Let me play the devil’s advocate, don a helmet and say something in favour of Covid-19. Before that, an apology to all who lost their lives or a loved one. Advanced countries like the US are not able to contain it despite the top medical care and technology available to them. On the other hand, it is believed that China’s figures are all fudged and the true picture is yet to emerge. Europe, again, is struggling with it, with Italy bearing the brunt. India too is doing its best to contain the disaster in ways learnt from the West and its own age-old traditions.
Humanity has been made to pause by a virus. Covid-19 has accomplished an impossible feat, which nothing and nobody could have achieved or even dreamt of achieving. The world created by the humans was spinning so fast that Nature had to apply the brakes and sweep them indoors.
Now the important and exemplary aspect of all this is that while humans all over the world are in a lockdown, Nature seems to have recuperated and is in the process of healing. The skies are unbelievably blue. The beaches are clean. Elephants were spotted at Har Ki Pauri at the Ganga Ghat in Haridwar. Peacocks are fluttering on the street in the crowded residential localities of Mumbai. Sparrows and other birds are chirping late into the day. We have wild cats straying into habitation. The carbon footprint is what it was some 50 years ago.
It’s as if Nature is trying to reclaim what we indiscriminately took away in our greed. We had Nature trapped by our speed and wayward ways of life. It’s high time it rested. At home, pets are ecstatic that everyone is home. Pollution has gone down. Silence seems to be the new way of life, with no honking and screeching of brakes. Several lives were lost in accidents every day, which too have paused. Crime rates are down and inertia has stepped in. As per reports, domestic violence is up, which only shows how little we had invested in our personal relationships.
One more thing that we need to appreciate about Covid-19 is that it is truly secular. It treats old and young, rich and poor equally. Hope we can tell our pseudo-seculars to follow the Covid example once we are out of this, something that they need to learn. This is just a small list for which we need to show gratitude to the virus.
The lockdown following the outbreak is a time to take a journey within and introspect—we should look into our lives and their impact on this Earth that is hosting humanity. We live on this Earth and we better learn to accept this fact that it does not need us. We shall perish in case we do not mend our ways and Covid-19 is a teacher that has taught us some important lessons. The resilience and inner human power can be polished in these times to shine brightly hereafter. As a suggestion, the world may consider giving Earth a week’s holiday by making a one-week lockdown an annual feature in the years to come.
I am sure once Covid-19 is behind us, we can continue to add to the list of happy things that we learnt and experienced. The only big question after this would be whether the world can go back to where it was before it paused.
As Nigerian author and poet Ben Okri wrote in his poem, Mental Fight: “You can’t remake the world/ Without remaking yourself./ Each new era begins within./ It is an inward event,/ With unsuspected possibilities / For inner liberation.”
Bina Gupta
Email: binagupta@gmail.com