Balancing acts and worldviews

more and pernicious as the world tackles a swathe of problems to do with ill-ness, stigma, violence, disasters, and displacement. The painting on the cover of this issue, “ Balancing the sky, ” reiterates this theme with a young girl on the streets of Mumbai earning a precarious living from the capricious generosity of passersby. She balances on a wheel on a tight-rope a good two meters from the ground. As the artist, Viveek Sharma, re fl ected, “ the painting is about keeping the balance. Despite all the cacophony around her in the city, she kept her balance. It ’ s like a metaphor for keeping the balance during all the ordeals that we ’ re going through in the pandemic, and also for nature — even though lives have been lost, nature is trying to keep its balance. ”