ONE can hardly resist the temptation of alluding to the age-old art of treading on toes in this epoch when everything on this blessed planet has been turned on its head. Who is treading on whose toes and with what results only time will tell. The fact remains that, despite the state of universal panic brought on by the Pandemic, the so-called big powers of this planet have not abandoned this age-old art.
It would perhaps be expedient to take time out, look back, and devote one’s undivided attention to the ‘coarse art’ in question. There was a time (pre-pre nine/eleven?) when the high and mighty of this blessed land took delight in this pastime. This was particularly true of those who delighted in dabbling in the art of ‘diplomacy’ or whatever it was known as in those days of somewhat loose habits.
Of course that good old time is no more. Things have moved on. One lives and learns.
In the process, several little lessons to be learnt come one’s way, if only one pays a bit of attention. Coming to brass-tacks, one wonders if the gentle reader has come to notice that any ‘sane individual’ spends half of his/her life in either avoiding treading on other persons’ toes or, alternatively, in saving his/her own toes from being trod on. This, however, is not all! A good part of the remaining half is spent on living down the after-effects of having (inadvertently?) trod on some (tender) toes, or the other way around.
On the wider canvas, the same can be said of nations .
