Small Acts of Kindness

Pandemic Papers 3/30/20

On a morning when my nerves crackled with anxiety, my writing teacher read us the poem “Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Lameris and encouraged us to consider the small kindnesses in our lives. A hand gently leading me to look towards the light — that, in itself, a great act of kindness.

I did as I was told. In that moment, it was not hard. A close friend had just texted me, “Are your parents here or in India?” They are in India.

Scrolling through headline after headline about coronavirus, he must have seen the ones for India: 1.3 billion people told to stay indoors. Long lines forming outside the handful of open stores; scores of people waiting for buses, heel to toe, heel to toe, their personal space shrunk to fit the space available; police enforcing social distancing with their batons. He must have read about the desperation already simmering at the edges: a rickshaw driver who would normally take his day’s wages to buy 400 grams of rice and 200 grams of lentils for his family of four, wondering how he will feed his children tonight. Migrant workers told to go home but left stranded with their bags on the roadside, hundreds of miles from home. Desperation can easily boil over into anger at times like these.

My friend must have wondered if my parents, both in their 80s and continents away from their…