Hopes during Catastrophe

Covid-19 will undoubtedly embark a memorable historical incident for the generations to come and will always make people doodle the wrath masses across the globe had to go through. It’s that return of the Saturn moment which probably most of us might have heard/read in books and may get to face once in a lifetime. The outbreak of this virus has eclipsed the entire world and has brought every possible movement to a standstill. Not even a single country is left to declare a complete shut down for weeks/months depending on the magnitude of the outbreak. Quarantine is the only solution at the moment and billions of people are locked down like being sent to jail out of the blue. The spine of the economy is crackling and the virus of recession is looming all over. It has already caused lives of thousands of masses (31k and still surmounting) with loss of trillions of dollars which encompasses the size of economies of biggest countries. It can’t get more devastating especially when no one knows whether it’s just the beginning or a mid-point and how much of catastrophe is still on the way.

All of this began from China being the epicenter at the beginning which moved on to Europe and now to US. With more than 0.7 million cases already diagnosed, we are heading no where to get rid of it. Every single creature is quiet and waiting for that one eureka moment when there will be a positive update but alas, darkness is in no mood to lose the battle. The worse of all is to discover why all of us are punished and keep reading countless articles regarding the origination which is insanely mysterious. Few articles say it was literally created in a lab to be used as a biological weapon, but few claim the origination to be the seafood market in China where it got transmitted to human beings through animals. There is no confusion around the birth place but what sucks is to fathom how it came into existence. Should it be just a coincidence that one book talked about it in 1981 and the city of the origin is same? How come beeline of articles without any basis claiming it to be intentionally created? How come all at a sudden a complex virus came into existence and in this technological advanced world no cure/remedy is possible to decode it? Nothing reconciles in the head and something seems to be weird.

It’s not different than someone playing the game of statue and pausing the ECG of life for an indefinite period. Suddenly, we feel lucky if we are the ones who got to grab the essentials after standing in the queue for merely couple of hours. People have started hoarding random stuff in the fear of non-availability even when part of it will expire/waste anyway. Stock markets have plummeted by almost 40% and still bleeding. Multiple MNCs have started announcing layoffs, pay cuts, several cost cutting measures, postponement of increments/promotions/bonuses and what not. Governments have started infusing stimulus packages to ensure economy is at least not out of breath. Institutions/celebrities have started doling funds to the maximum stretch of their bandwidth. Poor people have started walking towards their village with their belongings even when it might take a month to reach to their destination as they can’t afford to live in the city anymore. Banking regulators have started slicing base rates like never before and declaring moratorium for a quarter. All this is merely a tip of the iceberg as the pandemic beneath what we have seen/heard so far is yet to show its true colors.

Stepping out of our home, seeing someone and greeting them, going for a casual stroll, going to office/schools/malls/restaurants/parks/gym/events/salon, booking a cab, visiting your friends/kins, going for shopping/movie and tons of such unnoticed reasons to go outside our home feels like a distant memory and the most precious gift of life. With a very strict surveillance round the clock, it’s almost impossible to step out of the home and get a fresh gush of air. Everyone cribbing about their family time are now flooded with it and are overwhelmed & perplexed how to capitalize it to the fullest. We always took these moments of life for granted and never sensed how blessed we are to have it as part of our lives. We never treated them luxuries of life and nature has its own way to educate people when ignorance blindfolds us.  If we don’t plan to give a break to the nature, it will snatch in a way where we will not able to plan our forced break.

No one has been so desperate for anything as they are today to come out of this trap with no further dent on the soul. Nature’s fury is justified but grudges must vanish before its creation submerges too deep and is completely drowned. It’s very critical to have hope outshining fear, optimism overpowering pessimism, contentment & happiness overshadowing fear, life & health taking over deaths & sickness, smiles reigning over tears. The windmill of economy can’t be muted forever and make everyone homeless & penniless. The slogan “the one who keeps running is the winner” can’t be replaced with “the one who is still is the winner”. Isolation as a cure is the most sensible thing to do but it has to be buried organically before going backwards for more than a decade. Wish the quarantine is replaced with freedom of life and the invisible monster (whether created or taken birth on its own) never sees the light of the day ever in the future. Hope the countdown of normalcy will begin with a blink of an eye and people get over the mayhem caused by this pandemic in no time. It can’t be eradicated from the history but let’s pray it doesn’t make space in the future, not even tomorrow!!!