A poor pregnant mother gets kicked in her belly

The worldwide Corona infection cases stand at 4.5 million with 300,000 fatalities. Stealthily the number is creeping up in India also, like water oozes out of the cracks in a dam. Let’s hope the dam doesn’t give away altogether! India is almost like a raw fodder for the fiery virus. If it goes out of control, the loss in other countries will lose its meaning. They will consider themselves lucky, if god forbid the virus actualizes its full evil potential in India.

As of now, we have 75000 cases with 2300 casualties. On a positive note, a third of these have recovered completely, making the recovery rate at 33%, which creates many hopes. May be, the exposure to bugs, bacteria and virus in the filth and squalor of routine struggle on the mundane stage of life has bestowed herd immunity to we Indians. The virus appears to have a sadistic pleasure in tormenting the sanitized, cleaner cultures. Well, the poor have their own diseases, so have the rich. But that doesn’t mean we should go all dirty. The importance of hygiene and cleanliness has been understood well, even by those who barely understood the difference between latrine box and altar.  

Pop Diva Madonna is reported to be very happy after months of sulking and suffocating the interiors of her house. Tests have given the good news. She has the antibodies for the ill-famed virus. It means the bastard may not be fatal to her. She is thus ecstatic to go on a long drive in the scary Covid-19 air. She can now afford to roll down the windows and feel the kiss of air on her youthful cheeks. She has the protective gear inbuilt in her system against the enemy, which will fail to ambush her. Happy for her that she is going to have a sip of freedom at last! Haven’t we turned freedom too costly? The freebies of nature—the air, the water, open skies, pristine forests—have been chucked out in greed. Now is the time to pay for the loot. The rationing has started. Take care!

In India, the swashbuckling Lockdown 3.0 is a hugely costly affair. There is a categorization of red, green and orange zone. Life is supposed to take to cautious steps first in the green zones without any known Corona cases, followed by Orange where there are just few cases to be followed by the lugubrious steps in the scary red ones. But it’s very dicey. Let there be the slightest mistake and the lights may change colors. Well, we have been used to the play of lights at traffic signals. The green gives such a sense of relief. Let there be a green signal for all to move again. The red light has been too long and tortuous. Well, traffic rules sometime help in running the country also, apart from managing the road traffic. It means all this is a mammoth journey only.

During the lockdown, every life saved comes at the cost of crores of rupees. Life has been undeservedly too much monetized. Let’s now learn to define life and living in non-monetary terms also. It will help us, believe me.

Those at the lowest rung in the socio-economic ladder are suffering miserably. Their painfully set up homes and hearth are gone in a jiffy in the cities. People are walking back to their roots. A horrible reverse migration has started. How long we can expect them to stay stranded in ghettos without job and other basic minimum facilities of common life. Poverty has been pushed further into a darker corner. Even the miserable life of earlier appears rich in contrast. Only after losing what we possess, we come to realize the importance of the tiny blessing we earlier had!

Government has started special trains to take them home. They are the fatigued, defeated and lacerated soldiers who fought for our development in cities. Millions and millions want to escape from the imperiled urban fronts in the war. A train can adjust only 1200 passengers, where will the rest go? Getting a ticket appears like the biggest lottery. There is a provision for online booking. Even among the poorest of the poor, the luck will favor the better ones. I mean those selected few who have a smartphone and know how to make an online booking. So the moment the booking opens, the seats are taken by the more privileged among the poorest of the poor. It leaves millions who don’t have a phone. They have to choose other options by default. The best option by default is to start walking to one’s home that is more than a thousand kilometer away. A leap of faith! An escape from the ignominy of being stranded meaninglessly! At least you walk. You do something at least!

People get driven by rumors and stand in front of railway stations. They wait for the train that isn’t even scheduled. They but have to keep their hopes alive. Corona cannot rob them of their hope of a train. They stand in miles long queues for days. Social distancing loses its meaning. Poor migrant workers are paying lump-sum from their miserly savings to hitch clandestine rides in goods trucks. Sometime police topples the cart. Stranded in the middle, they hardly have any clue to what and why of future. We can measure loss in monetary terms, but who will calculate the silent, unchronicled miseries of millions who suffer in the dark, unknown chambers of this battlefield.

Destiny plays cruel jokes. You pay for an illegal travel in a goods truck, brave all legal risks and pay like you are paying airfare. You are lucky to cross almost a 1000 Km and just 350 Km away from the sweet native soil. You are ready to forget the miseries for that safe and secure feeling of reaching your place. Corona-infected destiny but still plays the spoilsport. It derails the journey indirectly. The vehicle meets an accident. Many get injured and those able to walk continue with their journey on foot. Can you believe, autos have been hired to travel 1200 Km. A family had just started counting the countdown Kms to home and the tiny three-wheeler meets an accident. A woman and a small girl die and others grievously injured lie in a hospital. We definitely reach home, but which ‘home’ it is always decided by some mischief mongers that stay invisible to us.

A small group of workers spends their entire savings earned through the soot, grease and grime of an urban toil to purchase cycles. People would still not lose a chance to earn money. Profit and loss is the only way we can think these days. Under distressed purchase, the rickety cycles are sold at an exorbitant rate. They don’t have any option. The poor workers buy and start on the arduous journey, going hungry, and being harassed by police at borders. The most they can ask from God at this juncture is that the tyres bear till they reach their villages. Humm, some migrant workers are caught hiding in the concrete mixer. I pray they don’t start the mixer by accident and mix human flesh with concrete. Well, it always has been mixed to set up the shiny edifices. But all that is done in subtle manners, indirectly. Doing it in letter will turn out to be too gory a sight. Let it stay in spirit only.

The house owners throw away the laborers for not paying rents. A house owner thinks in a typically legal way that he is entitled to the rent at any cost, under any circumstances. Well, law is on his side. The law is helpless beyond the strictly theoretical boundary on the paper. Is it Law only that we need to manage our society? Well, machines have an all-Law society, not humans. As the mechanics of Law take over our functioning, our mechanization will surely take us to the threshold of a dehumanized, artificial intelligence driven society. It would then be better to do archaeological search for the real man like we search for dinosaur skeletons now.

People walk on foot. The soles blistered. The already misshapen, abused feet getting lacerated to take crooked animal shapes! A hard crust of misery and helplessness stuck to their faces. Will they be able to smile at ease in future? It will take a long time if ever they will. They have few provisions, so few that a house will look empty with them. But whatever they have is the unavoidable essentials without which one can’t survive possibly for more than a day. So they cannot afford to abandon even these. They stack up their provisions in gunny sacks and begin on foot. The provisions are too little for a little house, but these are too heavy for a human head. They look like famished beasts of burden. They lumber ahead impassively, like jombies. Smallest feet learn to walk. Toddlers held in their arms. The bitter lessons for the youngest generation. Pregnant women walk with the extra load of maternity. A woman gives birth on the way and still has the courage to walk another 150 Km after the delivery. Salutes O Mother!

There are still luckier ones among this unlucky horde. Some have bikes. They load their entire family and provisions on the bike, yank a jibe at a small car, and move out on thousand plus kilometer journey. They have to dodge Corona. They have to dodge police also. Some have carrier rickshaw loaded with their sacks and take turns to ride and the rest run by the side. We have been condemned to move. We are shifty and restless. We have the curse to move at any cost.  

Those were the happy days when the Caravan had stopped by the busy outskirts of Sonipat. The caravan of wandering nomadic ironsmith is bigger than you expect these days. They are the stateless subjects of India. They still survive on the fringes without most of the rights that we take for granted. They still have sturdy wooden ox carts. The trace of modernity, however, is visible through their well-hammered bike carrier contrivances. The torso of a bike is welded to a tiny carrier behind. The carrier frame has their typical nail-headed gypsy pattern. Well, we give it all to retain our identity. How do they survive now with their movement, their life literally, stopped? It’s like a fish without water. I hardly have any clue. Their only right is the right to move. Corona has taken away even that. Right opposite the road, the district administration allows vegetable stalls during the early morning for 2-3 hours. That is the time when the gypsies smell the scent of humanity. People hurry across the city till 7 in the morning to muster up enough to see through the day. And the caravan lies on the fringes, bearing the slap on its face for a sin that it isn’t even involved in. The curse is born of the sedentary culture. What do they have to do in all this?  

All health establishments from a quack to a Harvard returnee doctor are usually crammed to the gills with patients, throughout the year, all ways, almost all hours and even minutes. It would make one wonder how come literally everyone is sick. Under the lockdown, my only query is: where are all those perpetual patients? All these neighborhood clinics and nursing homes and quack shops are empty and out of business. And surprisingly, the mortality rates haven’t gone up due to the shortage of these services. Haven’t we got habituated to fall sick and run to get medicines? I mean, you have the markets crammed with consumer items and most of the times we just buy even when we don’t need the things urgently. With health services scattered all around, possibly we itch like a consumer to avail their services somehow in a consumerist mode.

Well, silver lining at last. The big, fat, cumbersome and earthshaking Indian weddings are postponed. Less population growth rate at long last. Hail Corona at least on this! But then you have gallants still out there to hit the bed of matrimony. There are virtual marriages through Whatsapp video calls. The groom then takes his princess on a bike. Some take pheras in masks. Well, in a typical arranged marriage in India, the bride and groom hardly know anything about each other. With masks on, it must be like two aliens getting married, I mean a Maritan and an Earthling! And where is social distancing on the conjugal night!?

WHO that has turned into CHO is again and again parroting about the natural cause of the virus. It’s a well fed parrot that has been crammed to the guts with monetary chilies by its patron China. The WHO is praising China’s efforts in managing the pandemic—can you believe it, the world’s premiere health body is praising a country whose secrecy and mismanagement has brought humanity to such a disaster. Their economic clouts will help them more than their nukes. Why then waste so much of economy over redundant whales that are buried in bunkers. Use the same money to strengthen the economic clout.

They but won’t even mention Taiwan, the country who has set up the best example how to manage the virus: Just 400 plus cases and only 8 deaths. Can you believe it? The WHO but, under Chinese influence, doesn’t even invite them at meetings to share their expertise. All those who are eager to bring China to the dock should recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. The redgurads aren’t as much afraid of a nuke strike as they are of a sovereign Taiwan. There are always better means to bring the evil to book because the evil leaves many chinks in its armor through its own nature, inevitably.

People hardly have the guts to visit the friendly neighborhood barber. His effacing smile is hijacked by the Corona sinister grin. With his hands twisting your chin, cheeks, nose and head, he appears like a Corona-hobnobbing yamdoot. Hair styling is gone down the winds. People are no longer dancing on the excited stage of life, so glitz and glamour has frizzled out. Bald is the most popular hairstyle. And people manage it with their own trustable trimmer. And believe me, going bald hasn’t shaken the universe as one apprehended earlier. Doesn’t it mean that most of our sophistication is born of our mind’s construct? Convenience fetches simplicity and more peace. Saloon keepers beware; you may be required to take up other professions.

Well, the communal spinoff of Corona keeps doing the rounds now and then. Media launched a well-managed witch-hunt for finding the Corona and Islamic links. There were a few mischief mongers, but their over-enthusiasm resulted in the entire community being maligned. Who suffers? The common Muslim by birth who has to come out for a living and who has no role in the greater games of religion. In Lucknow, hotspots have been named after mosques. It’s an effort to throw chilies into the smoldering fire. Far away in the UAE, two expatriate Indians are sacked from their jobs for posting Islamophobic social media content. The OIC also puts up a notice against India for the current Islamophobic environment in India. They may have sensed something to arrive at the conclusion. But how can they stay blind to what China is doing to Uighur Muslims? Business is the only belief and faith of mankind. All other kinds of religion and Gods are merely the conceptions to sustain the business god.

Federalism is at its best as of now. The central cabinet is gone into a huddle and virtual instructions are almost symbolic. The states manage their fiefdoms and so do the district administrations. With politicians gone into a pondering huddle, the bureaucracy is functioning at its best. We have seen a little glimpse of a non-politicized bureaucratic functioning for some time. It isn’t disappointing I tell you. With the political mind just focused on Corona, the honest officers get a lucky lease to operate as per their talent. Karnataka state government must be feeling very relaxed and unchained as they issue an instruction for the online application to enter or exit the state. Aren’t all these boundaries our mind constructs? Now Karnataka border is as good as an international border, at least in effect.

Kim Jong has been seen. Or was it is his double? There is speculation. Well, whether it’s fake or real, the medal he receives is surely genuine. President Putin has awarded the North Korean dictator a World War 2 commemorative medal. Is it an honor from one pseudo dictator to another real one? In effect both are the same. But just imagine, wearing one’s heart on sleeve gets one into? Pseudo has benefits of a world leader; real face gets bricks of tyranny.

At long last, the African countries are realizing the parasitic relationship with China. Trapped in debt and attacked with racial slur, there are voices of dissent. Hope better sense will prevail and the rulers there will think of subjects instead of just getting Swiss accounts hitting the vaults in hobnobbing with China.

Well, misfortune of millions usually results in the fortune of the few. Same will happen post-pandemic. The stampede tramples the weakest. The fortunate ones usually stay afloat to mint more money out of the miseries. The international drugs and pharmaceutical cartels will of course make huge money. The poor will just think of gathering their scattered sinews after the storm. The wealthy ones find new opportunities as life and living will take onto course again.

And finally the booze gets unleashed. How long it could have been contained? A liquorless India is almost unrecognizable. It’s no India at all! The masses lynched by the agonies of survival hit the bottle to forget past, present and future after the back breaking toil and the state mints money. No wonder all drunkards contribute so massively to the cause of nation building. The revenue from the liquor is too massive for the government to even think of people going without the potion of forgetfulness. With all industries closed during the lockdown, and the sources of revenue drying up, the government fell back upon the kind, old booze. Now all social distancing norms fell flat. Where is the Muslim-hunting media? All of these are Hindus? Is a crowd of Hindus less risky for Corona than a Muslim crowd? Think of it. And please save yourself from the sins of sowing the seeds of another partition of the country down the line.

So the happiest news of the past few weeks hits the screen. Wine shops open. The boozers hit the ceilings in ecstasy. Worried wives and children meanwhile curse the government. Many women even protested against the opening of the wine outlets. But modern society means business only. No one can stop the wine industry. The customary rounds of domestic violence start again. The peace is broken. A man may think for ten days about spending money on his children’s books, but instinctively runs with all his savings to purchase wine. Empty pockets suddenly get money from somewhere. There are miles long queues. The business has started. India is back on the track. The economy has taken up. The wine has the power of drawing money out of the most miserly pockets.

A man is showering flowers at our nation-builders as they wait in hot summers with money in their pockets and the will to make India great again. ‘You are the economy of our country!’ he says. They stand with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. The government is also eager to help them contribute more for nation building. There is an extra cess to the tune of 70%. They are happy to pay. Let there be a 10 paisa increase in petrol prices, many voices cry foul. The wine pandemic has the capability to beat the poor Corona Pandemic.

Geeta and Ramayan are to be shown on JNU campus. Mythology pill served to cure the ancient scourge of communism on the campus. As the world frantically searches for a cure to Corona, the government is helplessly trying to find a cure for the indomitable campus bug at the JNU. It’s very obstinate and is stuck up at the political khadi like an angry nettle thorn.