking here. But if tragedy is assured, as the good doctor tells us, it teaches us to how to bear and respond to suffering, then perhaps the tragedy of Edipus Rex can also prove cathartic in its own ways. In these pandemic times, it can perhaps offer us some relief for those of us at least who turn to it. And with that, I think I'll come to an end of my discussion. I've gone on long enough. I'm very grateful to you again for hearing me out. And I would love to answer your questions if you have them. Thank you, Swati, for this wonderful lecture. And we are very happy to have you as the inaugural speaker of our PG Studies lecture series. So thanks for bringing a lot of contemporary political issues and trying to connect Edipus Rex with the present situation and the relationship between the state of health and disease or the people who are caught up in the pandemic. So I will open the floor for question and answer. So maybe we can take very few questions, maybe two or three questions. So keep it very short if you have any question to ask, Swati. So the floor is open now for question and answer and discussion. Is there any question? Any questions? Yeah, so I have a comment because it has never occurred to me while as you know that I do theater and I have done Greek theater also. It has never occurred to me because we have never read Edipus Rex. We have never researched on Edipus Rex, particularly through the lens of cultural studies and historical studies. Is that perhaps what you have mentioned in the talk that this play was perhaps performed after some kind of plague or epidemic struck the Athenian society. And that's why because as you mentioned in Homer's reference to Edipus Rex, which is all to do about incest and about illegitimacy of the position of the team, and Sophocles' Edipus Rex is very different because as you mentioned that you know Sophocles is in the play revolves around disease about revolves around a plague. Yes and in fact if you take a look at Bernard Knox has written about this. The date of Edipus Rex's exact performance is disputed. Now Knox takes on this same point and we can't conclusively prove anything of course, but Knox takes on this point to argue decisively and I find it a very good persuasive argument that the only reason why Sophocles is so very concerned, I mean he didn't need the story of Edipus is already sad. Why add an epidemic to it? There are already other elements of it, there is a blight, there is women not having children, there is the whole story of all these crops not, there's a pestilence. So why do you need to add the epidemic? And my only conclusion as with Bernard Knox is that he adds the epidemic precisely because he had seen that epidemic and so had his audience. Yeah, so I think this is a very exciting insight and yeah, so I find it very interesting, yes. Oh sorry, I have a sort of a comment but also something, some thoughts regarding you know what Dr. Moitra has shared and it's a wonderful talk. Dr. Moitra, thank you for that, but I wanted to just draw some parallels with our context. As mentioned earlier, you know in our folklore, in our oral traditions, we have many of these stories of death, death by unexplained circumstances mostly but if this death as well as these challenges that a person goes through is also sort of, one can say it's like the passage, ritual passage, the piece of merit as they call it. So you know I was just wondering in terms of what you have shared and death seems to be this pre-dominant theme and in a way some of the things that you have also said that there seems to be a tendency for us humans to forget or you know forget our mortality, right? No, no absolutely I agree with you. While I'm not the most versed in the absolute, the richness of the oral cultures of Nagaland and there are so many, I've read a little bit of this element in Eastern Kiri when the river sleeps where she also draws upon folklore to address the question of you know coming of age of going through certain things and encountering among other things death and I think this is a, this aspect of Naga folklore that you're talking about that not only connects it to folklore in various parts of this country where you will see similar themes of death of life and what it means to journey through that, that also connects folklore to the ancient epics where similar themes play out right back to the epic of Gilgamesh where the story is Gilgamesh going to look for his friend Enkidu after death and then he learns at the end of the play that the gods tell him that the life you seek you will not find when the gods created mankind death they gave to mankind and life they kept for themselves so that human life is a journey through death that it is a journey through fragility that I think oral cultures have oral traditions epic traditions are also oral traditions I think oral traditions have always understood this in a way that our modern traditions with modern medicine often forgets because of you know the pretense that we are immortal right we like to I'll have something I'll have a medicine I'll be fine but oral cultures have always understood this very intimately and that aspect of Naga culture that you spoke of that is at once very particular but also in many ways universal to other ancient cultures as well and that's why I really liked your observation thank you so much for it thank you doctor Mitra so any other question comment hello ma'am first for you thank you so much for the very insightful talk which you gave if I just wanted to reload the scene if it will make sense because especially with you know China for me was almost like this Odieprus Rex who was popular who solved a puzzle and then who was loved by everyone because China before the pandemic was very popular especially it gave like great boosts in various countries especially in India also various Chinese products were entertained like in a good way right but after the pandemic happened you know the whole world kind of turned away from China they started blaming China and even in India we see a lot of Chinese apps being banned you know the trade relations are affected so in this way I kind of related this Odieprus Rex with China as well like Odieprus Rex himself is China and the world is like the people you know the Odieprus Rex I think that's an absolutely great reading and in fact if you add this a little bit further think of countries like Vietnam South Korea Japan New Zealand all these countries have actually very successfully dealt with the pandemic New Zealand I think has had zero Vietnam which is a country with as much population as my state of West Bengal which is a very densely populated state Vietnam has had zero deaths zero right and that has also sort of put the lens on what is good governance but China for instance is a very rich country and sure we admired the fact that they are so rich they're so powerful but China did fail to save lives of their citizens right and similarly the USA the UK and even us we have failed to save the lives of our citizens while a country as tiny as Vietnam managed to not lose even not one life so this is your absolutely right it's sort of asking forcing us to ask these questions that what is the best what what makes countries strong is it simply economic strength is it simply wealth is it simply military or is it also taking care of the health of the citizens right so yes I absolutely agree with your reading and thank you so much for voicing it here I think we're probably done with questions Gaurav yes maybe yeah so if you have any question you can always write to us and we can always follow it to spark if you want to know more if you if you want to get some extra readings on edipus rex I am sure it's really helpful and as a you know resource person so okay so I thank swathi again and everyone who has joined today for our first lecture of the PG studies lecture series so but we will be having another talk next semester next week because as you know that this is the native american heritage month and we will have Wafa Hamid from Delhi University who will be whom swathi and I and some of us know so she will be talking about the native american and black american history so so thank thank you all of you again and thanks to swathi for this wonderful talk thank you everybody I'm very happy to be here and you're very lucky that wafa is going to speak next week you must tune in because she's a wonderful speaker thanks