BENGALURU : Time and again, I hear these statements, and am sure that it has been prime on our mind through this year: "Just a few days to go for this year. Let 2021 begin, and all will be well." Another: "Hope this year ends soon and all its negativity and gloom goes with it." And another: "I have struck out year 2020 from my calendar!"
The last one’s expression, in fact, has been captured by Time magazine on the cover of its December 14, 2020 issue — by red-striking-out year 2020, and describing 2020 as “The worst year ever”. Only four times before has this magazine carried a red-strike-out on its cover: In 1945, to cross out Adolf Hitler; in 2003, to cross out Saddam Hussein at the beginning of Iraq War; in 2006, to cross out Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq after he was killed by US forces; and in 2011, to cross out Osama bin Laden after he was killed in a mission launched by US Navy Seals at a house in Abbottabad near Islamabad in Pakistan.
Every year, when it nears its end, there is hope expressed for a better one to come. It’s no different this time. The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted us in more ways than one, and it has been deep, changing our way of living, learning, socialising and even perceiving each other. We have started to live with a higher degree of negativity towards everything that touches us. How long and what kind of a difference it is going to make to our lives in the years to come is yet to be estimated.
The pandemic persists, and we do not know what course it may take. But we live with hope for better times ahead. And in that hope lies our optimistic thoughts of leaving the Covid-19 virus behind with 2020 as we step out of this year at the midnight gong of December 31 and walk into the fledgling seconds, minutes and hours of 2021.
But it is only we humans who are so obsessed with numbers, dates, calendars. So much, that we assume that an era, with all its ills, ends with the completion of a period demarcated by a number — like a calendar year coming to an end, and a new one beginning with the next number.Unfortunately, the best of our efforts cannot make the SARS-CoV-2 virus that spreads Covid-19 infection understand the definition of a calendar, or for that matter make it bow to the wishes of humans that they need to just evaporate when January 1, 2021 dawns.
Our thoughts are haunted by the presence of SARS-CoV-2, and fears about getting into its grip.However, as curtains slowly but surely fall on 2020 and a new year begins, let us wake up to a fact: The SARS-CoV-2 is not the only problem in our lives, there are many more at different levels which are not just limited to the biological arena.
Even as we survive various bacteria and viruses — or manage to successfully duck them — we still have to face problems and challenges in our conscious surroundings, locally, nationally and internationally. These microbes are just a part of them.As Harold “Hal” Glen Borland, American author, journalist and naturalist, states: “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”Let’s stay safer, healthier and wiser!