This question is bothering me for a while now. A few days ago the nth news of someone not responding to treatment came to us and we all started searching for a ventilator bed and better treatment options. As expected the help took time to be arranged and yet the result was, that there was no improvement in health. We now hope and pray hard for a miracle that could save the one, whom his family awaits with bated breaths.
Times like these are way too difficult to bear and to survive with a sane mind. Everyone is either scared or suffering or in a fit of rage blaming the government, doctors or others. The plight of the mind is beyond comprehension and needs some reality checks.
We all need to seriously ask this question to ourselves. Where does the Corona Virus really stay? Is it in the air? Is it on surfaces? Is it near the hospitals? Is it only near the patients? Or
Is it permanently in our minds now? I guess in all these places. More so in our minds for many years to come. The havoc it has played the world over has imprinted a scar on every mind by now.
Near and dear ones are staying away. Ageing parents miss their children and grandchildren who stay away, kids lives are limited to the four walls of the house, the world going online has starved us of human interaction and communication and we as a race are facing the greatest fear ever that we can’t avoid. The mind is feeling empty and starved is very natural in such a state but it is equally important to draw on the inner strength if we are to survive. Let alone the Coronavirus, we are dealing with a greater pandemic, that of bad mental health.
We need to understand the fact that we aren’t really helping each other by being critics or playing the blame game. We are an equal part of the system and while I agree that we cannot make a Remidisiver available on-demand or arrange for a hospital bed when someone needs it. But what we can still do, is to believe, that someday sometime things will be fine. We need to hold on, we need to still believe that we got this. Many of our friends are telling us that their health deteriorated 10X faster when they got scared or stressed than when they were still positive that they will come out of this.
The extreme polarization of the press towards the failures of the hospitals and government is making us believe that we can only expect the worse. That death and a serious health condition are guaranteed if god forbid we fall prey to the invisible ghost. Many people in India and especially few NRIs who think that India can never handle this and are just awaiting the impending exodus because they strongly believe that the country that they left long back for greener pastures isn’t meant to handle pandemics.
But does any of this kind of talks help? We who stay here are facing every bit of it, helping out and reaching out through social media, calls and Whatsapp to as many as we can when anyone needs help. Humans of India are equally trying to be part of the task force in ways we can. Although many think it is their prime duty to share anti-government and politically instigated posts each day so that common people know they are in for a catastrophe.
Another grim story is that of looking down on certain sectors of society. If someone is a helper or a maid, then she instantly becomes way more dangerous than us and our likes. The reason is exposure and contact with people who are unknown to us. But don’t we come in close contact when we go vegetable and grocery shopping? Do we know who all are standing beside us and are they carriers of the virus or not? We even look at neighbours and people who are infected in the locality with a terrified eye. We try to shun them and blame them in some or another way for bringing the virus closer to us.
The blame game just goes on. Instead of maintaining social distancing in the right spirit, we are creating a mental distancing from people. We cannot run away from the virus now. It dwells within us as fear and physically in every place we know of and those that we don’t.
What we are failing to realize is that this is a moment of upholding the human spirit. A moment when we need to still instil hope and understand that we can win this deadly war even when we feel aboard a sinking ship. We just don’t know anything conclusive enough until now to make any assumptions or draw inferences.
India, my country of rich heritage and culture and faith and spirituality will and is fighting back. I know that MahaKumbh was a disaster, that there are many lapses in the medical system that need to be corrected, that we are not ready for another major lockdown and it might fail, that political outfits are creating havoc. However, this is just one side of the story that every other country has and the other side is still hopeful. That we are amongst the very few countries who manufacture vaccines, we are the second-most populous country and yet we have battled COVID way better than many others and are still doing so. We are standing back on our feet every morning and continue to fight the battles giving all that we have. We don’t give up!!! Even when we are a nuanced lot, we uphold the human spirit and help each other come what may.
So let us not call out each other but rather stand by each other in these times. Saying a kind word, doing things within confinement that makes us happy, maintaining social distancing in the right spirit, showing support and understanding towards each other is the need of the hour. We need to spread these vibes more and nothing else.
As Swami Vivekananda rightly said,
“Strength is Life, Weakness is Death.
Expansion is Life, Contraction is Death
Love is Life, Hatred is Death.”
Jai Hind!