It doesn’t happen till it happens. Bad things happen all the time. Shootings. Bombings. Wars. They happen far away. In other places. Other parts of the world.
The slickly produced images on film, stories of violence in homes, in villages, in cities, war and vendettas, bombings and shootings, real and imaginary have helped us grow a shell.
And much like the tortoise that pulls itself into safety, we retreat behind platitudes, or opinions, and sit watching, knowing we are safe. It’s happening there. Not here.
When the virus came, it was happening elsewhere too. In countries with ‘low immunity’, with elderly populations, with not enough sense to avoid infection.
Then when it landed on winged feet on our soil, we watched, sanguine, as others fell ill, struggled, succumbed or recovered.
Looked at the visuals on TV and in newspapers with the same casualness with which we watched slice of life series or thrillers.
So it has been through the months of lockdown. It divided us city dwellers into those who played safe and scared and those who dared to venture out.
Because they could not stay inside. Or simply because they had to be out there helping the needy.
Yet, just a bit of a sore throat, and fear would engulf the bravest among us... would we have to suffer hospital care and oxygen, ventilators, the entire drill of infection and worse?
And now, we in Mumbai, have the cyclone. Which, up till now, was something that happened elsewhere. As if in geography books: Hurricanes in New Orleans, or New York, tornadoes in Kansas and cyclones in Bangladesh, Odisha or Kolkata.
But it’s coming to Mumbai, and there is nothing we can do about it. There is, in this case no protection. No lockdown will change anything.
Neither money nor status helps. The sweep of the cyclone will batter the high-rise and the hovel with the same ferocity, affecting each in different ways. Trees will fall, and window panes crack, roofs will blow away and houses collapse...we’ve seen it often enough on the screen. We saw it barely a week ago in Kolkata, and it left us distantly moved. But now those images gain fresh relevance. And this time the fear is real.
Perhaps in this there is a lesson to be learnt. In the fact that one after another, these natural calamities have been presenting themselves... fever, locusts, flood... reminding us of curses that we thought were only stories. Perhaps, if we learnt to be kinder to one another, learnt to respect the troubles of others and not pass detached judgements, and realised that man and Nature have their roles to play in tandem with each other, we can right the wrongs we have brought down on ourselves.And hopefully, instead of a critical or dismissive WhatsApp comment that we send into the stratosphere, we will offer a helping hand. Or at least stay silent.