We’ve been here before. More than a year has passed since the pandemic, and yet the virus continues to destroy lives and families. In the last week, barring a few exceptions, every person I spoke to has either been infected with the virus or has a family member who suffers from it. We now have over Two Lac reported cases per day with no means to predict how bad this can get.
Tracking the virus numbers has become my not-so-favourite pastime. During the last three Trump months of November to January, I especially kept an eye on the US cases. I must admit that I found some glee in the increasing numbers. It felt like some poetic justice to the masses who confidently refuse to wear masks or maintain distance.
Over time, however, it dawned upon me that these numbers are not just mere numbers. They are a body count. And each number has a story behind it. A story of not just how they caught the virus, but how their happiness has been stolen away and replaced with misery. A story of their families struggling to make ends meet. A story of several lives disappearing without as much as a single person to pay respects at their burials, let alone conduct a funeral.
Like all disasters – both manmade or otherwise – the weakest fall first. Those who have access to healthcare and are able to afford it have suffered much lesser than those who do not. Even amongst those who have all material resources, the ones that lack bodily immunity have lesser chances to make it through.
The end is not near. Some talk about ‘herd immunity’, that once most people are infected with the virus and become immune to it, we no longer have to worry about it. But we’ve been wrong all along. The virus we face now isn’t the same as Measles, Polio, Mumps, or Chickenpox. It does not make one immune for the entirety of one’s remaining life. The immunity, at best, lasts six months. Hence, when done nothing, this virus may become a cyclical part of each of our lives, where one can be infected every six months, eventually succumbing to it when our body becomes weak enough to fail. The vaccines, even if efficacious, give no more than the same six months of immunity.
As a second-grade citizen in a third-world country, there is not much I can say or do. Our voice is redundant. One could fight, only if there was any hope. But there isn’t any. What we could not do at the bloody partition of ’47, we have successfully achieved now – to inculcate and internalise hatred for the political mobilisation of the majority. Let us not blame the politicians alone for they desire power through these means. Every person who has been communalised is responsible for what our country has become. These are not herds of sheep being led down blindly to their aspirations of some perennially elusive ‘development’. They are soldiers of new India who have actively chosen to feel powerful using their majority identity and find validation in the oppression of the minority. Place these very people in a country like the USA, and you will hear them speak the language of ‘equality, justice, and minority rights’.
I’ve always been proud to wave the Indian flag and sing the anthem the loudest. But I am beginning to feel that this isn’t the country I used to call home. Despite being fairly privileged, I have waves that hit my mind which make me feel like a refugee in my own country. The Covid narratives, which have spread as far as my village, has made those who’ve seen me all my life consider me to be a little different. Every other variable has been constant, but something has surely changed in how they behave. And it doesn’t require much thinking to know why.
Hope is too feeble. When there’s no power, there is also no responsibility. Doing nothing is, perhaps, the easiest thing to do. I shall continue to do nothing and be a witness of everything that unveils. However, with this healthcare crisis crushing us, I do pray that each of us have ease not just in life, but also in death.