SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
not so positive that seems to be coming out of this pandemic and something I’m trying very hard to ignore but find an inherent part of each of us is the basic instinct of self preservation at any cost. We change alliances, adopt practices, learn from others experiences constantly with a single focus - self preservation. Some do it in a more civilised (read: cunning n conniving) way and others through a cruder and raw (read: mob mentality) way. The focus is always self preservation.
Examples that come to mind;
– A person sitting in a remote region of the Himalayas changes his/ her strategy over a period of 8 weeks by first calling it a Chinese virus and hoping that the lockdown is proper within China then shifts their focus to hoping that travel to and fro East Asia gets restricted to moving on to hoping the disease restricts itself to a few countries in Europe and the US to locking down anyone travelling into India to thinking that Kerala can take the burden and then trying to lockdown certain clusters in metros to cordoning off certain States and now the next district is an issue while the brain tells you that cutting off the last arterial road to the village is dependable while contemplating that the enemy is your local grocery store to now wondering who in your property is at risk and physical distancing within your own cluster to now also contemplating who in your own family is most susceptible and how to create a buffer between your spouse and you. This will not spare you till you don’t completely self isolate and stand alone on Earth.
Is it all worth if you’re the only survivor on Earth and responsible to cremate or bury the rest of mankind and what kinda life is it thereafter- would you really want to live a life like that? Isn’t it better then to let the virus just flow and mankind then collects its pieces and absorbs it’s losses and learns to live with the virus.
– A healthcare worker shuts down the entire world
– A politician tries to horde all the hydroxychloroquine possible to produce in the next few months for his own country while landing up with excessive ventilators while most places in the World don’t have a single one.
– Youngsters defy the lockdown and show how much they care if the world is left without the elderly
– All of us keep extra masks for the lockdown and deny the healthcare workers the most crucial PPE to be able to function
– We horde toilet paper, sanitisers, food, beverage, medication and other essentials while doing lip service for the ones needing essentials
– We lock down 100s of millions of daily wage workers without proper food, shelter or means of living life so as to self preserve
– We quarantine people in most inhuman conditions with the higher risk of catching the virus just so as to self preserve
– We give a communal fervour to the virus by ill treating and casting a shadow of doubt onto people from other communities for mistakes made by them n drive them to a level of insanity where some get ready to take their own lives while others turn against society
– We treat a patient suffering from a disease as the disease itself
– We knowingly and unknowingly compare our current lives, savings and lockdown status with others and count our blessings
– We share information with the intention of making others aware within our own areas of influence without giving a thought towards where the message doesn’t reach again amounting to self preservation
– We look at climate change, pollution, mass extinction and overall the entire natural world all through the lens of self preservation as a species.
Whom are we kidding - sending jokes and quotes with a depiction of Buddha or a basket of flowers to each other and trying to show how much we’re in control of the situation as though yoga will cure the World.
In reality all of us have just come down to waking up every morning and watching the news with the hope that this thing is still not on our doorknob and also the hope that 70 smart and scientific people in a population of 7.5 billion have done their homework well and shall soon announce a magic pill/ sniff/ jab that shall allow us to live just the way we have till this goddamn semi dead organism hadn’t decide to mutate and then jump and find a new host in us.
We’re human and nothing will change - let’s just plan our next vacation and set the menu for the next get together - this time - no bats!
