Never grown up faster than in two Covid years
WE LET OUR GUARD DOWN AFTER FLATTENING THE CURVE AND WALKED STRAIGHT INTO A SPIKE THAT REFUSED TO PEAK
It innocuously popped up on my Facebook homepage, a year old post about the tragedy of a lockdown. Instead of the intended aim to reminisce and rejoice, reading it filled me with remorse. To my own ears, the concerns sounded frivolous, my complaints so annoyingly inane. I seemed naive, almost clueless.
Though I keep saying that I won’t add these two unused years to my age, it’s indisputable that I’ve never grown up so fast. Not ever have I had a clearer sense of what is vital and what is not.
Last year, I was debating the usefulness of a lockdown. This year, I was begging for one, anything to stop the avalanche of deaths. Once again, I’ve put my life on hold and stopped doing what I do. I’m maid for myself, judiciously balancing my time and ‘mai’ time, but all this seems like a minor inconvenience.
Last year, the problem was forced admission of any Covid patient and institutional quarantine of all contacts, so much so that people avoided being tested to evade the stigma and inconvenience of incarceration. This year, the problem was overcrowded hospitals, overextended health professionals, elusive medicines, delayed lab reports and the uncertainty of the next whiff of oxygen.
The haunting images of jobless labourers trudging back home were replaced by the much more sinister images of pyres burning in makeshift cremation grounds, bodies floating down waterways and shallow graves on riverbeds. Back then, the dead were adequately mourned, their tragic ends recounted by family and friends. This year, too many people were dying. There wasn’t time to grieve because of the trail of sick relatives left behind.
Last year, the blame game was simple. It seemed the Tablighi Jamaat was singularly responsible for our misfortune. This year, we had a wider choice, the Kumbh, ill-conceived political rallies and countless social gatherings. Not to discount our own little lapses, using duplicate reports to travel, ignoring physical distancing rules and wearing masks not for protection but for the police!
Overconfident of our inherent immunity, with mass vaccination on the horizon and a declining positivity rate, it seemed we were out of the woods. We let our guard down after flattening the curve and walked straight into a spike that refused to peak.
I still feel that it takes little to perish but in the last two months, I’ve learnt that we need much more to survive. In a country where black marketing is the norm and prices of any projected panacea are hiked, the moneyed and wellconnected will have an edge. Because the state isn’t dependable, it’s each one for himself. The natural Indian instinct is to hoard anything and everything, last year it was pantry staples, this year it’s masks, medicines, oxygen cylinders, concentrators and possibly even wood for the final deed!
I lost professors, a few colleagues and two classmates over the past two months. Frontline warriors, who silently slipped away unsung. I’ve never felt so helpless. During the second wave, I became wary of social media. A flurry of messages on doctors’ groups usually meant that another member has been sacrificed in the line of duty. Life’s never been so uncertain and death so real.
It seems laughable that last year I was questioning the relevance of a life without the freedom to work, play and travel. “Ye jeena bhi koi jeena hai lallu?” I had injudiciously asked. A year later, waking up to discover that my friends and family are alive and healthy fills me with gratitude. I’ve painfully learnt, “Jaan hai toh jahan hai,” or as my late medical school professor used to say, “A living problem is better than a dead one.”