The Lonesome Battles

 

As the people fight their individual battles by killing Corona from their hands by washing, washing and washing, peeling layers after layers of their skin in the chase after the enemy hidden in the pores, leaving them slim and delicate handed, the war appears to have turned further in favor of Corona. All of us are soft-handed soldiers now.

I realize this and make it a point to play badminton regularly and break the stiffness seeping through my middle-aging body. I still remember uncle’s diving shot, so try his unorthodox instruction to be a champion shuttler and a better soldier against the rascal Corona. Admittedly, the game is such a fun. Old bones aren’t at much risk of breaking. The late evening silence is ruffled by slow breeze, which makes the game of badminton far more interesting and tricky in an open yard. Whenever there is a shuttle to my far right, forcing myself to remember the instruction, and firmly keeping my resolve to fight Corona, I try to dive. All I manage is a sideways gallop like a springbuck and hit it with so much of self-affirming sadistic relish. It gives titillating sensation to hit it like this, so exhilarating that you even forget about the foul-toothed grin of the Corona soldiers peeping over the yard boundary.

The sight of my sideways springbuck jump must be really funny, as my niece bursts out giggling every time I turn a champion sideways-galloping springbuck. Apart from the self-driven reward of having been able to hit it like this, I usually get smashing returns almost hitting my nose as I recover after the effort. Moral of the story: it’s better to try predatory pounces like that of tigers. You stand a better chance in the game. Also, the bastard Corona will find a tiger more daunting than a cowardly springbuck. However, the addiction is injurious primarily. And I continue with relish.

As the late evening moves towards a shy twilight, a dragonfly appears offended against the flying shuttle. It wickedly chases it like a heat-seeking missile hell bent upon shooting down the target. It tries a few fast and furious attacking sorties. It swerves around with aplomb from the branches nearby and whirrs about the escaping enemy object like a US Blackhawk helicopter displaying its scorching, immaculate expertise against the enemy. But the dragonfly has to renounce the face-off and give up the chase finally. The target is too big for it. It’s thus unable to carve a niche for itself as the first dragonfly that shot down a badminton shuttle. 

During one of my sideways springbuck shots, the shuttle goes really high in the sky. It nearly hits the rudder of a huge-plumed peacock taking a struggling, buttock-bursting low flight over the yard having jumped, almost like it was going to commit suicide, from the neighboring roof. The micro-climate of the yard turned windy, given the massive feather fan going bamboozling overhead. A peacock storm! An astonishingly free-wheeling dare to fly given its size! Possibly the airy dynamics avoids a hit at the flying ship’s rudder. It’s a criminal offense to hit a peacock. We are saved of the crime.

With rookie enthusiasm, as the twilight builds up to rehearse both day and night simultaneously, making the game even more exciting among the murky mix of light and dark, the moon’s shy coquettish crescent and Venus’ passionate glare, like a crazy love couple, look down with dazzling brilliance. What a lovely spectator couple of our game! They seem to sprinkle a rain of honors, awards and facilitations. We try to lift the level of our game since we have such august people in the audience.

With a frightening hype and alarming inaudible sound bytes, the bats come out and flutter overhead as the spoilers of the game. Bastardly, sleazy nocturnal witches! Their zigzag flutters appear ill-intentioned. A few small ones scurry around a few times, almost with no effect either to the players or the shuttle. But then a huge one arrives as a bullying criminal. Possibly it has fallen in love with the cutie shuttle. Chases it like a stalker. It comes so close to my niece’s racket that she shrieks with fear and takes to her heels. The hooligan has stopped the game. We should not forget that bats carry Corona virus. Probably, the Corona army riding their bedeviling, hawkish drone is guiding it to spoil our game. Corona has a right to stop the game. All our games are Corona-raided games now. It has already disrupted and distorted the world of we humans. Nonetheless, the rest of the non-human part of the world still moves as earlier, or even better. The erstwhile giants look dwarfish and the lesser species look perked up for a ravishing, wristy, mischievous spell of freedom. 

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Fed by nutritional sunbeams, the summers are building up and it looks like a world of little smiles and big pains! The atmospherics are well charged and Corona has an uncanny grasp over the mass psyche. I hope it isn’t drawing strength from such massive concentration of energy around countless brain nerves focused on it across the planet.

Newspapers, electronic media and social media are now hijacked by Corona drunk with its loathsome rhetoric. The idiot is noisily gargling after feasting on our peace. The situation is definitely serious. If the developed countries having far better infrastructure, medical facilities, robust economies and sparse population are suffering so terribly, imagine what would happen to India if the epidemic reaches the third stage of community transfer. It must be already in that state. We are but trying our level best to believe that it is still the second stage. The entire country is looking at the numbers of confirmed cases with bated breath and a feeling of dread. The game of winning is reversed. With cases shooting off into hundreds of thousands in the US and the Europe, it is about the least numbers that signifies success now. The Government of India appears helplessly trying to strengthen feeble coastal embankments while the massive Tsunami reaches towards the coast.

To be a real patriot now all you have to do is to do absolutely nothing. You just sit at home and quell your desire to roam free in the mad race. Earlier, being a patriot required you to sacrifice your blood, vanquish the enemy, do this, do that, all doing, doing and still doing as much as possible. Now, all you have to do is to do absolutely nothing, and you win more odds in favor of your life. The government is in fact acknowledging you as a valued patriot and nation builder if you agree to stay at home and hide your face under a mask. 

Criminal negligence and utter insensitivity for a joint humanity are the breaches in the fort work being set up against the Corona assault. Nothing sort of treason, I tell you. While the Indian PM has been pleading to the masses to stay indoors and in isolation, people try to sneak out like hen from their coop. In Nizamuddin, Delhi, a congregation of about 2000 evangelical Islamic preachers, Tabligi zamaat, flouted all humanistic and legal norms to stay in a building, which looks like a gaol market under the present situation. Here they shared communal kitchen and engaged in religious discourse. I respect their enthusiasm for serving the cause of Islam. But, isn’t being sensitive enough to follow instructions to help avoid the spreading of the epidemic also serving the cause of Allah?

Such behavior by the maulvis gives a chance to the Hindu rightists to build a narrative in the media against Islam and consolidate their politics of Hindu-Muslim polarizations. The present government is unparalleled in manipulating media for a suitable narrative built on abstract facts. Fearsome and loathsome generalities are then driven into millions of ears pitching people against each other along communal lines. The media thus makes a complete elephant out of the tail and rumors  do the rounds that the infected Islamic Corona missiles are scudding into different corners of the country like live bio-grenades to infect people. No wonder, common people, led by social media patriots of Mother India, are viewing it as an act of bio-terrorism. The mainstream media has hollered the narrative so viciously that now almost all Muslims are seen as suicide bombers—carrying the corona vests tied to their cells. The media has made us believe that they are the harbingers of community transfer.

Apart from the media’s narrative jingoism, such irresponsible behavior by the congregation managers cannot be condoned either. The zeal for faith is one thing, but equally important is the consideration of people’s safety. If your love for your God doesn’t turn you sensitive and considerate enough to respect the value of life over all, including those of other faiths, then there is high time you go into self-introspection and learn the real meaning of the religious tenets you have been mindlessly cramming for centuries. The offender maulvis should be traced, quarantined and penalized by forcing them into a bit of secular education meant to turn a person more loving and caring. Given their fright for anything outside the scope of Islam, I think they will find it even worse than being sent to the gallows. So it will be an ample punishment for the errant soldiers of faith.

Given this rampant breach of safety norms by the maulvis, and the narrative-building media pampered by the Hindu rightists, communal interpretations of the epidemic are doing nefarious rounds. They must not have done it deliberately, only being turned stone deaf to the PM’s teary appeals to follow the norms as clarion calls of the champions of Islam buzzed through their neurons, but the common people are only capable to interpret it as a deliberate effort. Already the rumor machine is working faster than Corona. In the countryside people are spreading gossips that the escaped champions of Jihad are rubbing their saliva at gate and door latches to punish as many kafirs as possible. The situation turning communal is the worst we can expect at the moment. Gods of all faiths please save us as one common species, the poor self-fucking Homo-sapiens!

The evil Corona seems to tear apart our social fabric apart from our bodies. There are instances of house owners asking their medical staff tenants to vacate their properties, fearing the angels fighting in the front-line against the devil will bring Corona to their threshold. Worse still, there are heartbreaking episodes of panicked crowds chasing away doctors who go for testing and asking the suspects to go into quarantine. If you self-shoot your own front-line soldiers in the fight, it’s nothing short of collective suicide. Of course, panic brings up the worst in us. It can bring the best also, provided we reflect over things and beat our primal instinct of fear.

The conduct of police during the crisis has won my heart. They are going out of all their routine calls of service and doing everything they can do. After duty hours, lady cops are sewing sanitary masks, cooking and serving food. The families of the cops are helping their valiant soldiers by doing all they can do to contribute to the cause. It raises hopes that there is still ample of goodness left to defeat the hellish virus. The people are setting up community kitchens and making arrangements for the homeless to stay indoors at community centers. Adversities carry the prospect of bringing the best in us. There are many faceless heroes in the campaign. Their efforts may never be known, but their souls will reap rich rewards born of selfless service to humanity.

The people seem to be discovering new terms of being human. That seems to be the only icing on the cake. A municipal garbage collector, clad in his poor sanitary worker’s green jacket, his weapons against the invisible enemy being just a mask, his feet in tattered slippers, slowly pulling his rickshaw cart of garbage dump, is showered with flowers by the people clapping, cheering and applauding from their balconies. He looks up. His faceless persona lights up with a newfound pride. For the first time he is visible among the muck and garbage he works in. Earlier even the stray dogs were more visible. He has tears of pride in his eyes. People shout their loads of gratitude. He pulls his rickety cart with renewed strength.

There are many who are so restless that they can’t bear the ignominy of staying indoors for so long and would slip out like errant kids. They grapple with the shooting pain of incarceration and given in to the iterative winds of freedom lurking outside teasingly and gingerly. The police, freshly painted with laudatory colors, catches them with easy-flowing enthusiasm. Now the severe most punishment for the restless types is to force them into the art of restfulness, Yoga. The police lines them up, right there in the middle of the deserted road and they are sternly taught to do Yoga. Given their stiffness of bodies and frigidity of uncaring, inconsiderate heart, they seem to have undergone the Yoga torture for the first time in life. They would prefer even hard leather work on their bums in order to avoid this Yoga torture. Well, the police knows to hit where it hurts the most!

The medical staffs are getting infected. God forbid if the soldiers of the war against Corona start deserting the field. In Italy, Spain, France, UK and America things are moving to an unprecedented chaos. In Spain, with medical facilities falling short, they are forced to give ventilator to younger people instead of the old patients who might have lesser chance of survival. Patients are lying in the corridors just like they do in poor third world countries. Corona has eaten away all globe-shaking issues of nationality, economic wars, military rivalries and strategic game-planning. It’s just one little species fighting for survival. Hope the feeling of unity in the fight against Corona continues even after this episode is over. We will need it more and more in future because the challenges will be global in nature instead of being local, regional and national like in the past. This acceptance will do us the best favor we can do to ourselves. Our joint survival depends on clean departure from unsustainable policies which have almost toppled us over the precipice.

The medical experts say, and there are statistics to prove it also, the males are more vulnerable to Covid-19. It’s a benignly squinting fact. It’s high time the patriarchy comes out of self-hallucination where its proponents hold lofty analogies with all and sundry symbols of power and supremacy. This kind of fancy jargon will land them in pits of bereavement. Their behavioral taglines of smoking, drinking and other indiscipline in life leave their immunity on the lesser side in comparison to females. There are social, biological and behavioral reasons for this. The males, holding the directorial reigns over society, are predominantly responsible for the things having gone wrong on this planet. So by hitting males more than females, Mother Nature is passing a message: Let there be higher participation of females in planning and running the affairs of this world. Their greater role in running the world will turn it into a better world I swear! Mother earth needs a feminine touch to heal. The crude fingers have literally molested her. And her patience is wearing thin.

Corona is doing some sort of reverse engineering. The poor people, who are yoked in the rough and gruff of life milling with endless cuts and wounds, are sitting idle and washing their hands regularly. They will have the best shiny versions of their poor peoples’ hands. They will have softer, shinier hands! The rich and the privileged, on the other hand, have to do all their household chores themselves, so their hands will acquire rough avatar. Limitless are the somersaults of fate: a king can turn a beggar and a beggar may become a king. So never ever commit the mistake of taking anything for granted. Things are simply in a flux.

Imran Khan gives a lot of human rights lectures about India. Right now, during this Corona crisis, when people have become suddenly jobless, they push out poor Hindu and Sikh families from the queues waiting for ration and food. Pakistan is an officially Islamic country. They can do it as per their constitution and religious priority, but as per the holy laws of Koran, there can’t be a bigger sin than discriminating against people on such grounds and deprive them of even a little meal. It has turned out to be one of the worst places on earth, I tell you. The Muslims of India have every reason to feel thankful to Allah for being Indian citizens.

With abundance of consumerist supplies drying up from the globe, the people should learn and hone the art of surviving on the basic minimum, just for need, not for greed. As you have more time with your children, tell them the story how Mother Earth was raped. Be frank in your acceptance of the mass blunders of the current and past generations. Make them understand the value of sustainability. Confess with a frank look in the eyes. Set up an example to them about living a joyful life instead of an unhappy wealthy one. That will be your contribution: Churning out a valiant next-gen soldier of sustainability to protect future. Laugh more, play games as per the suitability of your house, tell them stories and spend quality time. Misfortune comes with the prospects of new seeds and saplings after the storm is over. Use it properly, or be prepared for bigger ones in future.

All of us anywhere over the planet stand equal chances of being caught on the wrong foot by the Corona army. So, only preventive measures aren’t sufficient. Don’t just spend all your energy in panic washing of hands and getting locked up behind seven locks, go for curative ones also. Strengthen your immunity. All of us are net-doctors with plethora of knowledge and tips on the internet. Do everything possible to upscale your immunity including balanced diet, exercises, Yoga and meditation. Try to be a robust joyful soldier. Make your armor sturdier so that you can withstand the Corona arrows now and other bugs stalking in the roadside bushes as you again go out once this particular bug is vanquished.

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At the most we can just prepare for the next stage of our individual battle! Corona is ridiculing all our efforts to tame it. Even the sleepy town and remotest hamlets are abuzz with the talk of the health hazard it poses. It’s no longer a disease of the moneyed class as a lot many countryside chums earlier believed.

The markaz maulana has gone into hiding after giving a cashable chance to the Hindu chauvinists to spread mischief and sow the seeds of suspicion against the minority. Can you believe people still take their words when they proclaim: ‘Corona doesn’t spread in masjids!’ It’s good to have unqualified and unconditional faith. But even the object of one’s faith would like some common sense among the followers. When they say that crowds in masjids are safe from Corona, it’s as foolish to proclaim that you won’t be killed if you jump in front of a speeding truck. Allah loves you, but expects you to be loving and careful also, apart from having unconditional faith in Him.

Almost all the Muslims in India are peace loving citizens. Still there is a significant chunk who have been brainwashed in the name of faith to wage Jihad against the so-called non-believers. The proponents of the politics of polarization can easily influence the unsuspecting Hindus with the argument that if the Muslim zealots can destroy their own bodies with suicide vests, the prospect of carrying Corona to spread it deliberately, where there is a big chance of survival of the self as well in comparison to the explosives, the prospect of offering their services as the live-agents of Corona are very much high. The paid-out mainstream media is building this communal narrative of the pandemic and people are easily buying it. No wonder the minority carries brainstorming travails. Reason and logic appears to be stashed away for the time being. The air blows disturbingly.

It’s a fact that about a thousand people had gathered at the Nizamuddin congregation. Pushed by a Tsunami of accumulated rumors, people are buying the story that many of these worshippers have now spread into all four directions of the country. Many are still hiding and not coming forth for testing and isolation. The Islamic angle to Corona, pushed round the clock by vociferous media, has egged on the government to go vocal. It appears determined and hard-pressed to track their footprints in the chaotic well-beaten paths of the populous India, making it very difficult to trace these virus carriers. You can expect Hindus to be offended. And out of the millions of offended Hindus, a few overzealous ones, possessing vested communal interests, may rake up the communal fire. Who will suffer? Of course, the poor, innocent commoners in the fold of Islam will have to pay for the follies of the few of their religious brethren. The real culprits are too smart and shady and manage to sneak out. The communal consequences of the Corona pandemic can be really catastrophic in India.

The people are debating about the options of mass testing or isolation. Mass testing has worked in South Korea. But we should not forget, they are small countries with manageable population. There are hardly any social challenges put forth on the basis of caste, class, creed or religion. India is a mammoth society, always sitting on the Pandora box of countless differences ready to flare up at the slightest instigation. We have slum areas which have more population than the entire capitals of medium-sized countries. So we are hard-pressed when it comes to manage Corona like South Korea did.

Ideally, mass testing and complete lockdown are the best options against a virus that has no vaccination. Unfortunately, India hardly has any option in this regard. Our best chance lies in complete lock-down and keep pushing the deadline of community spread for as long as possible, allowing more and more time for mass awareness to sink into the roots of the individual conscience. There will be a community spread. There is hardly any doubt about it. But we can postpone that and break the momentum for exponential growth as witnessed in Western countries. Let there be a case anywhere and just clamp down on the locality and focus on the entire area with more strict measures. These are minor check-dams against the Tsunami. Of course, testing rates will go up as more and more focus is diverted to these relatively high risk areas. All we can do is to hope for people’s cooperation in following the lockdown rules and keep waging their daily battles to stay happy and healthy indoors.

The measures like changing railway coaches into quarantines centers are very practical. We have one of the largest railway networks in the world. These definitely have high prospects against the pandemic as mobile field hospitals.

As people like you and we are waging our individual battles against the pandemic by compromising on our freedom and economic and social interests, the time and pause should be thoroughly utilized in preparing for the second stage of the fight. Right now we are fighting from our little posts, from the security of our houses. We have lot of choices. We have many safety sets defined by our four walls and our freedom to choose regarding what to do and what not to do. The individual safety manual during the lockdown has been repeated countless times till now. I think all of us can recall it with more clarity than any other theological or common interest book: The manual for personal isolation, the rules of individual hygiene, the rules of dos and don’ts. Recheck it if you haven’t done even till now!

However, what after the fight comes out in the open at the next stage? There is hardly any possibility that we will have a vaccine against Corona within the next one year. And no country can afford to shut down completely for that amount of time. It means we will have to come out to survive. Presently, it’s like a family patriarch or matriarch has stocked food and economic means for the emergency one or two months, so it is easier to fight from the safety of one’s house. But when the food is spent and you are forced to come out to wage another battle of socio-economic survival, and you still don’t have any vaccine, there will be equal chance of anyone getting infected anywhere in the world? What will you do?

You hardly have a choice about controlling the externals in this case. All you can do is to strengthen your immunity, forge your framework of holistic health, the sum total of your mental, physical and emotional health. Start preparing for that well in advance. All of us do have some idea about how to be mentally, physically and emotionally strong. Churn out your own individual survival kit. There is hardly any specific set of rules about that. Your inner self will guide you for that. We have commonalities to strengthen our physical selves, but we do have different emotional and mental needs to boost up our systems. Work out your holistic health plan while you have the option of staying within the safe premises of your house. Don’t postpone it. For you surely have to come out, right there on the broad stage of life, where there will be equal possibility of anyone getting infected anywhere in the world. The only vaccine as of now is how much aware we are and what we do to strength our ramparts for the second stage of war in the open battlefield.

Right now it’s like a guerilla warfare. The next stage will be an open battlefield. There the stronger will survive and the weak may perish. It’s never too late. All of us have our strengths. Build upon that. Cut down on the weaknesses. Who knows it may come out as a happier and healthier world after this crisis is over!

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Midway through the first week of April, 2020, the worldwide figure of Corona infected people has crossed one million. More than 50,000 people have fallen victim to the virus. America alone has more than a quarter millions infections. Health service workers are protesting against the lack of medical facilities and personal protection equipment. There is shortage of ventilators, masks and gloves in America. Doctors are forced to use the same mask for days on end. Can you believe it? These are the scenes usually stalking the humanity in poor countries. Corona appears to have melted all differences across the globe. Let’s accept the force of temporariness and avoid the mistake of taking things for guaranteed! This much of collective sense will smoothen the path after this testing phase is over.  

The heat is building up with irresistible stuttering. However, the early summer rhythm is gone and things look stale and spiritless. Mishaps are waiting merely an earshot away. Things are getting stretched between two extremes. You have people worshipping doctors like warrior gods against the deadly enemy. Then you have frustrated mobs attacking lady doctors doing their routine testing in suspected Corona case households. People are decorating the poor sweepers and municipal cleaners like grooms by putting flower and rupee garlands around their neck. Then you have markaz maulanas, who have been quarantined to save their own and others’ lives, misbehaving and even flashing in front of female medics. Can you believe it? NSA has been slammed against these people. They may have abandoned all sense of reason and behave so piteously but most of the people accept that they deserve it. It is nothing short of sedition against the country, they say.

To make it more serious, a little group of mischief-mongers among the Muslims is doing the dirty trick of flaring the people’s emotions. While 99% of the Muslims are right there in the mainstream of our common pains and collective happiness, the little rascally group is trying its level best to turn the situation communal. You have the video of a blinded jihadist brave heart rubbing currency notes against his sneezy nose and proclaiming that it’s Allah’s scourge against the kafirs for their sins. What a moron! This Corona hardly knows whether it’s a Muslim or a Hindu cell.

On the one hand you have educated people flouting all norms and almost deliberately spreading the virus, on the other you have heart-melting pictures of a haggard old farmer wearing mask while riding his bullock cart deep in the ruts of countryside pathways. Well, nothing too newsworthy about it. Love for life is the primary instinct. To make it a remarkable affair, even the pair of bullocks pulling the cart have their muzzles covered under green masks. It’s a lovely picture of having compassion and love for life during these testing times. It’s a seamless metaphorical event carrying the living message of caution and care.

The seemingly overworked PM again addresses the nation, for the fourth time in two weeks. People appear to pay heed to his words. He carries a moral power and speaks with honest conviction, which melts many a careless heart. The night is dark. He has exhorted the people to wage a war as the soldiers of light on the night of April 5 at 9 PM. He has asked people to switch off all bulbs and light up diyas, candles and even mobile phone torches as a symbol of mass support against the dark period. Such symbolic moments go a long way in sowing the concrete seeds of substantial action against the pandemic.

Isn’t it surprising that we can survive on the basic minimum, just at a tiny fraction of all the food, wealth, cars and consumer items we have ended up pooling and cramming to the ceilings in our households as well as in our minds! I think this is the time to realize the fine line separating need from greed. Things are very simplistic at their core, only we are the compulsive disseminators of sophistication.

The soldiers meant to defend borders are running community kitchens. The most flamboyant fashion houses, whose one weirdest-most flimsy dress goes into building a momentum of millions of dollars, are working on making doctor coats and other medical clothing. Stadiums where million dollar players would kick the ball into the netting are being changed into quarantine shelters. Thousands of mammoth metallic birds, which boom across the skies, scaring all the lesser birds, have gone silent. It’s the time to reflect and go into acceptance of some hard facts and wrong choices we adopted.

Amid all the horrific tales of the Corona pandemic, the non-human part of nature finds it eerily quiet. On the spookily silent roads, a herd of mountain goats climbs down from the surrounding mountains and does a cautious goat parade on the smooth tarred road. Their hoofs clanking with a strange tip-tapping music, playing like a drum beat to finish the parade before the owners of the road come rushing down again in the mad race.

The early summer sun is smiling with astronomical brilliance. In my courtyard, the potted plants have happy healthy flowers. We may have lost our smiles for the time being, but the flowers try to put up a lesson. There have been storms, quite powerful ones, during the recent weeks, but the flowers haven’t lost their spirit. They continue blooming. Lesson for us! Of course, we will overcome the odds. It would be best if we emerge as a positively changed species once the dark night is over.

A purple sunbird is feeding on the nectar. It’s a little story of balanced give and take. No greed involved. Hovering over the flowers, it gathers its late morning breakfast. The flowers are welcoming their kissy pollinators in return. Under the late spring’s harsh sunlight, its glossy purple color gives metallic blue iridescence. The little foot-soldier of Mother Nature with its down-curved bill is busy in its duty to survive and fulfill its role in the larger scheme. Its rapid ringing notes send a message of happiness and contentment. I stand mesmerized. My restful happy look doesn’t create panic ripples in the air around. It goes on with its job on the flowers just three feet away. I am transfixed. I feel honored to be there in the selfless arena of Mother Nature not as an intruder, but as a respectful spectator.

Somewhere in India, in the oddly silent and uncrowded premises of a gated colony, a cobra lays claim on a bit of life and living on the abandoned stage. Don't panic and don't get offended. The roads are empty and the vehicles are free for a ride. He wants to go for a joyride! The people staring from balconies, windows and gates are scared. It has got into the headlamp guard of a scooty. The fearsome reptile lops out its tongue, sensing the danger running through the human blood in the form of panic hormones. People are making videos from a safe distance. A snake catcher pries open the covering and there it pops out, its hood taut, ready to take on the entire group of people around. It hisses and sways with confidence. It has to create fear. It’s hardly interested in wasting its precious venom on something it cannot eat to survive. However, our inherent fears turn us blind to its mock threats, taking it as an assault on humanity. No wonder, mobs run to kill a snake with the wildest enthusiasm. Thank God, there is a snake catcher on the scene. Moreover, the humanity is on the back foot right now and they don’t seem too eager to get it killed.

It’s adventurous to look at its typical Cobra fearlessness carried by its majestic hood. As the king reptile it carries the instincts to stand face-to-face against all odds. It has the honor of being a succinct symbol of Lord Shiva's destructive attributes, which are as important as the forces of creation. A beautiful creature! I once remember walking outside my village. There it came, the majestic black shiny cobra. They say it's very confident. And why won't it be!? It will not change its path. It raised its hood from a little distance. I marveled at its confidence and majesty. I gracefully backed out, looking at it, lost in its sweeping powers to hiss furiously for survival.

Faraway in the Amazon forests, a Jaguar pounces on a crocodile basking under the sun on a sand bar in a river flood plain. If at all you can't help being predatory, then try messing up with a bigger rascal than you! If you engage with a bigger villain than yourself, without trampling the world of feebler hearts than you, and tame and trample the idiot, even the biggest moralists will hardly have anything to condemn you for your bloodied ways. Beyond the equation of right or wrong, on the impartial raw stage of life and living, the gutsy predator fights the huge reptile right there in its own territory and earns its meal in a fair and square way. It bravely walks on the tightrope of life and death with equal probability for life and death each second, every moment.

In the desert state of Rajasthan, around a public fountain a mother monkey trains her little son in the art of becoming a man. The water basin is a narrow rectangular diving pool. A tall aesthetically done, decorative, stone-worked column overlooks the narrow diving pool. The little monkey has to dive to join the league of prestige and manly entitlements. It hesitates. The pool below is quite narrow and height is quite daunting for its small frame. Mismanage your jump and there can be severe injuries or even death. The mother but knows the importance of this jump and stealthily pushes from behind. The little coma of hesitation is deleted by her to write the success story of her upbringing her kids with a fine balance of maternal care and hard teachership. All we need is a push from behind by the mother to conquer our fears and take on life and be a man of character, the trophy of her tapasya!

In the tropical grasslands somewhere, with spring air singing the songs of love and passion, the marvelous game of life and living unfolds. The grass is tall. The black shiny widowbird has to jump higher and higher to beat all rivals. Its long tail is swaying as its insignia of manhood. She watches from a high branch. Keep hopping and hopping. High jumps and the ability to last till the end when there is no rival left are the formula of success to sow the seeds of propagation from their individual end. And the hero nearly draws out the last ounce of his strength to dive into the pools of ecstasy later on. The field is left for him to gather his fruits in the form of her reciprocation to his passion. Keep jumping, keep jumping. Catch her attention! Persistence is the success mantra! Jump higher than the rest! Give your best. Tire yourself out. If nothing else, your aching, exhausted body will fetch you the grandest of sleep at night!

In the luscious green and buxom serenity of a Papua New Guinea forest, the Bowerbird's grand performance takes place beyond any disturbance and ripples from the human society. It’s a beautiful bird with blue beak, yellow eyes having dark pupils, dazzling red throat and head, and shiny yellow black-fringed wings: A little feathery bouquet of multiple colors. Love is in the air. It dilates its pupils. It starts with an introductory jarring chirp of its overflowing passion and confidently begins the show. He puts up a mesmerizing show. The princess to be wooed is spell bound. Look into my eyes he says and deliciously dilates his pupils like a mischievous wizard. The feathered hypnotizer lets out wheezy weird calls and waves his wings like a brave matador's cape. She is transfixed. The show is so eye-catching. She can’t help it anymore. Her interest is aroused with a sweet feminine surrender. She drops him a hint. Picks a wild berry in her beak and drops it on the ground. It’s a bouquet of love, her reciprocation. He picks up the bouquet and continues with the rhythmic steps which soon progress into foreplay. He head-butts her bosom. Intimacy builds up. It’s the opportune time to take the experience to its peak. The rival but arrives at the worst possible time. What a loss! The lovemaking moment is lost like a shape of clouds disappears on the infinite blue of the vast sky canvas. O thou crestfallen lovebirds, never lose hope. Disappointments are written large everywhere, especially with love. Give your best, like him, woo your woman to the core of your soul, and leave the rest to destiny. Sometimes things don't work even if there is consent written largely in her eyes. Keep flying. Keep smiling. Don't lose heart. Maybe you haven't yet come across your soul mate!

In an African jungle hut, an Orangutan is sawing off tree boughs like we humans saw logs. She is totally wild. The saw dust flies as she expertly saws it off, using her legs to steady the log. She manages to make smart pieces. O thou pausing humans, give them some more time to make their own huts. They are entitled to this support because you have been through this stage earlier.

Now tell me, with so much of life and living still going on with majestic ease, will Mother Nature be that merciless to keep we humans away from such bliss for too long? It certainly will not! We have been put into quarantine just as a mild punitive assignment to mind our behavior.

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Well, each and every day of April makes me realize what big fools we all have been despite our over-working cognitive ability in the brain. Melting ice-blocks and burning Amazon forests bear testimony to our over-ripe sense of purpose in seeking destiny tirelessly. Come on, let’s share some bear hugs with our true self during Corona-bombarded times.

As you go within and start having a discourse with your real self, satsang, a tiny lamp starts shining, and many a disillusion simply disappear. You taste the nectar of mystical peace. You feel like you have hit the ultimate jackpot. You feel like you are blessed with the most valuable wealth. Unlike the other forms of wealth we are acquainted with, we don’t want to cling onto it and hide it from others. You just feel like sharing it. There is hardly any option. The knot gets loosened and you feel floating on a higher plane of existence. From this elevation, you see the world below, watch it in totality. The complete picture erases the erroneous spots born of the lower fragmented view when you saw dead-ends even in the little streets. Now you see the beautiful pattern of the maze. The riddle vanishes, simply because there wasn’t any.

The kind, old, simple-hearted retired teacher is almost double of my age. ‘My eyes start overflowing with tears whenever I hear, read, do or see something about dharma!’ I remember him telling me a few months back. He came to convey his condolences on the occasion of my mother’s departure for her further journey. We had a long talk about the issue of life and death. I remember tears of acceptance, compassion, love and joy in his eyes. Now the other day, he calls me over phone. I am humbled by his words. Torrential waters of his compassionate self eat away big chunks of my remaining ego. I myself get tears in my eyes.

‘Sant ji, you are an enlightened soul! Please be my spiritual guide!’ his words are drenched with the pining fluidity of emotions. I now recall the tears in his kind, old eyes when we had met the last time.

I am humbled beyond words. The surge of my emotions is the only answer to him. ‘You have already your guru in you Master ji, your soul, the real you!’ I somehow manage.

He has raised me to the vaults of heavens, but I feel belittled to the micro size of a dust speck around anybody’s shoes on earth. I then add value to his devotion and honeyed mellowness by adding my own surrendering words of devotion. I speak like a student speaks to his teacher. I give him full respect. By the end of our discussion, we have learnt a lot about life and beyond. Most importantly, I have salvaged my right to pay him unqualified respect as an elder. 

In the same vein, I should mention a hardworking farmer in his 70s. He has been a karmayogi, and has toiled like a brute throughout his life. Now the hard-worked soil, irrigated with his sweat beads, has started to sprout forth flowers, the fragrant colors of divinity, of mystical messages.

‘My eyes flow like rivers as I read about the stories of saints and their pious deeds!’ he tells me. He looks very expectantly, with the eagerness of a child, trying to know a bit more about the reason for the same from a supposedly ‘educated’ guy like me.

‘It’s a very auspicious sign Uncle!’ humbled again, I begin my modest discourse. ‘The river has started to flow. The heat and light of love beyond the self has started to melt the frigid icy mountain of ego, fear and self-identity. Your awareness is expanding. Ego is like an ice-block, rigid, knotted, imprisoned and unmoving. One’s awareness is constricted in a hard knot. As the merciful rays of divine beneficence start falling on it, it melts. A river gushes forth. These tears, this salty water, are the stream of your melting ego, the enlargement of your awareness. Your consciousness is expanding. It will flow, acquire more space and taste more of life and living. Keep journeying uncle, the warmth and light of unconditional love will further uplift you to the endless expanses of airy travels. The river will further expand to airy free swirls as the water molecules will further lose their fluid watery grip to evaporate and turn into air. It means further expansion, more extension of awareness to the maximum limit to merge individuality with universality. It’ll be a beautiful transition from a frigid clod of egoistic ice to a free floating molecule in the airy sea. Well, that’s the journey. You are in an amazing state uncle, feel blessed with this flow, this fluidity, for this is what takes you to the next stage of evolution. The basic element in air, water and ice remains the same. Just that molecular structural arrangement changes!’ here I have to stop as I feel that now I am getting bitten by the bug of bookish knowledge about molecular structure and all. His eyes are streaming with happy, graceful tears, a proof that my little effort at interpreting it has found a sweet home in his simple farming mind. Moreover, heart has its own logic to perceive reality. It can beat the best of super-brains.

He is overwhelmed. For a moment, I get panicked he may touch my feet. Thankfully, uncle avoids the catastrophe. My head is itching to get a fatherly blessing from his rough hands and I adopt the meek look of a child ready to receive his blessings. But then he finds me too learned and supposedly wise to put his hand on my head. I am deprived of blessings by a lovely soul. But we shouldn’t forget, between the surrendering touch of feet and the blessings on the head, there lies the vast and sacrosanct temple of the heart, where all and sundry meet on the same plane of being the very same poor, little souls searching for the ultimate peace and joy. We two seekers of the truth meet in that temple, and inevitably the temple’s sole ritual, i.e., a bear hug, follows with effortless ease. Fuck Corona idiot! It cannot enter such pure temples, where hugs are life-saving even during the Corona-bombarded times.

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Although still very much in the grip of the pandemic, and not having much clue to what shape and size humanity will come out of it, we still have the choice of sowing the seeds of a new world post Corona. It needs no hard-boiled academic or philosophical formulation to learn from one’s mistakes. All we need is an ounce of humility and acceptance of the mistakes we have been committing over the centuries.

As the Corona epidemic puts up a painful pause over the globe, life and living gets redefined in sweet-sour ways. The worldwide figure by the end of first week of April is close to 1.5 million with 75000 deaths. There are tears of loss as people lose their near and dear ones. Sadly, most of the deceased are not getting the farewell they deserve. New York, the city of dreams is the worst affected with around 7000 deaths so far. Pushed against the wall, the authorities are mulling over still sadder option of mass burial. It seems nothing short of a third world war, with Homo-sapiens on the one side and Mother Nature on the other. 

We have been dwarfed by mass fear and cascading panic. We shouldn’t have any misgivings, the virus looks prepared for a long haul. However, we humans live on hope, which is as much a need of ours as water and air. We have this awareness of being hopeful. As a derivative of hope, we can search and contrive—even in the bleakest of situations and their ugly ramifications—the moments of celebrations as well.

Fighting like an ill-equipped army pitted against a far superior and stealthy force, the honorific squads of doctors and nurses are meticulously holding the fort for one common humanity. It’s a phenomenal fight. They are sandwiched between the dichotomy of life and death. We have many martyrs from our front ranks.

As our courage veers away, we pull it back through tiny triumphs. When big outright wins aren’t coming forth, it’s advisable to embrace little ones. They keep the baton of hope from falling off forever. In the same vein, the people and medical staff give an applauding farewell to the recovered patients as they leave the hospitals. They are the proof of this wonderful human system. They represent its natural ability to preserve the life force in it even though our best healthcare labs haven’t been able to manufacture an antidote. This system is endlessly miraculous. The more we learn, the lesser it appears. It has a mystical sovereignty. We can hardly decipher what it has to say on this. In gratitude, people salute the inherent immunity, which is churning out its own resistance in the absence of any man-made antibiotics.

It’s a gloomy picture painted with downright tiresome colors. Many European countries have 100,000 plus cases. PM Boris Johnson of the UK is in the ICU. The leader fighting against Corona has been seriously wounded. Let’s pray he recovers to start fighting again! The death figure is scarily creeping up. The US with 374,000 plus cases and more than 10,000 deaths has requested anti-malarial drugs from India. PM Modi is apparently helpless. He cannot unconditionally export the only apparent solution so far against the virus even to the closest allies whom he needs to save himself from the orangutan red bully in the neighborhood. Heart says one thing, mind says the other. It’s a see-saw conflict.

Conspiracy theories are circulating as a natural corollary to any kind of disaster. Our mind is caught up in a naïve furor. In the UK, people have attacked the 5G towers. A word is doing the rounds that the current pandemic is the result of the decreased immunity due to the 5G radiation. In any case, any sort of technological muddling is sure to result in infidelity and transgressions against our immune system. China, the robotic businessman always free to march ahead through any means and ways in the absence of democratic dissent, ever eager to add to Yuans in its kitty, is now expertly negotiating trillions of dollars worth Huwei 5G technology in lieu of medical supplies. Business is the sole God of the atheist communists. As the world writhes and seethes under the clean painful sweep of the virus, the majority of the common people see a Chinese hand in the current situations. The governments may have their protocols and show exceptional restraint in pointing out the culprit, the masses but appear to be pretty much convinced about the Chinese trappings in the pandemic.   

Against a common threat, the human society is portraying both mundane and not so mundane reactions, either for the good, or for the bad. Both tragic and comic dynamics are sweeping the segments. In the gardens of the gated colonies, with people stacked up on floors above floors, the policemen are making an easy transition from being scarecrows to become uncle Santa. The people have been forced to question their own sense of veiled criticism, animosity and rivalry against the khaki. They aren’t just the stern gatekeepers who have locked people up with the entire countries being turned into mass prisons. In the gardens of gated colonies, the cops, in gym track-pants and T-shirts, gyrate to the acrobatic exercise beats and lead the people in doing some physical workout in their balconies. Peering across their balconies and windows, the people catch up the strains of optimism and start exercising. It’s better to muster up strength against the enemy leering over the walls.

Let there be world-level philanthropists, goody-goody doers and charity messiahs, that doesn’t intimidate and deter this slight-built man from doing all he can do for the cause of humanity. The cyclist crusader has a rickety cycle decorated with Corona warning and safety messages. The carrier behind has a big pot full of his cooking to feed the hungry. He dons a mask, a pair of gloves, his clothes are poor but cleaned with confidence and dignity. As he pedals ahead on the mission, the humanity takes one huge step against the invisible enemy. This is the beginning of our victory and Corona’s defeat.

Trump may have prioritized economy over people while delaying the imposition of lockdown, here in this resource-crunched country, the government sees only up to a point where lives can be saved. The economy is for the people, not vice versa. Do you get the message Mr. President? In the semi-desert district of Rajasthan, the principle of humanism is being taken one step ahead. The district administration is doing its level best to get animal fodder delivered to 300 villages. Cattle are almost family members in an agrarian economy. It shows the district administrators have decided to fight till the end.

Much to be happy about these positive developments, still the sour strains will keep pouring in as can be expected during such critical times when we are at an unflattering forefront of a lethal, invisible war. In a sleepy, green mountain village of Himachal Pradesh, amidst marvelously serenading strains of peace, the people show how far the feeling of insecurity, panic and fear has sunk in. The cold whimper of fear subverts all social mores. Its ramifications are creeping up the mountains. It’s intimidating and vandalizing the pure air. A woman from the village works as a nurse. She has been a steely front-line warrior woman against the virus and is granted recuperating leave for a few days at her native village. The villagers but get scared and deny her entry into the village, scared that she may carry the bug to them. They are antagonized to the extent of serving excommunication and ostracism on her poor head if she breaches the village boundaries. The district administration has to foray into the affair and literally fight the people to help her enter her house. With such unwelcoming gesture, I have hardly any doubts about the villagers’ insulting behavior during her stay here. Such social challenges are as grave as the deaths occurring due to the deadly virus.

In Sagar, MP, the priests of all the religions in India walk shoulder to shoulder to defeat the common enemy. It’s a striking fluidity of faith. In their secular and accepting enthusiasm, they cutely break the social distancing norm by the way. But the melting of inter-religious antipathy and discrimination is too big a reward against the little threat of Corona infection. Behind them masked policeman walk in marching symmetry maintaining a safe distance from each other. Let’s hope Corona gets scared by this show of solidarity. The society has to give a secular, humanist punch. Otherwise, Corona will bug minds also apart from bodies.

On the streets of Hyderabad, the police, again blurring the foci of the routine condemnation of their rude behavior, carries out a road show. It’s a beautiful mix of ‘matter of fact passing the message’, a show of strength along with an icing on the cake in the form of a sense of aesthetics. A lovely concoction! The bike riders wear Corona helmets, the evil-spiked ball. There is a four member column of horse-mounted policemen with a steely resolve of going to war. Foot-soldiers march carrying glaring placards and banners about the Dos and Don’ts in the face of the epidemic. The music tempo blares rhythmic beats to mellow down the typical policing frigidity. It looks half admonishing and half celebratory.

Dear brothers and sisters, many a marriage have been postponed for some better sunny day. Not too many people seem eager to start their conjugal duties in such a depressive environment. Those who still itch to jump into the bed, do it almost stealthily, as due to the lockdown rules one cannot have feisty congregations and high-flying ceremonies. There are instances where the bride and groom take hurried circles around the holy fire, their faces covered with masks and just 5,6 people witnessing the occasion.

Now, something about the most worrisome aspect of Corona, especially in India: communal consequences of Corona. Already there is a lot of polar ice kind of coldness between Hindus and Muslims in India, the roots going back to the partition time slaughters and even before when Muslims ruled the country for almost 1000 years. Currently, it is a massive political tool for all the major political parties. The religious differentials are so glaring that it is always like a livewire ready to give a blast.

Of course, the triggering agents are very few on both sides. But once the trigger is pushed, it lets out a cascading effect, aided and abetted by rumors and hearsay to take masses in the middle in its wake. The stony knots in the rigid communal hearts lands in the communal cauldron. It splashes the boiling waters on many a few simple minds both among the Hindus and Muslims. With around 4000 active cases, a third of these being directly related to the Markaz congregation in Delhi, the media profusely building the communal narrative of the virus, the Hindus are seething with anger. Even to the most secular minds this high percentage is too much to pass it off as mere chance happening. The people are ready to buy the communal conspiracy. The people seem convinced that they have every right to cook up their conspiracy theories. The majority of the Hindus now believe that it has been a well-planned bio-terrorism by the Jamatis who deliberately took the virus to every nook corner of the country to teach the Hindus a lesson. Almost everyone believes that it has been deliberately accomplished to put the country down to its knees.

In the Muslim majority areas of South Haryana, dozens of absconding Corona positive Jamatis have been traced after much boil and toil. The state government has been forced to seal the entire areas where these Corona carriers are supposed to have moved. Under such massive sealing measures, the common Muslims are bound to feel offended and a feeling of discrimination and alienation creep in already insecure minds. In the countryside, people see any skull cap as a potential Corona terrorist. I think the communal consequences of Corona will be the worst in India. 

At the Kanpur medical facility, where the Markaz Corona suspects are quarantined, they are on the path of Jehad. The way they have been rounded up, they have panicked and lost their wits. They have misbehaved with female medical staff. They are seen spitting around, threatening to infect all and sundry. In Lucknow, a few absconding Jamatis are caught hiding in a crowded bazaar adjoining the army cantonment. There are daily reports of law enforcement people tracing down the Jamatis who have gone underground. The media uses choicest hyperboles about these incidences. No wonder, most of the Hindus see it as a well planned ploy to spread Corona throughout the country. It may be true, it may be not. The problem is, in both scenarios only a tiny group is involved, but the entire Muslim population is being put under a scanner now. In reaction, even the common Muslims are reacting. They are refusing to cooperate with quarantine teams. They are insisting to do group namaaz just to assert that they have every right to practice their religion. In such circumstances, all the epidemic time restrictions appear like Government of India is targeting them. Well, that’s what the communalists want. At Kannauj, 40-50 namaazis are caught gathered for a group namaaz. It’s good for faith, but not for health. The government is forced to restrict all religious ceremonies across all religions to ward off the community spread of the virus. When the police teams reach the place, they are attacked with bricks and stones gathered on the top floor. I think all the hard core Mullahs who are putting the lives of common Muslims under risk by taking such rigid stance should be sprayed with chlorine-mixed waters till the virus of communal hate vanishes from their hearts. Corona on skin is less lethal than the communal virus in hearts and minds.

The entire country is glued to the news these days where you hear only and only the tales of Corona. All these communal strains of Corona are infesting the commoners’ minds far and wide. Hindus and Muslims usually stand very cold and detached from each other. In my village, there are some migrant Muslim laborers and a few Muslim families who stay in fruit farms having taken them on yearly rent from the local farmers. They are under a stern scanner now. The villagers are in panic and suddenly some rumor starts that some Muslims have seen in the streets at midnight. Then you hear that they are hiding some Corona positive Jamati who is still untraced. You can very well imagine the condition of a few dozen Muslims among thousands of Hindus. These common people are the ones who are at the maximum risk of communal violence. But then if things turn communal it helps all political parties. One party gets advantage from one group, the other from the other group. So Corona may not have much of political leverage, the communal consequences of Corona definitely possess immense significance. The only antidote possible so far to stop the scourge of Corona, social distancing, is further aggravating the sense of alienation among the Muslims and a sense of irritable aloofness is creeping among them. And if it flares up, who will lose the most? These will be the innocent Hindus in Muslim majority areas and innocent Muslims in Hindu majority areas. The real rascals on both sides hardly pay any price.

On a positive note, in Bhagalpur Bihar, three poor sisters, almost dying of hunger, call the PMO. The rasping sands of Corona have eaten away the famed Indian administrative apathy. Within just half hour of their call, they are the much relieved recipients of big packets of food and even new clothes. All the wings of administration are actually functioning the way they should normally. They are in fact justifying their salaries—many of them—for the first time in their careers. As they say, even misfortune comes with positives.

PM Modi is an expert in the art of rallying people behind him for a cause. He has requested people to switch off electric lights between 9 to 9:09 PM on April 5 and light lamps and candles as a Prakash Parva to create a feeling of unity among the countrymen to wage a battle against Corona and be ready to make some individual sacrifices. Quite surprisingly, people really listen to the PM and follow also as he patronly tells them. Lighting the lamp is OK, but you cannot expect the tempo to stay within the somber boundaries of the symbolism of a humble lamp to fight the darkness. People have to have their cannons also to ward off the evil, and remind the unpolluted skies that see we are down but not out. Be ready for our banging exhaust fumes when we come out again. So the leftover firecrackers from Diwali light up the sky and boom-boom go the blast, letting off huge plumes of smoke and airy vibrations shaking the steady wick of oil lamps. Here they won’t listen to even the honorable PM. His political opponents, though, have to condemn the move at all costs, even if it sounds without any rhyme or reason. Muslims again will see it as a majoritarian Hindu way of fighting. The Hindus will take it as a natural right born of majority numbers. The PM has to engineer some Muslim ways of fight also, so that they don’t feel as alienated as they do now.

The celebrities are under the risk of getting redundant during the lockdown stage. On the lesser exciting stage of life, all and sundry, from the strongest to the poorest, appear more or less the same. So the outgoing free-birds are doing their level best to stay in the minds and hearts of their fans from their drawing rooms by sending videos. Vicky Kaushal is seen cleaning his fan. I hope his image doesn’t get cleaned from the hearts of his fans. Or to make it more positive, let his fans start cleaning the dirt of insensitivity and ignorance from their minds and hearts.

As one gets into the corner, move onto the back foot, you get few extra hard punches, if destiny has decided to light a few more stars twinkling across your nervous system. So the poor elders, those very same reprimanding and shrieking bullies, have been made to do shit-ups and sulk like little errant idiots by the mother of all, the grand mama, Mother Nature. Now children, with their innocent selves, are closer and dearer to the grand mama. So now children have also run into the grown-up whiplashing fray. My nephew Nevaan, 20 days short of his fourth birthday, is using the fear psychosis prevalent around to get his parents scared and get away with his treat, the same and very same cartoon channel.

They are in the balcony, trying to put some online-dispatched homework into his little brain. He finds them not so confident in their bullying these days. Caged parrots as they are! He has parroted the common symptoms that are being narrated all around the globe. He can feel that these intimidating elders are much scared of something that they say gives fever and cold. So here goes the little manipulator, using his resources expertly in the changed circumstances: ‘Mummy I think I have fever, feeling cold, and my nose is running!’ he drops the bomb. ‘Let’s not stay in the balcony. Come inside, I feel sleepy, not well. Switch on the TV. May be I won’t feel the fever then!’ Little does he realize, he has been jumping like the naughtiest ape-kid in African jungles till the very moment when the study session started! Oofs, poor elders cornered like never before.

With the most evolved ones among the apes not jumping on the stage of life, the earth appears to be resting after ages. Seismologists have confirmed that earth’s crust is vibrating far less than earlier. It has gone almost into sleep. In the absence of our drama, everything seems to have gone into rejuvenation. Let’s make such civilization-level pause mandatory over the globe after regular intervals to allow Mother Nature heal and save it from a burnout.

Are the weapons of destruction and nuclear stockpiles helpful now? The US has shortage of medical equipment and medicines. The boundaries and differentials of international politics have melted and all we see is a group of scared Homo-sapiens, suffering in the very same way and seeking the very same solution. Shouldn’t we realize and remember this even after the worst is over? In the moments of pause, we can calculate the costs of our virtual animosities and insecurities, our limitless defense expenditures, our stockpiling of weapons which turn obsolete and redundant in the face of any danger that challenges us as a common humanity. These murderous weapons are relevant only in the cases where only a portion of humanity is engaged in confrontation on the basis of differentials contrived by our mind, which creates hypothetical values to satisfy our individual and group ego.

There being no solution for the common challenge so far, the medics are giving hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug in treating Corona patients. The US President has requested PM Modi, his dear friend, for urgent supplies of this drug. Unfortunately, things are tragically falling apart in the US. Now, PM Modi, afraid of things going out of control in his own house, has said ‘no’ to the request. I think as of now just apprehending that this stock may be needed in future in India is quite unwarranted. It is simply abiding by the age old rules, strictly created by the boundaries and walls of one-upmanship. As of now, there is one sufferer: humans across the globe. Let’s pause the national differentials for the time being and use our resources collectively! A patient, wherever he/she may be in need the medicine now, should be given priority as a citizen of earth, an earthling, the basic identity all of us share on this little planet. We need not stockpile medicines for future patients, while many die presently without them. Those who are dying in any country have a first right to the medicine irrespective of political and boundary divisions. This is the time for sowing the seeds of a collective spirit, a global community. Let’s make it a better world!

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The people have a dramatized, even to the extent of being romantic, version of the lockdown. Stopping and going into houses appears something out of box. They find it adventurous to begin with. It will but start squeezing them tight very soon. Most of us are too much out-bound in our approach to life and living, so staying at home will come out as a bit of torture, a kind of mild imprisonment. Well, we have been locked up en-mass for being the constituents of a system that turned nature angrier than it should normally.

Lockdown means there are no saloons to trim hair and beard. Many a lady will get a chance to look how they look in reality after being off the parlor seats for many weeks. Let’s hope people still recognize each other. The men may appear like brigands with their overgrown beards and hair. The women surely will turn out to be the savage counterparts of the male thugs. Well, I’m a poor Hindu with his choti swatted away!

On this Hanuman Jayanti, April 8, when the biggest, brightest and the nearest to earth since 1948 super moon tries to dispel the dark like a night sun, PM Modi has followed the age-old Indian principle of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, meaning this entire earth is one family, by allowing drugs to the countries most in need of it including the US. As a 14% bigger and 30% shinier moon blazes in the night sky, the temperamental US President has praised his friend Modi through a happy tweet, where he also mentions Hanuman Ji and Sanjivani Booti. The Indian Gods are acquiring a global status. Of course, we need a Hanuman and Sanjivani Booti to tame the rampaging rakshasha of Corona. I think, Modi will not only manage the affairs in India, he will emerge as a world leader post this crisis, when there will be a spate of critical rethinking about our collective priorities and certain ‘wrinkles’ in the fabric to be smoothened and ironed out by hook or crook.

Elsewhere, you have the foot soldiers waging pitched battles against the pandemic. Spirituality seems to have gone into hiding with the pious crowds vanishing from Haridwar streets. Gods appear to have abandoned we poor humans in this needy hour. A burly policeman has decked up as the fearsome Ravana, the demon king. He dons a huge fake mace, an elfish crown and intimidating handlebar moustache. He is thundering and hollering death threats into a microphone if someone dares to step out. ‘Corona is my Yamdoot, he is roaming around to take anyone loitering around unnecessarily!’ he lets out thundering peals of laughter, sufficient to push the hiding devtas still deeper into the Himalayan caves.

How I wish we had followed the Gandhian philosophy of fulfilling ‘need’ instead of running after ‘greed’. Now we have been taught in a hard way. A super-luxury carpet maker is making sanitary masks, again proving the fundamental point that it’s primarily about fulfilling needs, and saving it from falling into the clutches of greed.

The people have been torn between duties defining their responsibilities and emotions defining their personal life. In Indore, a young doctor, fighting in the front line against the deadly virus at one of the most affected places in India, has isolated himself from his family. He has to save patients by being with them. But he has to save his family also by not being with them. During his off duty time, he has set up his house in his car. His family and little kid can at least see him from a safe distance in their balconies.

Rigid looking cops have, surprisingly, lots of creativity which is blooming forth in the crisis. The Gujarat police comes out with a Corona band. The lead singer is a handsome young sub-inspector. He can go into making a nice actor from the looks of it. They sing beautiful Corona safety songs imitating the composition of popular Bollywood songs. Those romantic songs by celebrity singers and bands hardly hold any appeal as of now. The Corona band is ruling the charts.

We are all into this. It’s a collective punch at our conscience. In Taiwan, people are lining up to donate to help Corona patients in Italy. Full of gratitude and compassion, they have already collected more than 3 million USD. They still remember those testing times 75 years back when the Italian priests had built hospitals in Taiwan ravaged after the Second World War. Now they repay that kindness with lots of love in what can be safely called the Third World War. Long ago was sown the seed of kindness and now it bears fruit. An act of charity seldom goes undercoated. You can say, the seed of kindness, once sown, rarely dies. It has to blossom up. It seems to be almost a natural law.

From all we can see, we have solid reasons to suspect that the Chinese communists have a lot more role to play in this than it appears. I won’t be surprised if it comes out into the open that it’s a lab-engineered virus, a biological weapon. It leaves me quite flummoxed out of my senses. I even get a poetic outpour:

The rabid Chinese communist thugs,

And fundamentalist religious bugs,

Will tatter and tear

the majestic carpet to bloodied rugs,

Don't take their bait,

Don't engage them in hate,

At level theirs don't fight,

For it'll be devil's delight,

Love is the sole remedy against the bug,

Go, give them a sweet hug,

Goodness lies in every human heart,

Only on the surface bad doth dart,

May be they will realize,

It's the only harmless weapon

to cut the devil to a decent size,

Civil disobedience against

the Chinese communist thugs,

A loving embrace

to the blinded suicidal religious bugs,

Only this will quell the doom,

Or be ready for the devil's boom!

The real Corona has its genesis in a deadly ideology. World peace and harmony in future depend on whether we are collectively able to dismantle that ideology or not. The outside world cannot directly inject a remedy. That would be catastrophic. It can only help within limits. The real antidote is democracy and the people caught in the grip of this ideology have to fight for it themselves for their own and world peace. Sanitize the real ideological bug driving Covid-19. It’s high time to systematically neutralize the real ideological virus driving Covid-19. 

One may wonder, why would nature allow such agents to get such evil ideas and ambitions? It simply is a reflection of our own atrophied selves. The Chinese Communist Party and the religious fundamentalists are simply the sour fruits of the tree that we have all sown and nurtured. They are the tools for the inevitable consequences to occur. Even the consequences need a medium to operate through. They are simply the part of the same recipe that has gone further sour. Punishment comes in this or that form.

Surely, Mother Nature is angry! As the last of the millennial old Baobabs fall in Africa, Mother Nature seems to be withdrawing her blessing hand from us:

Not all is well,

Another Baobab fell,

The millennial old sages,

Mother's blessing arms for ages,

They now bid a sad bye,

Her blessings withdraw with a sigh!

Every adverse situation is counterproductive though. You see the Himalayas shining in their crowning glory from the farfetched dusty distances down south in the plains. Yamuna has bluish waters after ages. In Delhi! Can you believe it!? All is not lost buddies. There is a steady stateliness and spiritual sprightliness in Mother Nature’s steps as she marches on her journey of bestowing generous gratuities to all and sundry. The less polluted air is judiciously congenial in its touch. A more beautiful world is waiting to welcome you as you come out of this troubling phase!

In Hong Kong, a pair of Pandas is seen naturally mating after 10 years. Meanwhile, the experts and zoo authorities tried their level best to artificially stimulate love between the sulking pair for a decade. It bore no fruit. Now, with the peeping Toms gone, and Mother Nature whispering mischief into their ears with an offer of pervading pleasantries, the hearts of these cute giant Pandas bloom in privacy, and the flowers of lovemaking drizzle down. There seems to be some gain in lieu of all this Corona pain! Well, of course, we have to learn to calculate this gain beyond our strictly human-centric shoddy indulgence through our economic models. The models which are ensconced in servility to our unstoppable greed.  

A peculiar situation has built up here in the local agrarian society. With razor-edge excitement wheat harvesting is staring at the farmers’ worried faces. Already the inclement weather, with its motley mix of aggression and aesthetics, has chucked out a major portion of the crop. To make it worse, the migrant Bihari laborers have gone to their native places. The local labor, the low caste Hindus who bear the ignominy of sarcastic undercutting by the high caste born, can pull a few strings now. They have to feed on paltry situational dole outs. They are quoting 300 Kg of wheat and an equal amount of chaff fodder for one acre of crop cutting. On top of that, the otherwise aggressive, abusive and fixedly discriminatory farmers are forced to use courteous words when talking to them to save any offence. Their rough edges need to be hidden under gracefully proportioned feigned demeanor. Even then the local labor is hardly sufficient to harvest even a portion of the left out crop. So the modern day farmers have to toil like their grandfathers did in the fields to salvage at least that much of wheat that would stave off rats of hunger from their stomach in the coming year.

The humanity appears to be cornered in an inhospitable hothouse. Our institutional inadequacies lay threadbare under a cascade of alarming news. There is some inherently designed default in our approach. The virus meanwhile looks busy with a marathonic doggedness. A tiger has fallen prey to Corona infection in a US zoo. Far away in my village, the common quail is letting out its alarmist repetitive notes of ‘pakadleo pakadleo pakadleo’ ‘catch, catch, catch’ with a quickened curiosity as if it’s hooting from the side of the war-mongering Corona. I would prefer phonetically similar sounding ‘Kapildeo, kapildeo, kapildeo’ as a eulogy to the famed Indian cricketer. ‘Pakadleo, pakadleo, pakadleo’ turns the situation still more alarming, as if it’s egging on the devil Corona to be more aggressive.

There at a distance, a kala teetar, black francolin, is more dignified in its burst of four-worded calls ‘Dekh Ram Teri Kudrat’ ‘O Ram praised be thy creation’. Its notes carry the footloose fragrance of the countryside distances. A Muslim would prefer to hear ‘Subhan teri Kudrat’ in the same call. In fact, ‘teri’ and ‘kudrat’ are so indisputable and clear—as if spoken by the human tongue—that even fundamentally divisive Hindus and Muslims concur at least on this. Or you can say Muslims are more comfortable with ‘kudrat’ being an Urdu word. ‘Teri’ stands neutral.

A male cuckoo, mistily enveloped in love, is voicing the song of passion for the rapidly fading spring, which hasn’t augured well this time, at least for the human world. The female’s sound isn’t melodious and sonorous. It’s an excited burst of squeaking notes. Still the most irresponsible mother in the birdie world gets the sweetest of a lover. The male cuckoo, solemnly cuddled in pathos and pangs of love, lets out honey sweet, sonorous notes which ride the crest of excited spring air to play around many an ear. Her luck, what to say!

I can’t see light at the end of the tunnel after the current lockdown phase comes to an end on April 14. The way things are aggravating, it will surely be extended. My hair has grown wildly to give me the look of an old porcupine, which is shivering for life under an elephant foot. It’s better to look a man-handled ape instead of walking into some Corona infested saloon. I have the option of taking it as an Einstein look. But then after a time my head looks like a worst caricature of the spiked Corona ball. I can’t bear the ignobility of sharing a look with this devil incarnation. I decide to get it done, I mean the hair job. My brother gleefully awaiting the opportunity to give experimental furrows on my head is the only option I have. My trimmer, which has furrowed the crop on my chin, must have been feeling sadistically elated to taste unchartered waters. My niece is eagerly looking forward to some entertainment amidst the Corona boredom.

I politely, with fulsome exaggeration of etiquette norms, ask him to give an all-swiping clean off job, knowing fully well that one doesn’t need much of an expertise in swatting the entire crop in Toto. I have accepted my fate, saying anything to the contrary is a corpulent formality. I feel helpless like a sheep as he holds my head. The destiny seems always caught in the throes of composing my ruin. My spiritual romance in ruins, the trimmer buzzes around my ears, with the elated notes of my niece giggling, as he decides to try some spunky hairstyle first. You dare not, I warn. I but sound like a noontime barking cricket trilling on some lousy fallacy. I bark that he is just slamming his superannuated ego around my head. He hardly cares and with elaborate prefabrication of willpower harnesses the aesthetic allure of turning a master hair-crafter. Contrived with sordid stratagem, the first furrow is already there. He focuses with eventual verve. It’s a point of no return. Despite my repeated admonishments to do an all-clearing job, he, with an impatient radiance on his face, takes his styling job too seriously. My hair starts to get an erroneous eviction. Well, everyone wants to learn newer things during the lockdown.

How would you feel if someone tries to force the look of a dandy on your grand daddy face? I have an inkling of what they are up to. They are trying the cock-type spiked look of an adolescent boy in the neighborhood. I can feel the sides getting cleaned. My reverie is broken by my niece’s uncontrollable giggle. They are done with style number one. They hold the mirror to my face all this while trying their level best to convince me that it’s fine and looks normal even for someone who has crossed forty. They put up a mock show to be damn serious. They are trying to convince me to say ‘yes’. I am mesmerized by my old cock-crested look. My impulses and reactions have gone numb. Far away from all reactions, I feel like searching for some oddest new reaction to this.

I then break the reverie, dispel the childish transfixation and come with my only possible reaction. All this while, they have built hope that I may agree to their proposal and give them everyday entertainment, not just this fleeting sadistic pleasure at the moment. I give it all in expressing my resentment. Their hopes are tossed out. ‘An all-clear job is best for you idiots!’ I break the ponderous silence.

They have the prey again in their clutches. I am helpless. They try a few more styles and leave me literally a rakshasha. Ultimately, when they can no longer carry on with the experimentation, they try to do what should have been done right in the beginning. Now, I plead to at least get a well-managed clean job instead of giving me uneven furrows here and there. They have such a dubious super-evaluation of their skill and hold me with a contemptuous authority. To them it might be sidesplitting comedy but to me it’s automatically disconcerting. I feel like an errant kid getting punished. Then they declare it is done with a fleeting Romanesque look of pride. My choti, the signature of my sanatan dharma, of me being a Hindu is also gone under the deft strokes of ebullient enthusiasm. They have forgotten to keep a little patch of hair on the crown of my head, as a mark of respect to my highest chakra. Scandalous! Heresy!

In the Corona communalized environment, I pray I won’t fall into the hands of over-zealous Hindu mobsters who will penalize me, mistaking me as a baldy Muslim without the trademark Hindu choti. But then I will hold out another trademark insignia of not being a Muslim! Hee hee!!

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