No issue of FORCE has been as difficult to bring out as the one in your hands. Even during last year’s lockdown, FORCE continued to bring out the monthly editions in the ‘can-do must-do’ spirit. But this month has been different.

In the second week of April, the FORCE team slowly started to lose nerve as bad news trickled in from all around us. We wondered if we were operating in an echo chamber removed from the realities of our neighbourhood, our cities, our country. By the third week, the trickle had become a tsunami. There was devastation all around. The helplessness was sense-numbing. The regional newspapers were full of obituaries, pages after pages. The social media was full of cries for help, and also news about how the loved ones finally gave up the struggle to breathe.