Speaking about his
new novel Nights of the Plague, the
Nobel laureate of yester years, Orhan Pamuck says that “the Pandemic alters the political and social
scaffolding of the nations…the subject
of plague is always related to politics.”Pamuck’s prescience is
extraordinary when viewed in the light of what had transpired during the
dreadful twenty odd months of Covid that witnessed the dance of death. Pamuck says
“Humanity more or less behaves the same way during pandemics.
First there is denial. Denial makes the
numbers go up. This leads to conspiracy theories-nationalism, going inward,
blaming the governments or other ethnicities.
Sometimes it leads to new governments
being formed. Other times, the
government is involved and becomes authoritarian…”
Initially
in November 2019, when China reported the deadly spread of Covid, the world was
complacent as it was regarded as a one off plague in the far away, distant
China. It only dawned a few weeks later that the Covid virus needed no passport
to travel all over the world. We in India, true to Pamuck’s prediction, were also
initially in a state of denial. By the time we acknowledged its presence, the
fatality count had risen up by geometric progression. The appeal to nationalism
by the PM to be responsible citizens, observe
a self
imposed curfew and clap on balconies and clang plates happened with the
kind of pomp and show that we see during Indian weddings or festivities
and made the obedient masses
collect on the streets and hysterically clap and clang thalis(plates) to frighten the virus to bolt out of India. But
it didn’t serve the purpose; on the contrary it reversed the whole point of the
exercise of self imposed lockdown by crowd’s close proximity causing still more
rapid virus transmission.
Again
Pamuck’s anxiety about the health of democracy has proved true as the
coronavirus outbreak has globally challenged human rights. According to Freedom
House report, “the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled a crisis for democracy
around the world. Since the Corona virus outbreak began, the condition of
democracy and human rights has grown worse in 80 countries. Governments
have responded by engaging in abuses of power, silencing their critics, and
weakening or shuttering important institutions, often undermining the very
systems of accountability needed to protect public health.’ Pamuck is in line with the Israeli writer and
intellectual, Yuval Harari’s prediction
about the post-Pandemic world that its critical
influence will be felt on health care systems,
where its impact on the ruling governments will lead
to totalitarian surveillance through collection of personal data of
every individual ostensibly to
provide them with better protection against the Virus. On
the social front, the easy availability of personal data –especially related to
health -can adversely impact life insurance premium, employability and even
marriage.
I like every other person
waited for the day when masks would become a thing of the past and the world
would move to normalcy as it did after
the Spanish flu exactly a century ago. Those born after 1920 when the Spanish flu ended , do not have any
idea of what those two nightmarish years
(1919-1920)- that accounted for 50 million deaths- were like! All the havoc
caused during the current pandemic years bear close similarity to the Spanish
flu years except that the fatality is much larger than before. Covid has once again brought to the fore the
awareness of Man as a Lilliputian
pitched against a tiny virus that was gargantuan in its lethality. All the advancement
in Medical Sciences and technological innovation could not put the present day
Humpty Dumptys together again. The Virus has had its last laugh, becoming the cruellest
leveller of mankind.
But all the resolutions and determinations that kicked in
while experiencing the ruthless savagery of Covid are now gradually becoming a
thing of the past as we blithely ignore the lessons we absorbed while we were incarcerated
within the four walls of the house. We have now turned deaf to the eerie silence
of the walls that remind us of the countless deaths that struck every household,
of orphaned children and devastated families, of forced isolation accelerating
cognitive decline and damage to our physical health. For a short period it had jolted us out of complacency and reckless
self-centric life of the pre-pandemic YOLO years, when we lived and
breathed the idea that since you
live only once, live life to the fullest. While it
is okay to let oneself loose and have some fun, the YOLO generation
is using this logic as an excuse to fully engage once again in doing
things that are enjoyable and exciting, however silly and inane
they are. In the process of total
enjoyment we have once again fallen back to self centrism, with no care or
feeling for fellow beings and unmindful
of the waste and devastation of our environment and its resources.
The pandemic brought us –albeit for a short interval-to
appreciate the wisdom of a Gandhian way of life that stressed on minimalism,
characterized by sparseness and
simplicity. From our early days, we have been taught in our Tamil language சிறுக கட்டி பெருக வாழ்-(build a small home and live King size). But we were lured to adopt maximalism whose
motto “more is more” that goes contrary to the philosophy of
minimalism of “less is more.” In the years of freedom struggle and
the early years of post independence we
took pride in following Gandh’s pithy advice- “waste not, want not”. This was in the early fifties of
the last century. As we moved from underdeveloped status to that of a
developing nation, “waste not, want not’ became passe’. The waste that accrues in a present day Indian
fat wedding can be measured from the trashcan filled with left- over food on
the plates. But for a brief interregnum during Covid, despite the house
imprisonment and barred from eating out, we readily accepted homemade food as a
measure of healthy but frugal life.
But this did not last long and the deceptive lull of the
first wave with people letting their hair down during the festival months resulted
in the catastrophic rise of the second wave with people dying in thousands for
lack of oxygen. The lessons learnt during the first wave were forgotten. The
second wave raged leaving a trail of devastation. The ominous forecast is the possibility of a
third time repeat as people have already
forgotten the two major lessons Covid
had earlier taught –wear the mask and accept aloneness. The neglect of these
two Covid appropriate behaviour presages fresh anxiety about the uncertainties
of life and why things should not be taken for granted.
The festival season preceding the annual arrival of
winter has once again turned people crazy. Today’s leading newspaper has 45
full page advertisements, excluding the half page ones that add up to another
15 pages. The total number of pages as
indicated on top of the opening page
pegs it at 88 which makes advertisements garner 2/3rds of today’s edition. The TV channels advertise
diamond and platinum rings, high quality silk sarees and dresses, high priced
cars and electronic gadgets, packs of almond and pista and dry fruits ... Is it
naivety on my part to wonder if we have all won Bachchan’s crorepathi show! But
when I step into market and ask for a simple ‘Chaat”-the traditional savoury
item sold by street vendors, the
rocketing price of 170 rs/plate make me scamper home. For the poor and the middle class, milk, pulses, vegetables, oils
have become beyond their reach as the prices have rocketed sky high and all the sop offered by
the government in terms of increased Dearness Allowance cannot get the poor even a quarter of their daily
needs. The traffic snarls with cars on the roads moving bumper to bumper, the
surreptitious bursting of crackers(faking as green crackers, which was also
banned by the Supreme Court)adding to the deteriorating air quality, the
jostling crowds in the market without masks despite the experts’ warning indicate
that lessons learnt have been forgotten. There is no thought left for the
elderly, for those with co-morbidity, those with decreased lung power and for
young children. In the name of tradition, which can best be defined as
perpetuating the illusion of continuity, the crackers had to be burst. The
unwritten advice is ‘if you have headaches, find your own aspirins’.
Life has returned to pre-pandemic days except for the
poor facing even greater hardship than before. The government hails the
industrial and corporate magnates for kicking in the animal spirits to show that
economy is on the upswing, but the truth
is the upswing in economic activity is only for the rich, by the rich and of
the rich. Animal spirits is limited to the entrepreneurs and businessmen and
rich consumers who can afford mega purchases. But they are absent in the vast
majority of consumers belonging to the lower strata of society who have no
purchasing power.
The
austerity that marked the last two Diwalis is no longer there. Lavish parties, travel to exotic places, frenzied shopping, exchange of Diwali gifts from the rich to the richer
and from the richer to the richest...have
replaced past austerity to present
superfluity. As stated earlier, we see bombardment
of advertisements and attractive
offers to lure customers-in particular
the EMI offers- to soften the blow where the product is alluring and the price
is forbidding. As Santosh Desai writes:
“The Festival of Lights is at its
heart a festival of consumption”. The
Rich splurge as they have more than enough to see them through the rest of life, the upper middleclass , to keep up
with the rich Joneses makes extravagant purchases for show off/ display, while
the lower classes remain in awe and despair- which hopefully should not
misdirect them to trigger a social crisis. We are back to the pre pandemic days
without a thought for the most disadvantaged groups that comprise the majority
of our population.
Labelled
as the Black Swan event, Covid has had a devastating effect on all societies
and on all sectors like health, education, jobs, industry and agriculture. We
in India have been exposed to the horrific
pictures of migrant exodus walking back
with their families during the hottest part of summer when lockdown was suddenly imposed rendering them jobless in megacities
far away from their native states. It had a
severe impact on millions of low-income migrant workers and daily-wage earners.
Many charitable organizations arranged food for these migrants trudging back
wearily on foot. For once even the most self centric person had empathy and
felt connected to fellow humans however distant they were economically,
socially and mentally. Pandemic did kindle-at times even unobtrusively-fellow
feeling as everyone had lived through the pandemic. The shared experience of
loss of beloved ones, the trauma of a
long period of isolation, the fear and
anxiety about contracting Covid despite the protective vaccination, the job cuts and job losses, and above all
the absence of contact with the outside world of Nature ... made us realize the
worth and value of what it is to be human.
We, in India who had escaped the deadly onslaught of the two
World Wars-1914-18 and 1939-45- while
the West encountered the Absurd functioning of the universe where nothing was
certain, nothing could be taken for granted, nowhere to feel safe and secure, nothing to expect,
nothing to predict....in short nothingness of Man pathetically confronting
the Nothingness of the Universe --
a timeless, spaceless, dimensionless state with no features a state beyond human mind and imagination. The unequal
battle between the two forms of nothingness made the Western man value his
worth and dignity by standing up to the Absurd without seeking crutches to
support him. ‘The greatest mystery was not that we have been flung at
random among the profusion of the earth and the galaxy of the stars, but that
in this prison we can fashion images of ourselves sufficiently powerful to deny
our nothingness.’(Maurice Friedman).Even the crutches were not available. The World
War brutality tells us a story of a Jewish Rabbi seeing God crouching in a dark
corner. When he asks God why He is hiding, God answers cryptically: “I am
tired”.
The Pandemic has now given us the awareness of the Absurd. It
has struck millions of families, sparing neither the rich nor the poor in its
viral sweep. It has upended the complacent, self centred life we were leading
to one of acceptance that we all belong to the single family of humanity-what
our Upanishads had defined as Vasudeva Kutumbakam- “The world is one family” stressing
the idea that all people are connected and that we should treat others with
kindness and respect, as if they belong to our own family. The notable point is
the virus has shown us as one collective humanity in sharing mental and
physical trauma. It mattered very little if the pandemic raged in Timbuctoo or
elsewhere, for its reach was wide and
rapid as the globe had shrunk with its amazing connectivity. The need to
be united and not divided in the face of a common enemy was the key lesson we learnt from the
Pandemic. But once the pandemic has
lessened its vice grip, we have returned to our old ways of fighting in the
name of ideology, race, religion, status and nationality. The pandemic had for
a short period fine tuned the idea “No
man is an island” and we desperately wanted to move out of the sordid
confinement within the house to meet and greet fellow beings.
But now that the Pandemic is on the wane, we are back to our
egotistic self, back to the sense of the centrality of “ME” defined by my material,
intellectual, racial, religious status . Everyone- the ruler and the ruled, the
spiritual priest and his flock, the physician and the patient, the trader and
the consumer, the employer and the employed,-asserts his strength and
superiority that leads to national, ideological, religious, racial and societal
schism. Pandemic for all its lethality had united us with a sense of belonging
to the Human race. But as it makes its final bow, it seems to take back the unity
that it had installed . In its place all that remains is alienation, discord
and disharmony. The news headlines and
news flashes are no longer about the lethal invasion of Covid, but about the
invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the sabre rattling of China against Vietnam, the
new geo politics of nuclear war, the deadly conflict over hijab in Iran, the fatal
conflicts in Iraq, international
economic warfare, global food crisis, climate devastation…Add to this, racial
conflict, religious polarization, genocide currently on the rise all over the
world. The lessons learnt during the pandemic are the only fragments humanity
has to shore against its extinction.
Let us recall how the Mahabharata ended signalling the end of
the Dwapara yuga. After the Kurukshetra war ended, only 12 survived that
included among others the five Pandava brothers, Draupadi,Krishna and Aswathama
. The Mahābhārata ends with the
death of Krishna, and the subsequent end of his dynasty and ascent of the
Pandava brothers to heaven.. Soon after the death of Krishna, the entire
Yadava clans of Dwaraka were destroyed due to a fratricidal war.
Once again the desperate cry of Where Shall Wisdom be found
is heard. This is the title of Harold Blooms brilliant book, where he refers to
Wisdom literature from the Bible to twentieth-century writing, that have
shaped our thinking. Though Bloom has
not included the Indian classics like the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, we can add them to his list from the Book of Job
and Ecclesiastes; Plato and Homer; Cervantes and Shakespeare; Montaigne and
Bacon; Johnson and Goethe; Emerson and Nietzsche; Freud and Proust along with
the Gospel of Thomas and Saint Augustine. These
are what Eliot would have defined as “the
fragments to shore against our ruin”. Bloom says these Books “teach us
to accept natural limits… Reading alone will not save us or make us wise, but
without it we will lapse into the death-in-life of the dumbing-down in which
America now leads the world, as in all other matters.”.While Bloom refers only
to America, the post Covid World of today needs his sagacious solution. Go back
to books and they shall hold the mirror to the lessons taught by Covid.
