MARCH 31, 2020
KARO-NA! Overwhelming
Corona is reshaping the world. Warships, railways, star hotels, soccer fields, churches, and mosques are new hospital addresses. Roads are empty, however, aircrafts have no parking space at airports. Nature is enjoying the change with low carbon emission around the world and earth’s vital organs are under repair. Hospitals are over stuffed; frontline responders are dying, German finance minister committing sucide, and powerful people under quarantine.
Is my optimism still intact? Humanity is in a tight grip of fear. Studies have shown that fear really is contagious, writes Eva Holland, author of Nerve:Adventures in the Science of Fear. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “It’s a survival mechanism,” she explains, “and it is designed not only to help us survive as individuals, but to help our communities survive too”. Stanford professors are advising us: “Distrust your eyes - they are easily deceived.”
On the other end of the locked world, Sir Elton John hosted the iHeart Living Room Concert for America from his home in Los Angeles and urged people to donate. People in balconies in Delhi and New York are clapping to show their gratitude to frontline workers for putting their lives ahead of ours. The cheer groups are led by the likes of Margaret Atwood and J.K Rowling. “Club Quarantine” are sprouting all over the virtual space and people are learning to live in smaller communities.
The Internet is new oxygen! People are surviving on this new source of breathing by fulfilling their social needs. The players in OTT space - Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar etc. are laughing their way to the bank, whereas the whole world is staring at recession and depression, much worse than the Great Depression of the 1929s. Look! how various television channels are surviving the dearth of content and making people watch 40 year old mythological serials - Ramayana and Mahabharata.
In the times of mayhem, there are still people who are completely oblivious of the situation on ground. French Marines aboard ballistic submarines are stealthily cruising ocean deep since the last 40 days when the world was different. On the other hand, American spies are facing an unexpected dilemma: how to cancel a clandestine meeting with a promising new recruit. “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884” by Vincent van Gogh has been stolen.
Isn’t all this overwhelming! The COVID-19 situation is changing by the hour and it is so unsettling for me to form one opinion of this situation as this scourge is shifting the goal post and for the time being moving ahead of humanity.
I still retain that I am an optimist!