Where Will We Find Ourselves Going Once The Pandemic Is Over… An Impossible Dream?

Where we once lived in a global community where our family and friends were just a drive away or a flight away, now it seems like an impossible dream…

We are currently living in unprecedented times, and going through unprecedented events.

From the beginning of the pandemic to now, the world has gone through waves of fear, uncertainty and even some hope at each stage, that probably the worst is now behind us. As the saying goes, that, ‘A drowning man will clutch at a straw’; that straw being vaccinations for the infamous SARS-Cov-2 virus.

However as we sit on the second wave today, the reality looks grim, looks scary and if I look at India, it is as if the country is on fire. I wanted to use a more hopeful phrase here, but the images that I have been seeing the past couple of weeks and the news that I am hearing, leaves me with no option.
As we struggle to keep our selves alive and our loved ones alive, we may want it or not, it is leaving us with lessons which one could never imbibe otherwise.

If only religion can help us now

A country whose undercurrent has been differences and division, is now united – individuals from every class, caste and religion are together in their fight – fight to be able to breathe. In these absolutely surreal times when we are struggling for ‘oxygen’, if ever a hypothetical ‘godman’ declares that demolishing all places of worship (temples/ mosques/ churches etc) would free the country of it’s misery, I see no doubt in my mind that the entire nation would stand united on this.

If ever people are made to believe that the ones going to gurudwaras are the ones who miraculously don’t catch the virus, we are sure to build gurudwaras at every nook and corner as they say.

The carnage brought about by the virus sees no class, creed and kind. And since this fire has reached almost all our homes, we would all come out of it with a very important lesson – if ever there is a ‘God’ he/she/it does not see or impose differences too.

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Power of the community

The pandemic has also brought about, once again, the power of community. In a situation where due to political negligence the health care machinery is failing, NGOs in India have once again risen up to the occasion.

These NGOs have to compete against the entire black market which has opened up due to the excess demand of oxygen and covid drugs like Remdesivir.

In any case, the numbers of infected are so huge, that the services provided are just not enough. Nonetheless, bad times have always proved that humanity does surface.

Where we once lived in a global community where our family and friends were just a drive away or a flight away, in times of need or celebration, one could always be with family no matter what their global location.

The pandemic has changed that completely. These are times where the ones physically close to us (in the same city and now probably in the same locality!) are the ones who are going to be with us – to share our grief or to share the few happy moments, which we might have amidst all this chaos.

What would life be like after all this is over?

Once all this is behind us, unfortunately with all the lives it has taken with it, it will leave the rest of us with the ability to know where our actual priorities should lie.

Life is not all fun and frolic, trips and parties. We might be more compassionate towards people who have it lesser than us and we would relate to the miseries which are not ours.

We might probably value a simpler life with the joys of actually being happy (and not the happiness which money can buy) with people who make us happy.

We might probably value our environment and Mother Earth and everything in it more, because we would have seen up close what it means when hell breaks lose.

Image source: YouTube

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