2020 has been quite a year, we all can give it that!
Without stating the obvious, because we’re all too doomed to now even dissociate it from normal, I would like to bring up a rant from the past today, a stream of consciousness kind of rant from the times we still made jokes like, “Global Warming should hire coronavirus’s publicist.” Because we were still afraid of the consequences. Not that the veil of uncertainty has been lifted, but we’re well adjusted to the gloom and despair and shady mechanism of dealing with “not knowing" what will happen in the near future, or so we think.
But before you go all ballistic on me, accusing me of not having new and fresher content to keep up, I’ll just say that these words just form the tip of the iceberg of the collective disillusionment that many individuals in our world are facing. And we can shove it in the back of our minds and learn to live with the dump, or we could start a conversation and see where it goes. I am not starting a revolution; this is just a paranoid 20 something thinking out loud. So, grab a spoon kids, I’m spilling dish.
02nd April, 2020
By the way, the second person pronoun is for family members judging me for not taking a part in the “Diya Jalao, Virus Bhagao Aandolan” so don't take offense, I'm talking with you, not at you.
I don't want to light candles, today. I don't want to symbolize a cultural phenomenon or a nation coming together. Sure, these are wonderous things and we need hope in times of crisis, and sure I might be called anti-national, un-empathetic and useless for calling out these practices, but astrological and symbolic gestures aside, where are we? And what are we doing?
Lighting candles to celebrate hope, watching Ramayana and Mahabharata on national television from the comfort of our homes... Where has your fucking conscience gone to take a hit?
This crisis technically reminds me of Dan Brown's novel Inferno where Bertrand Zobrist invents a biological weapon to make a certain percentage in an entire population impotent genetically. Well sure, those infected and recovered from Corona virus can still very well reproduce, but I don't think the situation is any different. Hells have broken loose.
Thousands and thousands of people, humans are dying lonely deaths across the globe in developed, developing and under-developed countries. There are millions, who are in isolation from their infant kids, lovers and families because they go each day to work in a zone where any day, literally any day they can become a carrier of this deadly virus. There are those who've lost their jobs, daily wages. Corporations that behold the behemoth of the middle-class income and employment have come to halt, pushing the already recessing global economy into an irreversible downward slide.
Where is your fucking conscience when you open your mouth and express the wise words that "God does everything for the greater good."
For all I know, your greater good will seem invisible if it was you or your relative that was diagnosed today. And as a matter of fact, who assures you that there's a "greater than this" and now? Who assures you that the world will get back to a day where this threat and more on the likes of it won't hang on their heads? What guarantees you a normal tomorrow?
I am not a nihilist. I am not an altruist. I am not even an avant-garde environmentalist. But I am person with a loud conscience. And right now, it screams. It screams inside me and shuns all these rituals, prophecies, and intellectual bullshit.
That's because these problems, that our world faces now, one of un-sustainable patterns of development are the huge negative externalities of the very same capitalists, governments, the upper-middle class. I am not talking about COVID-19 anymore. I'm talking about the amount of water it takes to manufacture you leather jacket, or the fur on your blanket or the food you waste on your plate. I'm talking about how much resource you consume off the face of earth and how little you have to face it's consequences. Because when the planet decides to restore itself, it's not you. By the privilege of your wealth and estate, it's not you that has anything to loose. For all you care, it's an un-asked for vacation, a time for savings and investments, a time for self-development and introspection. Do that. By all means, go ahead and be productive. But then just be respectful and conscious of these privileges.
There are those out in the street who probably can't spell or comprehend social distancing. They live in a foot square of space, have nothing to eat and no hand to partake in the mess we make of the resources we're provided with on earth. Those under-privileged, not as fortunate lives on earth are bearing the risk that money is protecting us from: in form of food supplies, masks, a home, electricity, internet and what not.
We're so fragile that sitting alone with ourselves can get to us. We can self-destruct like an atom bomb in those minute stay-cations without the annoying hum-drum that we're always complaining about.
So I'd request you people to just shut up. Keep your opinions to yourself and don't celebrate this unity, that's got nothing to do with the problem ahead. I've got nothing to prove. If you can, then do help those who can't provide for themselves in these times. Donate masks, food, sanitizers, soap. Request the govt to convert hotels, hostels, schools and theatres into make-shift hospitals, check-points and shelter homes, employ medical sales personnel in advocating basic precautionary measures, admonishing test kits and spread awareness.
Humans have proved, that they can't care about anything, except their own suffering. Entire clusters of species would go extinct without hitting a news bulletin or a wink in the eye of general public. But we care about our lives, our children and our money. So, if that's the narrow spectrum of what we're capable of caring for, then let's do just that rightly enough. Make it count and not in the number of diyas or candles you light, but in the number of lives you help save. You may practice all your symbolic hope, but just a reminder that the band that kept playing while Titanic sank, sank with it.
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