A bank employee counts the bundles of old Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes received at cash counter at a Punjab National Bank branch in Chennai. Pic/PTI

Post-apocalyptic — that’s how this past week has felt. Each hour interminably long, every minute measured by one’s pace in a queue, every small purchase impressing worry lines on frustrated faces. The poor and the working class continue to suffer in relative silence, almost too complacently, with moralistic fervour, while the disgustingly rich have been let off the hook for not honouring their loans — a slap in the face and stab in the heart for the thousands of farmers who have committed suicide because of the stubborn lack of respite from the very same banking system. For the first time ever over my five-day stay, I found my native state of Goa enveloped in a relentless blanket of evening smog, besides garbage lying unclaimed on the edges of highways, and wayside lakes and ponds infiltrated by plastic waste. I welcomed the supermoon as it appeared uncertainly over a hazy sky. I should have felt elated by its magnetic lure. But like most of the world, I am still mourning Leonard Cohen’s death, and the absence of someone to serenade our state of erotic despair, make poetry out of the weight of our sinking lives.